The Commercial Airline Industry Has Witnessed A Steady Increase Essay

The United States carries over one third of the globe’s total traffic, where Over 1.5 billion passengers fly annually. Over the past 20 years, air travel has grown at an average of about 5% per year, the reason for annual change is usually differences in economic growth, and of course other environmental factors, such as the current war. As a rule, the annual growth in air travel has been about twice the annual growth in GDP. Deregulation, liberalization, and competition have essentially altered the management strategies and practices of airlines. Productivity improvements and cost management have been two of the greatest concerns for US airlines for the past twenty years. As a whole, the airline industry must continue to improve their specialization in terms of fleet utilization, pricing and revenue management, and schedule optimization.

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.

EasyJet’s business model aims at using their cost advantage and leading network positions in strong markets to convey point to point cheap fares and operational efficiency. It provides friendly services to customers and delivers market leading returns to shareholders, by sustaining a dominant European network at primary airports, with the main objective of making travel easy and affordable for customers. Despite the fact that, low priced airline model has been really favoured in recent years, there are still key issues identified with EasyJet’s business model which are; it’s cost base, limitation of airports and oil prices.

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).

Overall, the five forces model suggests that the overall intensity of competition in the airline industry is likely to be severe. Back in the early 1980 's competition was very intense. During the late 1980 's the monopolization of major routes by a few major carriers, the limited availability of free landing spots at major hubs and the emergence of limited brand loyalty and tacit price agreements have all helped reduce the intensity of competition. However, as already mentioned, slumping demand in the early 1990 's plunged the industry once more into a severe price war. Airline travel is a commodity-type product, with limited potential for differentiation.

The risk of entry into the airline industry by potential competitors is low due to the “liberalization of market access, a result of globalization. According to the IATA (International Air Transport Association), about 1,300 new airlines were established in the last 40 years,” (Cederholm, 2016). The cost structure of businesses in an industry is a determinant of rivalry. In the Airlines Industry, fixed costs are high, because before the organization can make any sales, they must invest in air crafts, fuel and service employees. These items come attached with hefty price tags. Industries that require such enormous amounts of start-up capital as predicted by many analysts

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.

This industry is heavily saturated with intense and rapidly evolving competition due to the relative ease of entry into the market. This accounts for why there are hundreds of airlines ranging from prominent well-known ones to virtually obscure and obsolete airlines. There are six primary airlines which compete fiercely and maintain the majority of the market share and total volume. The remaining fraction of the market share is then sub-divided and allocated amongst the hundreds of smaller, less relevant airlines. The only notable trend within the industry seems to be a total lack of consistency, as market shares and profits fluctuate regularly during any given time period.

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

The airline industry is one that has rapidly evolved both with regards to technology and product offerings. This paper argues that technological advancements, deregulation and competitive pricing and marketing strategies are what have driven change in regards to JetBlue. The paper goes on to explain how each of these factors affects and drives change in the other three. Deregulation occurred to increase competition; competition in turn affects innovation in marketing and pricing as well as technology, yet this process has no specific order with regards to where the change starts as innovation and competition, can then affect the way the market is regulated. The paper begins by giving a history of pricing strategies and how the deregulation that occurred in 1978 revolutionized the business and it's pricing. It then goes on to the industry analysis which discusses how travel agencies affected pricing due to the percentage that they took from sales. Yet with the advent of the Internet, brick and mortar travel agencies became basically obsolete as more and more passengers began choosing the cheaper online alternative. This new technology cut out the middleman, and also allowed airline industries to diminish their own costs by diminishing personnel, as they developed company websites from which the passengers could purchase flight tickets. The Internet also allowed airline companies to develop dynamic pricing models, where they could monitor their competitors'

The airline industry suffers from oversupply as well as fixed costs which served as the foundation for low fare carriers who offer no frill flights in return for discounted fares. This approach effectively pulled the casual traveler and spread to frequent travelers and some classes of business travel for companies seeking to cut costs. Buyer demand is re-shaping the airline industry as a result of these options.

Key success factors are variables that can significantly “affect the overall competitive positions of companies within any particular industry” (Wheelen, p113). Airlines are in part service businesses. To be successful, an airline must be effective in four general areas: 1) attracting customers; 2) managing its fleet; 3) managing its people, and 4) managing its finances.

The purpose of this report is to inform airline executives about the external forces affecting their industry and what they can do to keep up with the changing business atmosphere. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 had a grueling effect on the economy, and while most industries are almost back to their pre-9/11 financial status, the airline industry is lucky to break-even. This report will explain three leading trends that are forcing the airline industry to re-think their stance on strategic planning.

Trends – Over the past 75 years not one major airline has ever been a big profit gainer, some have done very well to just break even over the course of existence. A positive trend is the renewed focus on technologies that streamline operations, improve passenger facilitation and loyalty, and create flexibility in changing business processes that will eventually lead to lower costs. The news in 2005 will be the revival of the major carriers. New

The deregulation in the 1990s has greatly altered the structure of the aviation industry in Australia as well as internationally (Kain & Webb 2003). This deregulation in air fares, passenger numbers and quality of service has facilitated the rapid growth of low-cost carriers (The Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development 1995). While these changes in policies have been relatively beneficial in the consumer’s perspective, it created many challenges for legacy airlines such as Qantas. The entrance of low- cost carriers threatens legacy airlines’ market share since they are more flexible in service provision and that allows them to make a lot more profit. Moreover, Virgin Blue as a successful low-cost carrier