Airline Industry

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the airline industry experienced losses from 2001 to 2004. In 2005, the industry was profitable for the first time in four years and stayed profitable through 2007. The economic and financial crisis in 2008 took a toll on the industry, causing a few airlines to file bankruptcy. The improvement of the economy in 2009 and 2010 helped the industry get back to profitability. Airlines were using tactics to increase revenues, including charging baggage fees, charging for food and drinks on board, and some airlines charged additional fees for seats with more leg-room. The large increases in revenues helped to offset the higher fuel costs, helping the companies achieve profitability.

With operating income of $801 million and revenue of $8.55 billion, American Airlines was the largest airline in United States as of 1988. As Airline Deregulation Act changed the environment of airline competition, American Airlines had to make some radical changes in its business. Because deregulation made the market more competitive than ever, American Airlines still has many strategical and tactical decisions to make in order to be one step ahead of its competitors. Although there are many issues that airline companies deal with in order to create competitive advantage such as costs, route structuring, distribution channels, customer service and marketing activities like loyalty programs, the most important decisions are to be made regarding revenue management activities.

The terrorist attacks of September 11th caused many changes in our country. Although there were many after effects of the September 11th attacks, the airline industry was most impaired. This paper will explain two factors related to the airline industry that were most affected, the American people and the economy.

Rising fuel prices has a huge impact on the airline industry. In an article published by the New York Times in 2007, oil prices were hovering ‘near $100 a barrel’ which caused the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to ‘slash’ their predicted profits for 2008 from ‘$7.8 billion to $5 billion’ (Clark, 2007). In 2008 high fuel prices were ‘dominant factor’ in the losses that faced the industry, and continued to same effect in 2009 (Dunn, 2009). Diagram 2 shows how fuel price has increased and fallen over the last 5 years.

US On-Airport segment – margin increase through productivity gains that more than offset cost inflation

American airline industry is steadily growing at an extremely strong rate. This growth comes with a number economic and social advantage. This contributes a great deal to the international inventory. The US airline industry is a major economic aspect in both the outcome on other related industries like tourism and manufacturing of aircraft and its own terms of operation. The airline industry is receiving massive media attention unlike other industries through participating and making of government policies. As Hoffman and Bateson (2011) show the major competitors include Southwest Airlines, Delta Airline, and United Airline.

1. There are a few trends in the US airline industry. One is consolidation, wherein existing players merge in an attempt to lower their costs and generate operating synergies. The most recent major merger was the United Continental merger, which is still an ongoing affair, but has created the largest airline in the United States by market share (Martin, 2012). Another trend is towards low-cost carriers. In the US, Southwest has been a long-running success and JetBlue a strong new competitor, but in other countries this business model has proven exceptionally successful. The third major trend is the upward trend in jet fuel prices, and the increasing importance that this puts on hedging fuel prices and capacity management (Hinton, 2011).

Fuel has consistently been one of the largest expense categories for domestic airlines, ranking second only to personnel expenses. During 2003, fuel costs represented, on average, over 16% of the total operating expenses for all U.S. domestic airlines studied by Richard Cobbs and Alex Wolf (2004). Moreover, airlines are generally unable to increase fares to offset any significant increase in fuel costs. From 2001 to 2003, these same airlines experienced a 25.9% compound annual increase in jet fuel costs while average airline pricing decreased by 0.1%, as measured by revenue per available seat mile (Cobbs and Wolf, 2004). Jet fuel costs have substantially risen over the past several years putting consistent pressure on airlines to maintain positive cash flows. Any saving in fuel costs works out to profit earned.

Airlines must operate within a low-margin, high-fixed-cost environment, making profitability particularly sensitive to decreases in volume, either from environmental factors (e.g., the September 11,2001 attacks) or from competition. Moreover, the airline business is labor-intensive. Labor costs as a percentage of revenues ranges from a low of about 25 percent for the low-fare airlines to almost 50

• Airline’s profitability hinged on the fraction of its flown seats occupied by passengers- load factor

The Airline industry has experienced continual problems with rising costs with both fuel and maintenance which has caused them to increase their fees to the consumers to pay for those rising costs. This paper will help explain what an airline such as Delta does to help alleviate such costs without forcing its consumers to flip the bill through high fees that consist of tickets, baggage fees and food. The costs of doing business in aviation today have spiraled out of control making it very expensive for both airlines and the

Since the airline industry is a direct product of market conditions, it is greatly affected by all externalities. Many people noticed a decline in travel after the September 11th tragedy occurred due to safety concerns. When there is a huge increase in fares that definitely interferes with the demand for travel; it causes the price of tickets to continue to rise since a clear correlation between supply and demand exists. When the economy is doing well in terms of the employment rate, and when the dollar is strong people have the tendency to travel more (Jerram,1998).

In the last ten years, airline industries have suffered due to the horrible economic recession and unsustainable fuel prices, which is the major threat to the airline industry. The airline industry heavily relies on fuel prices; therefore, high priced fuel scares existing airline industries and threatens their top management’s decision to reduce operating expenses including wages, material costs, customer satisfaction costs, and sales

According to the latest statistics given by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the airline sector will post a profit of $9 billion in 2011. After the recent credit crunch, economies are now coming back to normal, business travel is increasing and investments in the airlines are now rising.

has a high sensitivity to the economic cycle (Doganis, 2006). The profit margins of the airline