Should United Airlines Preform A Marginal Analysis?

Southwest Airlines is a company that is known for its low ticket prices and profitability despite the highly risky industry in which it operates. This essay examines the cost behavior, cost volume profit (CVP), activity based costing (ABC), budgeting process, costing and decision making policies of the firm. The essay will discuss how the airline integrates these concepts in its daily operations.

1. United Airlines is owned by the UAL Corporation and was incorporated on December 30, 1968. The actual company was formed may years before this actually in 1925 and was a private mail carrying service between Pasco, Washington, and Elko, Nevada, and from these humble beginnings they formed a were able to start a company that would come to be a global leader in the airline service. From the 1960’s to the 1980’s the company had 6 different presidents and started to expand and venture into different aspects of business other then airlines and were unable to have any success. These companies that they purchased were not a success and were later resold.

While Frontier and Delta are both popular choices of airlines for Americans, Delta has become more of a household name because of their friendlier service, more comfortable cabins, and their limited extras fees. Frontier airline still is a worthy competitor by being cheaper, but they also have many added on fees for things that are free with Delta. Overall, Delta knows how to take better care of their customers and make sure everyone is satisfied.

There are several possible factors that seem more relevant to be as a cost diver to estimate Delta’s salaries:

The article “Here’s what United will do differently after the infamous dragging incident”, written by Kristine Phillips and Avi Selk (2017), describes the aftermath of the incident where a United Airline passenger was forcibly removed from an airplane to open a seat for an off-duty crew member. This event was a disaster for United and fueled public anger toward United, even “international outrage” (Phillips & Selk, 2017). This issue has caused United Airlines to change their policies by requiring off-duty crew members to “check in at least an hour before the flight leaves” (Phillips and Selk, 2017) and once the airplane has been boarded, the passengers cannot be removed, unless it is for safety reasons.

The purpose of this memorandum is to address the profitability issues at Continental Airlines and to estimate the costs for 2009 to forecast the future outlook of the company. To address these issues, I used regression analysis to observe what effect the 11% reduction in flying capacity would have on the firm’s future operating costs. I also used the results from the regression analysis to verify the costs that, if reduced, would further comply with the implementation of cost-cutting initiatives and operational efficiencies that the company is striving for. Lastly, I consolidated the data to forecast Continental’s financial outlook for 2009, then provided insight

BlueSky flies three airplanes between Houston and three cities, Chicago, Miami, and Phoenix. These three cities are the spokes connected by the Houston hub. A few times each day the three airplanes fly from the spoke cities to Houston. They arrive

In 2008, the senior management team at Continental Airlines, commanded by Lawrence Kellner, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, convened a special meeting to discuss the firm’s latest quarterly financial results. A bleak situation lay before them. Continental had incurred an operating loss of $71 million dollars—its second consecutive quarterly earnings decline that year. Likewise, passenger volume was significantly down, dropping by nearly 5 percent from the prior year’s quarter. Continental’s senior management needed to act swiftly to reverse this trend and return to profitability.

From the humble financial portfolio as a crop dusting outfit in the mid twentieth century, to the multi-billion dollar portfolio of a major airline in the twenty first century, Delta Air Lines has risen as a successful business. The airline industry is directly affected by outside economic conditions and is also cyclical in nature. These factors make it very difficult for airlines to make predictions to stay financially afloat. Delta has ridden the bumpy path of the last twenty years and managed to survive. In the past twenty years there has been many events that

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

A drop in fares has been the best result of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. It has been the impetus for the increase in the number of flights, which in turn has spurred a drive for greater safety in airlines. But with the current airline market, this development has given us one negative. Since ticket prices have dropped to new lows, the realities of an industry which operates on such economies of scale dictates that only a few competitors have the capacity to operate within the market. This is not the desired effect of either political side on this issue, but it is an economic necessity with the environment that has been created, very similar to that of public utilities and phone companies.

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

The company's internal strategies stand in response to the conditions of the external environment. The airline industry in the United States is a difficult one in which to operate. Fixed costs associated with

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

Within case analysis assignment, the JetBlue case is analyzed strategically in this document to set answers for following basic questions: