American Airlines Value Pricing Analysis

The airlines do not focus on the combination of quality and good service at a fair price; its focus is instead only on providing ultra low cost. It also charges customers for value added features and services. Thus the pricing is value added pricing. When compared to the competitors of Spirit for operating costs per seat mile; it is lower compared to other major airlines. The important points like encouragement to demand stimulation and preference for its low-cost model makes it successful for its low-cost pricing strategy.

The airline industry has long attempted to segment the air travel market in order to effectively target its constituents. The classic airline model consists of First Class, Business Class and Economy, and the demographics that make up the classes have both similarities and differences to the other classes. For instance there may be similarities between business class travellers on a particular flight, but they will not all be travelling for the same reason. An almost-universal characteristic of air travel is that customers do not fly for the sake of flying; the destination is the important element and the travel is a by-product, a means-to-an-end that involves the necessity of an aircraft that gets the customer from point A to point B.

Overbooking is a highly controversial issue that has been on the agenda for many years. It is not only a business topic but also an ethical matter. Overbooking can be examined through many ethical theories.

To replace the old domestic air-fare system with 16 different prices, discounts, and restrictions that are constantly changing, American made four key changes to its fares.

* Market. The market is a huge weakness with the economic downturn and people flying less, they are having a harder time to keep the basic fares down low enough for people to fly.

7. Current Competitors: “The Company faces competing service from at least one, and sometimes more than one, domestic airline including: Alaska Airlines (Alaska), Delta Air Lines (Delta), Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airways (JetBlue), Hawaiian Airlines, Southwest Airlines (Southwest) and AirTran Airways (Air Tran)”

Piedmont Airlines recently invested over $1 million in state of the art equipment and employee development in order to forecast and analyze the appropriate amount of discounted fares to offer per flight. The company discovered that by offering several discounted flights to consumers willing to book their travel well in advance of their departure date left many options available for the business traveler who needed to book much closer to the actual departure date. The analysis was the task of the Revenue Enhancement Department (RED) managed by Marilyn Hoppe. While this state of the art equipment was a step in the right direction, Marilyn believed that there were still a lot of subjective decisions being made and

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

Some of the ways costs are figured in the airline industry are as follows: available seat miles, revenue passenger miles, load factor, and revenue per available seat miles. The available seat miles calculation is the “number of seats available multiplied by the number of miles flown” (Wikipedia, 2007). The revenue passenger miles calculation is the

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

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 order to identify the optimal booking policy we have conducted simulation with 40 different booking levels for business and economy. As these two variables are independent, we have conducted consequential analysis. Results for business class level booking are in (figure 3). The detailed information about tested values is in Appendix B.

Netessine, S., & Shumsky, R. (2002). Introduction to the theory and practice of yield management. INFORMS Transactions on Education, 3(1), 34–39. 
Retrieved from http://archive.ite.journal.informs.org/Vol3No1/NetessineShumsky/

American Airlines was the United States’ largest carrier in 1992 with a fleet of 622 jet aircraft, flying 2,450 flights daily to 182 locations, as well as new innovative technology and programs. American Airlines was the first to introduce a computerized airline reservation system called Sabre, “Super Saver” fares and frequent flier programs. Regardless of the innovations, American Airlines and the airline industry was still not operating as profitably or providing customer satisfaction the way it should have in 1992. In 1991, As a result of a recession and the Gulf War, demand for air travel fell, fare wars came about, and the airlines

*One method of adjusting the demand is that the airline company can reduce the price or offer promotions during the low peak season to attract