The Airline Industry: Facing The Challenges Of The 21st Century

According to MBASkool (2015), a SWOT analysis has been completed to show some of the opportunities and threats that American Airlines faces. They are listed as follows:

The Airline industry is a large and constantly growing industry. It facilitates economic growth, international investment and world trade and is therefore central to other industries as well for globalisation. There are various forces which lead to globalisation in airline industry. Key drivers of change are forces likely to affect the structure of an industry; sector or market. (1).

In order to determine whether the Five Forces are still applicable, this part will analyse Industry in general concerning structural changes due to Digitalization. Because of Digitalization, another two forces significantly affect the competition which are Globalization and Deregulation. The impact of Globalization on the Industry structure is the customers gain benefit as comparing global prices become much easier and faster in from the Globalization process (Dalken, 2014).

This is an analysis of the Airline Industry in Europe. The paper will cover the current market situation, including financials and market volume. Following this will be a Five Forces analysis on the factors that affect industry competition. The paper will conclude with key insights into the profitability of the industry and a SWOT analysis of one of the industry’s best performers and what rivals and possible future entrants can learn from their success.

United Airlines and Continental Airlines, two major airlines companies, agreed to a merger that would create the world’s largest airline. Such important deal has a lot of problems to be dealt with, from technical, for example how to put the companies databases together, to more fundamental, like how the company should be ruled.

o “In March 1984, … they finally agreed tentatively to lease and remodel Newark Airport’s Terminal C.” (p. 14)

P. Airlines are subject to extensive regulatory and legal requirements issued by The Department of Transportation and The Federal Aviation Administration. The industry has to comply with laws and regulations not only domestically but also internationally which requires significant spending. After 9/11, many new security measures have been put into practice, resulting in expenditures for equipment, training the personnel, federal and airport charges, security taxes and etc.

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).

After six consecutive years of profitability, the U.S airline industry was descended into a downward spiral. The number of passengers flying dropped from 56 million in August 2001 to 30 million in September with no passengers for two days after the attacks (Poling). It took three years for the airlines to reach the 56 million passenger mark again. The impact on the travel industry, specifically the airlines, was more severe than in other areas.

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).

Spirit Airlines should do a global expansion plan with bases of operations, not limited to, passenger flight operations, maintenance operations, ramp operations, airport facilities operation, in international countries. Global expansion will and should include hiring and firing of staff, training and development of staff, and financial reporting for existing currencies.

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.

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.

In the airline markets, SIA has strong competition from not only Asia areas, airlines but also many international brand airlines such as United Airlines and American airlines (best airlines in American for 2012). Although SIA has a great brand reputation with global markets, but it also continually develops the new equipment in the busy airline industry to provide the new attractive point for increasing the customer satisfaction.

Literature reveals that the globalisation of the airline industry has resulted in easier accessibility across international borders. This has greatly benefited the tourism industries economic sector with a rise of foreign tourists and an increase in global competition (Dwyer, 2015). However the negative effects on the environment are vast with climate change has become a global problem. A swish study proved that out of the countries examined, 50-85% of tourism based emissions are as a result of air transport and therefore if the tourism industry is to reduce emissions, it can only be achieved through a major decrease in these environmentally destructive emissions caused by aviation (Perch-Nielsen et al, 2010).