Introduction
The Airline Deregulation Act was signed into law in 1978 and allowed the airline industry to be deregulated which lifted restrictions on where they were allowed to fly (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 2007). This also allowed the airline carriers to be competitive so they needed new ways to operate in order to provide services that travelers were searching for when choosing an airline. One innovation that was pioneered by the major airline carriers in the early 1980s that collectively represented a radical change from the era of regulation was the hub-and-spoke system (Wensveen, 2007). This paper will discuss what the airline hub-and-spoke system is and how it operates. It will also discuss the advantages and disadvantages as well as the economic effects it has on the airline carriers.
The Hub-and-Spoke System Explained
The hub-and-spoke system or network is a system that feeds air traffic from small communities through larger communities to the traveler’s destination via connections at the larger community (Wensveen, 2007). The airline will do most of its operations in the larger communities which the airline will call it its hub. The small communities are the spokes of the network and are connected to the hub by non-stop flights between the different spokes (Aguirregabiria & Ho, 2010). For example, a person wants to travel from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport which is considered a “spoke” city to San Antonio International Airport on United Airlines will have to travel to Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport and change planes as due to Houston being a hub for United Airlines. Many travelers would wonder why it would not be a direct flight to their destination...
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Wensveen, J. G. (2007). Air Transportation A Management Perspective (6th ed.). Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company.
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. Because the reasons can differ greatly in the motivations for a customer wanting to fly, it can be difficult to divide the market into discrete segments, that is, there is always going to be overlap in the preferences and characteristics of any given segment. With that in mind, the commonalities that are shared between the clientele that make up the respective classes can easily withstand analysis.
In 1978, deregulation removed government control over fares and domestic routes. A slew of new entrants entered the market, but within 10 years, all but one airline (America West), had failed and ceased to exist. With long-term growth estimates of 4 percent for air travel, it's attractive for new firms to service the demand. It was as simple as having enough capital to lease a plane and passengers willing to pay for a seat on the plane. In recent news, the story about an 18-yr British...
Denver International Airport Construction and Operating Costs. (1997, July 5).University of Colorado Boulder. Retrieved April 28, 2011, from http://www.colorado.edu/libraries/govpubs/dia.htm
Point-to-Point routing system, unlike low-cost competitors that utilize hub-and-spoke system, partnering with larger airlines to provide connecting flights.
As airline industry is a competitive marketplace, the airline companies use new technologies to improve their efficiency and decrease the overhead costs, including ‘advanced aircraft engine technology, IT solutions, and mobile technology’ (Cederholm 2014). The technology changes including technology improvement, new innovation and disruptive technology. The disruptive technology need to meet the characteristics of ‘simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability’ (Christensen 1995). The technology changes would bring both opportunities and threats to airline companies. Since Labour cost and fuel costs occupy 50% of most airlines operating cost (Groot 2014). Therefore, if new technologies could be disruptive in the two aspects, there will be important changes to current airline
In the airline industry, Southwest Airlines is considered a true innovator. By shaking up the rules of flying and improving upon inefficient industry norms, Southwest has quickly grown by leaps and bounds. From the very start, Southwest Airlines' goals were to make a profit, achieve job security for every employee, and make flying affordable for more people (Southwest,2007). Southwest has not strayed from these goals. It does not buy huge aircrafts, fly international routes or try to go head to head with the major carriers; and thanks to a great planning, Southwest airlines has become the most successful airline company in the U.S., if not the world.
Before to select the proper alternative, three alternatives were analysed and evaluated under four decisions criteria: customer experience, cost, growth rate / market penetration and ease to implementation (See Exhibit 2: Factor Analysis). Between all the alternatives, it was suggested that Southwest Airlines enters to New York City by bidding the slots and gates at the LGA (See Exhibit 3: Alternatives Analysis). This alternative sustains the challenge of changing the customer experience which means adding more flights from and to the East; furthermore, entering to new markets will reinforce “the power of the network” through LGA. At the same time, this decision will allow signing more code-sharing agreements with other airlines flying to international destinations and offer new products and services to LUV customers as loyalty rewards, in-flight internet, onboard duty-free purchases, etc.; as a result of this, it will increase passenger’s insights and experiences by flying with Southwest Airlines. Nevertheless, there is potential risk by selecting this alternative, in the recent years the energy prices has had a huge increase affecting costs, fares and even capacity needed, however Southwest Airlines has been able to hedge fuel for decad...
Airport planning, once carried out utilizing a single future forecast, failed to account for the complexity and uncertainty of the aviation industry. Today, it is widely assumed airport success can only be met through the utilization of a flexible, integrated planning approach that sees forecasts as incorrect.
Airline and travel industry profitability has been strapped by a series of events starting with a recession in business travel after the dotcom bust, followed by 9/11, the SARS epidemic, the Iraq wars, rising aviation turbine fuel prices, and the challenge from low-cost carriers. (Narayan Pandit, 2005) The fallout from rising fuel prices has been so extreme that any efficiency gains that airlines attempted to make could not make up for structural problems where labor costs remained high and low cost competition had continued to drive down yields or average fares at leading hub airports. In the last decade, US airlines alone had a yearly average of net losses of $9.1 billion (Coombs, 2011).
Southwest Airlines strategy of focusing on short haul passenger and providing rates as low as one third of their competitors, they have seen tremendous growth in the last decade. Market share for top city pairs on Southwest's schedule has reached 80% to 85%. Maintaining the largest fleet of 737's in the world and utilizing point-to-point versus the hub-and-spoke method of connection philosophy allowed Southwest to provide their service to more people at a lower cost. By putting the employee first, Southwest has found the key to success in the airline business. A happy worker is a more productive one as well as a better service provider. Southwest will continue to reserve their growth in the future by entering select markets only after careful market research.
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Airports can be considered as important national resources of most countries in the world. The main responsibility of an airport is in transportation of people and goods and in internal and global business. They are where the nation’s aviation system connects with other modes of transportation and where state responsibility for managing and regulating air traffic operations intersects with the role of governments that own and operate most airports. However, most major airports are owned and operated by the private sectors. This is due to several reasons such as to improve efficiency and economic performance, be more competitive as well as to maximize the community’s return from the airport assets in which public enterprise found out to be less efficient in term of its production and management.
Shuk-Ching Poon, T. and Waring, P. 2010. The lowest of low-cost carriers: the case of AirAsia. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21 (2), pp. 197--213.
Air travel is a huge and tremendously flourishing industry. Globalization can be defined as the integration of national and local economics, culture and societies through a web of communication, transportation and trade. The current era considers globalization as the dominant driver of almost all business due to the influence or the international market. The emerging prosperity of the global aviation industry plays a substantial role in economic growth, tourism, global investment and world trade, which are the impacts of globalization. This essay portrays the negative and positive effects of this globalization on the airline industry.
The competitive advantage of an airport depends on five core factors, namely the Spatial, Facility, Demand, Service and Managerial factor. The Spatial factor refers to the level of regional development surrounding and around the airport, for example, an international trade zones, convention centres, and other facilities. Facility factors are the level of facilities and the airport’s ability to expand and increased its facilities. Demand factor refers to the level of origin-destination demand and that of transit and transfer traffic volumes for hub-and-spoke network. Service factor refers to the...