Leadership in Aviation
American Airlines was under Robert Crandall's leadership from 1980, when he was named president and later chairman, until he retired in 1998. He possesses characteristics like intelligence, character, ability, and desire, all of which is needed to get things accomplished through people. American Airlines was transformed from a small, domestic carrier to one of the world's leading airlines with the largest jet fleet worldwide. American led the airline industry in the 1990's in revenues and operating income, and its parent company, AMR Corporation, was one of the top Fortune 500 companies under Crandall’s reign.
Raised in Rhode Island, Robert Lloyd Crandall graduated from his state’s university and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School. He worked as a regional credit supervisor for Eastman Kodak and later, headed the computer programming division at Hallmark Cards. In 1966, he joined TWA (TransWorld Airlines) as assistant treasurer. He briefly left the airline industry in 1972 to become senior financial officer at Bloomingdale's Department Stores, but returned the next year when American made him its senior Vice President of Finance (Robert L. Crandall: Official Biography). From there, Mr. Crandall advanced to president.
During his 18-year tenure as head of American Airlines, Robert Crandall and his self-empowered team formulated many of the innovations that helped to revolutionize the airline industry after deregulation, when many competitors went bankrupt. American was the first to recognize the value of filling empty seats with discounted tickets now known as "Super Saver Fares." These tickets offered deep discounts for advance-purchase tickets and outsold cheap charter competition. He was also quick to see the importance of restructuring and building a route system around central hub airports to which many airlines still use today.
To keep American Airlines on top of the industry, one of Crandall's visions was to accelerate the company's efforts into the rich overseas markets. By tapping into voids created by Pan Am, Eastern Air, Braniff Int’l and TWA, Mr. Crandall’s ambition acquired promising overseas routes to Asia and Europe, and Latin America.
Perhaps Robert Crandall's greatest contribution to the success of American Airlines was his vision in propelling the SABRE Group from an internal division of the company to one of the world's largest, privately owned computer networks. Conceived in 1959, the Semi-Automatic Business Research Environment served as an internal link between American's offices and ticket counters to help track reservations. When talks aimed at developing an industry-wide reservation system, broken down between travel agents and major carriers in the mid-1970’s, Crandall successfully marketed his airline's computer system throughout the world.
WestJet is the second-largest carrier in Canada, which mainly focuses on economic airlines. In decades past, WestJet expanded its destination network form all western Canadian cities to international scope. During this development period, IT played a important role. For example, electronic ticket is used in the airline reservation system. However, some IT-related issues also hinders the company’s development.
The Airline Industry is a fascinating market. It has been one of the few industries to reach astounding milestones. For example, over 200 airlines have gone out of business since deregulation occurred in 1978. Currently, more than 50% of the airlines in the industry are operating under Chapter 11 regulations. Since 9/11, four of the six large carriers have filed for and are currently under bankruptcy court protection. Since 9/11 the industry has lost over $30 billion dollars, and this loss continues to increase. Despite the fact that the airline industry is in a state of despair, JetBlue has become the golden example, a glimpse of what the industry could be.
As Frontier approached its 10th year of operation, Frontier officials realized an image shift was in order. The airline had established a reputation for friendly and reliable service, and reasonable airfares, mainly appealing to leisure travelers. But they reali...
Robert Johnson I went down to the crossroads fell down on my knees. Robert Johnson went to the crossroads and his life was never the same again. The purpose of this essay is to tell you about the life of Robert Johnson. He is the root of much of the music of today. If he didn't influence the musicians of today directly, he influenced the bands that influenced today's music.
... amid nations (Gerber 2002, p. 29). Although there has been a major decrease of barriers to trade liberalisation concerning flight amenities in the last century, there are imperative uncontrollable external factors a business must assess and weigh before entering international borders and becoming a prosperous globally identified firm (Ramamurti & Sarathy 1997). Qantas, a highly esteemed patriotic and iconic Australian brand has demonstrated accomplishment intercontinentally. The ultimate success of their business, in order to sustain competitiveness in their global market, will rely heavily on their continuous assessment of combined political and legal reforms, economic dynamics, sociocultural influences, technological modifications and environmental concerns and their interlocking marketing strategies to gain the most beneficial opportunities that come their way.
Over his lengthy, distinguished career, British screenwriter and playwright Robert Bolt has been thrice nominated for Academy Awards and has won twice for Doctor Zhivago (1965) and A Man for All Seasons(1966). Born and raised in Manchester, Bolt served in the British Air Force during WWII and afterward attended Manchester University.
More than 37 years ago, Rollin King and Herb Kelleher got together and decided to start a different kind of airline. They began with one simple notion: If you get your passengers to their destinations when they want to get there, on time, at the lowest possible fares, and make darn sure they have a good time doing it, people will fly your airline. And you know what? They were right. What began as a small Texas airline has grown to become one of the largest airlines in America. Today, Southwest Airlines flies over 104 million passengers a year to 64 great cities all across the country, and we do it more than 3,400 times a day.
JetBlue Airways entered the market in 2000 from a position of financial strength, leadership capability and several rare advantage points uncommon to others in the industry: 1) David Neeleman, the founder, had several years of industry experience as a result of having successfully launched and sold an airline (Morris Air), bringing both explicit and tacit knowledge into the his new venture; 2) Neeleman was afforded the opportunity to work directly with his idol, Herb Kelleher, at Southwest Airlines (the king of the low-cost leaders) after Southwest purchased Morris Air from Neeleman; and 3) Substantial financial support from venture capitalists who had funded Neeleman's previous ventures and were more than willing to support and capitalize on his idea for a new low-cost passenger airline.
In the airline industry, Southwest Airlines is considered a true innovator. By shaking up the rules of flying and improving upon inefficient industry norms, Southwest has quickly grown by leaps and bounds. From the very start, Southwest Airlines' goals were to make a profit, achieve job security for every employee, and make flying affordable for more people (Southwest,2007). Southwest has not strayed from these goals. It does not buy huge aircrafts, fly international routes or try to go head to head with the major carriers; and thanks to a great planning, Southwest airlines has become the most successful airline company in the U.S., if not the world.
Airline and travel industry profitability has been strapped by a series of events starting with a recession in business travel after the dotcom bust, followed by 9/11, the SARS epidemic, the Iraq wars, rising aviation turbine fuel prices, and the challenge from low-cost carriers. (Narayan Pandit, 2005) The fallout from rising fuel prices has been so extreme that any efficiency gains that airlines attempted to make could not make up for structural problems where labor costs remained high and low cost competition had continued to drive down yields or average fares at leading hub airports. In the last decade, US airlines alone had a yearly average of net losses of $9.1 billion (Coombs, 2011).
Southwest Airlines strategy of focusing on short haul passenger and providing rates as low as one third of their competitors, they have seen tremendous growth in the last decade. Market share for top city pairs on Southwest's schedule has reached 80% to 85%. Maintaining the largest fleet of 737's in the world and utilizing point-to-point versus the hub-and-spoke method of connection philosophy allowed Southwest to provide their service to more people at a lower cost. By putting the employee first, Southwest has found the key to success in the airline business. A happy worker is a more productive one as well as a better service provider. Southwest will continue to reserve their growth in the future by entering select markets only after careful market research.
It has stayed relevant to the market through its propelled philosophy of relationships to generate profits in the business. Since its establishment in Monroe, Louisiana the once tiny airline has stretched to greater heights serving in 6 continents. It has also established a distinguishable name among its competitors with a reputation of leading customer services. However, even as an established venture, the company needs to maximize its profits in order to stay in business and expand in to new territories beyond its conquered boundaries. A strategic analysis was carried out by our team to establish the company’s current situation. A SWOT analysis was performed to come up with three referenced, strategic alternatives. This alternatives are meant to act as a strategic guidance to the company in order to enhance growth. The strategic recommendation provided will improve and enable the business to cope with the competitors while the implementation of the strategy section will outline the way to go about achieving these alternatives in the business setting. Lastly, we put up a discussion on the evaluation procedures and necessary controls for the
This was a sad day for everyone in both the immediate and extended “Delta family,” a day perhaps as sad in its own way as the death of Mr. Woolman almost 40 years before. The sadness mixes with fear by employees and retirees, their families, stockholders, customers, vendors, taxpayers, governments and all others among the tens of thousands impacted by the bankruptcy. Leadership decisions by Delta’s Board and CEO’s over a long period of years laid the foundation for Delta to be in a position where the factors would have a large enough impact to result in bankruptcy. By promoting Ron Allen to CEO, primarily because he had moved up the chairs in the company through Beeb’s efforts, the Board showed their lack of awareness of the need for a strategist to deal with the fundamental changes taking place in the airline industry. Then the Board brought in Leo Mullin and gave him free rein for 6 ½ years to turn a cash rich company into one in such poor shape financially that his successor had to turn to expensive sources of money to keep the company
Gittell, J. H. (2003). The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Robert Owen was born in Newtown, Montgomeryshire (Wales) on May 14, 1771, the sixth of seven children. His father was a sadler and ironmonger who also served as local postmaster; his mother came from one of the prosperous farming families of Newtown.