Pest Analysis: American Airlines

The threat of new entry is high because there are no significant barriers of entry in the airline industry. For example, airplanes can be easily leased, defraying the large initial capital investment. Additionally, exit cost in the business is

Suppliers generally have a moderate to high bargaining power within the industry due to the limited number of suppliers which forces aviation companies to choose from the number available and accordingly to accept their prices. In fact, fuel is the second highest cost for aviation companies. There are highly depended on supplier’s prices and the availability which indicates on a relatively high bargaining power of suppliers. In addition, there are high switching costs which are strongly in favor of the suppliers and means that the company experiences an increase in operating costs when switching to another supplier as flying another type of aircraft leads to additional costs (maintenance, training etc.).Aircrafts are vulnerable to delays due to the location of gate locations which leads to a decrease in utilization and therefore to an increase in costs.

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.

It is difficult to enter into the plane manufacturing industry because of the capital needed to enter. The amount of money and expertise needed to make even one plane is around 200 million dollars. For this reason, there are

American airlines is a corporation that exhibits all of the characteristics of a firm in an industry where good tactical management is the key to success. This company and its regional airline partner American eagle serve almost 250 cities around the world and operate more than 3600 daily flights. Its goal is to provide safe, dependable and friendly air transportation along with related services, making a great effort to transform any experience into a positive one. All of the services that this company has and the image that they are trying to keep in every day activities make each day an inevitable challenge for its employees.

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.

The domestic US airline industry has been intensely competitive since it was deregulated in 1978. In a regulated environment, most of the cost increases were passed along to consumers under a fixed rate-of-return based pricing scheme. This allowed labor unions to acquire a lot of power and workers at the major incumbent carriers were overpaid. After deregulation, the incumbent carriers felt the most pain, and the floodgates had opened for newer more nimble carriers with lower cost structures to compete head-on with the established airlines. There were several bankruptcies followed by a wave of consolidation with the fittest carriers surviving and the rest being

Air Asia leading airline was established with the dream of making flying possible for everyone. Since 2001, Air Asia has swiftly broken travel norms around the globe and has risen to become the world’s best. With a route network that spans through to over 20 countries, Air Asia continues to pave the way for low-cost aviation through our innovative solutions, efficient processes and a passionate approach to business. Together with our associate companies, Air Asia X, Thai Air Asia, Indonesia Air Asia, Philippines Air Asia and Japan Air Asia.

Being the largest airline in the world comes with some significant advantages, one of the most important is a physical presence in the locations that passengers want to travel. As part of the anti-trust settlement, American Airlines agreed to sell approximately 15% of their takeoff and landing slots in Washington D.C. and New York . Even with this sale of slots, American Airlines is still able to offer flights to over 250 destinations daily. Just by their sheer size, American Airlines should be capturing a significant share of the market.

American Airlines had been the largest airline in the United States for a long time. In 1990 and 1991 due to a recession and the Gulf War, demand for air travel dropped drastically, for this reason, fare wars started and all the airlines incurred massive losses.

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).

With 1988 operating income of $801 million on a revenue of $8.55 billion, American Airlines, Inc. (American), principal subsidiary of Dallas/Fort Worth-based AMR Corporation, was the largest airline in the United States. At year-end 1988 American operated 468 aircraft on 2,200 flights daily to 151 destinations in the United States, Bermuda, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, France, Great Britain, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, Switzerland, Venezuela, and West Germany.

One of the world’s most competitive and prominent industries is the airlines industry. It generates huge amounts of income as well as employment each year. Some of the common names in US air travel service providers are Alaska, Northwest, Southwest, US airways, American etc.

According to my research the power of buyers is medium to increasing within the airline industry. Over the last few years, buyers have been presented more choices when choosing an airline carrier. The internet has created a structure of easier pricing information and allows the buyer to more easily compare pricing. Buyers can sometimes find pricing discrepancies on the exact flight due to less fragmented pricing information at the buyers fingertips. The internet and it’s ability to compare prices has also allowed the emergence of a few budget airlines to be profitable. Much of the bargaining power of the power can still depend on where the flier is traveling. The “hub” system, mentioned earlier still allows the larger airlines to dominate certain cities and creates an environment of higher prices in that market. For example, a flight from Nashville to Santo Domingo, DR presents the flier with very low bargaining power. Unless the flier wants to fly through NYC or Newark, NJ, he/she must fly American Airlines via Miami. The price for this flight is typically very high due to no other airlines

Substitutes to air travel pose a significant threat to the profits of the entire airline industry. It is advantageous to be in an industry with few or no substitutes as they diminish profitability for the industry as a whole. There are many alternative ways in which a person can travel long distances. Therefore, the airline industry is threatened by many substitutes. Trains are the primary substitute to air travel in that they provide long distance travel at marginally lower expense to the buyer. Train stations are also generally more accessible to the public than an airport, which adds further appeal to the substitute of traveling by rail. An advantage held by airlines is the fact that air travel is widely known to be a much faster mode of transportation, yet more and more buyers are choosing train travel over air travel strictly slight for the price advantage.