Delta Airlines Case Study

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Over the last 20 years, airlines have distributed ticket sales through online tickets sales, via individual airline websites, through online travel sites, or through travel agencies. This has changed the way that individuals can purchase airline tickets, rather than the antiquated methods of going to the airport counter to book a flight. Advantages to ticket distribution control The global distribution services are indirect channels that provide distribution of ticket sales to travel sites, which in return charge the individual airlines for each ticket sold through these outlets. This is rather costly to each individual airline, as the airline is charged nearly $12 (Quora 2011), for each individual ticket sold through these outlets. If every passenger that flew during the year of 2015 with airlines that served the United States (895.5 million passengers USDOT, 2016), airlines would have been charged $1.07 billion by the global distribution services. Travel agencies are also paid commissions by the airlines as well. Indirectly, …show more content…

In addition to the Delta website, consumers are able to purchase tickets off of global distribution services and online travel agencies; this method is commonly used by larger airlines. It is advantageous for consumers to purchase tickets directly from the airline for acquiring a higher tier of frequent flyer miles and typically a lower baggage fee, as well as no additional fees that are placed by the travel agency or distribution service. Low-cost airlines, such as Southwest Airlines, however offer online ticket purchasing only through their website. Because low-cost carriers try to keep distribution costs and operational overhead to a minimum, keeping the ticket sales internally helps keep ticket sales lower. Also, internal ticket sales prevent travel agencies from receiving a commission from the airline, and also drives more traffic to their

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