United Airlines Case Study

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

3. Obviously one of the biggest financial impacts that the company has faced was the terrorist attacks on September 11th and the financial and economic impact that this event caused on its own. United airlines responded to the attacks by installing bullet proof doors on all the cockpits and

: On average, over 8 million people fly around the world daily and over 2 billion fly in the United States daily. Everyone wants non expensive flights, comfortable seating, and on-time flights. Spirit Airlines is an airline that prides themselves on provided very low costs to customers and they strive to be the most cost efficient airline in regards to their competitors. “Spirit Airlines was founded in 1964 as a Clippert Trucking Company” (https://www.spirit.com/history.aspx) and has grown to servicing beyond coast –to- coast and has transitioned to low-cost carrier and ultra-low cost carrier. Spirit Airlines transitioned to Airbus fleet and consists of A319s, A320s, and A321. The A319s has seats 145 customers, the A320 seats 174 customers,

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.

Airline travel is arguably safer than that of car travel, with not only less risk for in motion issues and collisions of any sort, but not issues about missing the turn off. Airline travel issues do not usually persist during travel, yet can sometimes happen before the take-off even begins. The issue with Airline travel is not travel hazards, but instead travel protocols often carried out by the airline companies. United Airlines specifically has gone through too many CEO switches and un-transparent business ethics leading to customer complaints and needs to reevaluate business ethics.

United Airline’s actions to handle their problem of an overbooked flight created a hurtful image and reputation to American citizens. United Airlines made many mistakes while handling this crisis. According to CNBC, United Airlines made three major public relations mistakes. As a company, they could have prevented this disaster from happening in the first place. This could have been done by simply continuing to offer and bribe customers who would have voluntarily given up their seats on Flight 3411. CEO, Oscar Munoz, also took steps to dig United Airlines into a larger hole. While handling this crisis, Munoz first, gave a cold apology. Second, Munoz blamed the victim of the incident, David Dao, by calling him disruptive and

United Airlines was in the spotlight back in 2008 for one of the first- known social media crisis scandals for big business when Dave Carroll posted a YouTube video about his terrible experience with the airline. 10 years later, the airline is back in the spotlight for multiple instances of horrific customer service. In March of 2017, United Airlines banned two young girls from boarding their flight because they were wearing leggings. The airline believed the girls were representing their company by using the free passes they were using to board their flight and were not in compliance with the dress code policy for the company's benefit travel. Now in April of 2017, United Airlines is once again in the spotlight for forcing a man to give up his seat to a staff member. They dragged him down the aisle of the plane and beat him for refusing to give up his seat, while appalled passengers recorded the incident and expressed their concern for the man. As United Airlines continues to be in the media for crisis scandals and disconcern towards their guests, it is impossible to depict that they can revive their reputation.

A nine month battle with United Airlines began when Dave Carroll filed a claim. United Airline’s policy requires that customers report any claims they have within twenty-fours of the incident. However, Carroll after leaving the airport after midnight was miles away on tour and was not able to take any action about the claim at the airport. Finally, after so many months of battling United Airlines told Dave Carroll that, “The matter was closed. No vouchers, no money, no apology, no

In the article “United Airlines Is Giving Its 6,000 Customer Service Reps The iPhone 6 Plus,” Jon Russell mentions how Apple allies with United Airlines, the major American airline headquartered in Chicago, while providing customer service representatives with iPhone 6 Plus. Due to the complaints from the airline staffs, the company decides to allocate better tools to serve the customers, especially during busy travel times with approximately 4,000 flights per day across over 350 airports and 6 continents (Russell 2015). Approximately 6,000 staffs are now using iPhone 6 Plus as a device to assist their customers. Moreover, in 2011, United Airline gave its pilots iPads and 23,000 flight attendants iPhone 6 Plus in late 2014. This not only allows airline staffs “to print out luggage tags,

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

The issue with United Airlines brought a lot of negative attention to their business. This has made people question their ethics and if they really want to fly with United. Also, it doesn’t only affect the customers, it also affects their employees. Moreover, do the employees really want to deal with all the backlash and work for a company known for overbooking and not handling the situation properly.

This proposal addresses the needed steps to be taken in order for Southwest Airlines to see continued growth in the airline industry. Southwest Airlines has been able to remain one of the most profitable airlines in the industry for an extended period of time. Even with the hindrance of the 2001 terrorist attacks involving airplanes and the U.S recession of 2008, Southwest has continued to see strong revenue growth. Meanwhile, other companies were experiencing major losses and in some cases folding. Southwest Airlines has capitalized on the company’s strength of being the top low cost

British Airways (BA) is a company that encountered several difficulties back in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The poor performances of the organization, was leading the company to failure. BA was offering a service that even though it accomplished the mission of the company, was not providing customer satisfaction. The organization was not taking into consideration the needs of the costumer and was not providing an acceptable customer service experience. “Productivity at BA in the 1970s was strikingly bad, especially in contrast to other leading foreign airlines” (Jick, Peiperl, 2010, p.28). Due to numerous changes, the company increased their revenues and became a respectful and well know organization.

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.

The project requires the student to carry out a research, analysis and discussion on how a Singapore listed company can access to the country’s financial system and how it benefits the company in achieving its business objective. The research will cover the various types of financial services offered by financial intermediaries whom the corporation can access to.