Value Creation in the Airline Industry

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.

1) Introduction to airline industry 2) Drivers of globalisation using yip’s model 2.1 Market globalisation 2.2 Cost globalisation 2.3 Globalisation of government policies 2.4 Globalisation of competition 3) Localisation- arguments against globalisation 4) Pestle Analysis 5) Porter’s 5 forces analysis and their application to Airline industry 5.1 Rivalry amongst Existing Firms 5.2 Threat of substitution 5.3 Threat of new entrants 5.4 Power of customers 5.5 Power of buyers 6) Opportunities and Threats of Airline industry 7) Internal analysis of Virgin Airlines: Strengths and Weakness 8) Financial Statics of Virgin Atlantic Airline 9) Strategic

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).

Barriers to entry are also heightened by the hub system in the airline industry. Carriers can offer travelers more choices while tying up less capital through their hubs. As a result, the hub system creates market power for large carriers.

Today the hub and spoke concept is used at most major airports throughout the United States such as Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas. The new system allows air travelers two key concepts in air travel. The first, experienced by those that live in close proximity to the central hub, saw a significant increase in both flights available and service areas. The second key point is with air travelers that live near the spoke or regional areas of the routes. Those near the spokes have gained hundreds of new destinations with the new system. By traveling from the serving airports to the hubs air travelers are able to reach destinations on servicing or regional airlines that would not have existed prior to deregulation.

Southwest Airlines shot out of the gates, much to the chagrin of their competitors as a short haul, low fare, and high frequency carrier. As SWA expanded and deregulation occurred, they had to decide what kind of airline they wanted to be and how they would adapt to the changing environment. The FAA reports that passenger numbers are expected to reach a billion passengers in 2023 (FAA, 2011). Most Airlines are responding to the increased demand by centralizing and consolidating their assets. This in turn creates a situation where capacity is maximized in some airports and congestion increases causing significant delay. Demand will continue to rise over the next few decades and these airlines must rely on regulators and policy makers to upgrade the very necessary infrastructure and technology. Southwest’s strategy is to remain a point to point carrier instead of the traditional hub and spoke carrier, satisfying their customer demand with lower congestion at underutilized airports with more flights. However Southwest continues to remain flexible looking forward as it adopts hub and spoke techniques, coordinates with the FAA and governing bodies, and invests heavily in its most important airports to stay ahead of the pack.

Colleen Barrett, President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines led with love and her company succeeded. Lead with LUV is based on Colleen Barrett and the different ways to create success. There are five main points of the book that I will discuss: What is leadership, Celebrating Successes, Having Mentors, The Triple Bottom Line, and A Compelling Vision.

None of the Southwest’s competitors can completely copy what Southwest is doing, because Southwest is a values-based firm. Southwest’s strategies can be imitated, but Southwest’s culture cannot be copied. I would like to explain what the values-based diverse firm looks like, how Southwest is values-based diverse, and why Southwest’s culture cannot be copied. The following are the relevant facts, the analysis, and justification using supporting evidence.

Five major passenger airlines dominate their industry by size (Grant, 2013, p. 479). But their size, legacy costs and hub and spoke business model created significant exit barriers (Grahm & Vowles, 2006, p. 108). New competitors not only started with no entry barriers but also few if any exit barriers. Legacy carriers had to identify new innovative strategies to augment their core business models to profitably compete.

This study conducts secondary research with data gathered from various sources, including relevant journal articles, the airline’s annual reports, and other secondary sources. It also applied the ground and blocked time of flight segment provided by R.A.Haeme, et al., (1988), the hub and spoke network structure and the point to point network structure discussed in the study of (Gillen, December 2006) to examine the operational

Flight Centre describes itself as a global discount flight specialist. Taking into consideration the relative size of the Australian and international operations as well as the availability of information on global environment and competitive factors, for this analysis, it is more appropriate to consider the Flight Centre’s industry environment as “The Australian international and domestic airline

This paper will review the case study of Delta Airlines which was suffering like all its competitors with rising fuel costs which averaged anywhere between 30 to 50 percent of its total operating costs. This paper will answer six questions which will help identify what the company did to handle the high cost of fuel. The questions that I will answer will include the following.

1. Jet Blue´s Business- level strategy; value and cost drivers Jet Blue uses to create and maintain ist competitive position

Learning, specialization and fix cost distribution can spread over larger output with economies of scales (Albers, Koch and Ruff, 2005). Three strategies were opted as motivation by the airlines to create an alliance (i) mergers and acquisitions, (ii) setting up low-cost carriers and (iii) air alliances. Air alliance was considered as the most sustainable strategy by the Star airline. Through the strategic alliance, the airline had an opportunity to expand and become large but at the same time they can lower their cost by creating the competitive advantage that is why Start Alliance opted for this option (Cojohari, 2015).