Braniff International Airways : A Brief History

Business Strategy – BAD 4013 – SUMMER 1999 Case Study Southwest Airlines I. Strategic Profile and Case Analysis Purpose The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit. Twenty-seven years ago, Rolling King, owner of floundering commuter airline, and Herb Kelleher, King’s lawyer, got together and decided to start a different kind of airline that would provide a short-haul, low-fair, high-frequency, point-to-point service in the United States. The company began service on June 18, 1971 with flights between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio (“The Golden Triangle” as Herb called it). Southwest Airlines is the fourth

Two of the largest competing airlines in America may seem to have a lot in common to a consumer’s eye: big commercial planes, friendly staff, one free carry-on bag, complimentary snacks. Maybe the biggest comparison of them all is how much of the airline market these two companies take up. But for every similarity, there must be a difference. Beyond contrasting ticket prices, there are many fronts on which to compare Southwest Airlines and American Airlines. To begin when the companies began, American Airlines was established approximately 40 years sooner than Southwest Airlines as a result of a merger. In terms of people, Southwest Airlines currently has just about half the number of employees that American does. However, to truly compare the two companies, the organization itself must be researched and analyzed. Southwest Airlines and American Airlines appear to be very different to this day in terms of organizational culture, team dynamics, and conflict and negotiation.

“The Customer Loyalty report clearly shows, membership in Classic Rewards is down nearly 20%” (UOP (A), 2012, p. 3). The same report also reflects members point redemption for flights down 20% from the previous year. Overall membership in the program fell by 10% between 2002 and 2004 with new membership falling nearly 75% in the same period. According to the monthly financials, operating expenses increased significantly from 2003 to 2004 reducing net income from $71 million in 2003 to $10 million in 2004. The review of these reports prompted the Board of Directors to set challenging goals to save the airline.

In the past three years the airline industry has faced an unparalleled list of challenges and American Airlines has certainly had more than the others. Year by year AA has tried to recover with a great deal of effort to turn the company around. The strategies they are applying to counteract the status are : Lower costs to compete, give to the customers the service they are expecting

Independence Air started as Atlantic Coast Airline (ACA) on 15 December 1989. It operated as a feeder service as United Express for United Airlines and Delta Connection for Delta Airlines. United withdrew from the contract after ACA labor and management objected to a request for concessions for a lower fee-for-departure agreement. Consequently, ACA reinvented itself as a low cost carrier known as Independence Air and began operations on 16 June 2004. Independence Air was based at Washington Dulles International Airport.

The airline business is an industry that is competitive and unique, focussing on consumer choice and the responsiveness of airlines to changes in the external business environment. For any airline, this environment can be very complex as it is ‘hard for them to fully understand and impossible for them to fully control’ (The Times, n.d. p1). Virgin Atlantic is an international airline that is based in the UK. It was started by the entrepreneur Richard Branson in 1982 and now flies to 30 destinations around the world (Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd, 2011). By looking at

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).

The report finds that Delta Airlines has successfully emerged from its bankruptcy in 2005 to report successful returns in both 2007 and 2008. With its 2008 acquisition of Northwest Airlines Delta became the world's largest airline, further improving its position in the airline industry. Despite this current positive position report also finds potential adversities

At the onset of the airline industry in the United States, major network airlines were the sole providers of air travel. This multifaceted industry was a difficult industry to break into as a consequence of “sophisticated customer segmentation, hub-and spoke models and costly information systems for reservations, fare wars and intense competition” (Thompson 2008). Shrinkage in airline ticket prices augmented the demand for airline travel. Many markets were simply deserted or over-looked by major network airlines; this is a region a fresh “second tier of service providers” could enter into. This endeavor proved to provide a consumer savings of billions per year. Thus in June of 1971, after a tumultuous battle with other Texas-based

Delta Air Lines began in the early 1920’s as a crop dusting operation, known as the Huff Daland crop dusting company, and was based out of Macon, Ga. This was the first agricultural flying company in existence at the time and grew into the world’s largest privately owned fleet of aircraft (18 planes) by the mid 1920’s. At the turn of the decade, co-founder C.E. Woolman lead a movement to purchase Huff Daland and re-branded the company as Delta Air Service, named after the Mississippi River Delta region the company would navigate.

3,4- The Airline industry and the market The airline industry is large, specially in the United States, mainly due to the “ Deregulation” of the industry. In 1938, the Civil Aeronautics Board was created to control the growth of the air transportation industry. This board had the authority to control entry, exit, prices and methods of competition. In the late 1970 this structure was found inefficient and in 1978 deregulation took place. Due to the deregulation of the industry competition intensified, prices dropped, and the number of people travelling increased. Many new companies emerged and regional airlines saw deregulation as an opportunity to expand. Due to the rise in competition, by 1986 mergers started to take place and in 1987 64.8% of the market was controlled by the four largest airlines. The demand for air travel is determined mainly by price, studies revealed that half of the leisure travellers and on quarter of business travellers did not have a preference for a particular airline, which means that prices determined the

Some of the incumbent airlines of the time (Braniff, Trans-Texas, and Continental Airlines) initiated legal action, and thus began a three-year

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the business strategy of JetBlue Airways. JetBlue was founded by David Neeleman in 2000 and quickly became one of the largest discount airlines in the United States. It was started in the east coast primarily and expanded throughout the country and entered the international market soon after that. JetBlue received the “#1 Airline Brand” rating10 even while keeping its advertising costs significantly lower than Southwest Airlines. Jet Blue’s talent in formulating and executing effective strategies has enabled the company to rapidly grow in the domestic and international market base.

The company incorporated in June 1971 and officially began operations on April 17, 1973, with the launch of 14 small aircraft from Memphis International Airport. It soon became the premier carrier of high-priority goods in the marketplace and the standard setter for the industry it established.