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Strategic planning in the airline industry
Oligopolies and the airline industry
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As a consequence, SAA markets has gradually suffering from slack down recorded from the past three years dated 2012. SAA is finding itself difficult to sustain profitability due to reduction in passenger’s traffic and increased in operating expenses coupled with heavy competition burdened by competitor’s pressure. Customers are more than ever demanding a different and personalised relationship with the airline. SAA continues to operate in highly competitive markets. The growth and expansion in the airline industries has also been fuelled by the emergence of competitive carriers through capacity being added on several existing regional routes. Besides, Non-African airlines are also gaining the fifth freedom rights to operates between African …show more content…
To gain market share, it is clear that SAA cannot focus on profit deliverance alone. The game has changed and it is very important that we understand that today ‘customer and relationship’ are the driving forces for our business growth and success. It is one of the top-of-mind distinctive issues that SAA should be prevailed. However, since the past years, SAA is experiencing a continuous decrease in profitability and customer’s engagement. SAA is struggling to carry out a high standard of service. Yet, this leads to a lack of value added in creating a customer orientation organisation. The number of passengers opting to fly with SAA until now is continuing to be on a downward spiral, slipping to an overall rank. The SAA market is underperformed primarily due to the intense competition in offers and poor focused laid on customer loyalty and long-term engagement. The main competitors increase their seat capacity significantly and practiced various price undercutting. Emirates Airlines (EK) and Air Mauritius (MK) launched aggressively promotional campaign to revamp the business and to maintain their customer based with challenging approached that keep repeaters clients with extended network. From Figure 1.2 we can understand that MK maintains growth for the African in term of load factor moving from 58.6% in 2013 to 61.5%
It has stayed relevant to the market through its propelled philosophy of relationships to generate profits in the business. Since its establishment in Monroe, Louisiana the once tiny airline has stretched to greater heights serving in 6 continents. It has also established a distinguishable name among its competitors with a reputation of leading customer services. However, even as an established venture, the company needs to maximize its profits in order to stay in business and expand in to new territories beyond its conquered boundaries. A strategic analysis was carried out by our team to establish the company’s current situation. A SWOT analysis was performed to come up with three referenced, strategic alternatives. This alternatives are meant to act as a strategic guidance to the company in order to enhance growth. The strategic recommendation provided will improve and enable the business to cope with the competitors while the implementation of the strategy section will outline the way to go about achieving these alternatives in the business setting. Lastly, we put up a discussion on the evaluation procedures and necessary controls for the
The U.S. airline industry experienced year-over-year growth in passenger revenues, in 2013, driven by strong demand for air travel.2 Additionally, on average, fuel costs were down in 2013 as compared to 2012.2 The U.S. airline industry is also a very competitive market. Due to government deregulation in 1978 there are few regulatory barriers to new entrants in the market, although there are other barriers to consider. Starting a new airline is very capital intensive. Purchasing a commercial airplane from Boeing can cost anywhere from $76million to over $300million.4 Another barrier to entry is risk in the industry. Airlines tend to experience volatile costs such as fuel prices, which can be difficult to predict in the long run. A regu...
As Frontier approached its 10th year of operation, Frontier officials realized an image shift was in order. The airline had established a reputation for friendly and reliable service, and reasonable airfares, mainly appealing to leisure travelers. But they reali...
Southwest Airlines has come from an underdog to being one of the best airlines in the industry. This reputation translates from its strategic management of resources. The Co-founder and former CEO, Herb Kelleher, established a unique corporate culture that leads to high customer satisfaction, employees’ morale, and one of the most profitable airlines in the industry (Jackson et al., 2012). The corporate culture concentrates on empowerment the workforce. It shows through Southwest Airlines core values that “happy employees lead to happy customers, which create happy shareholders” (Jackson et al., 2012). Since its first grand opening in 1971, Southwest Airlines has shown steady growth, and now carries more passengers than any other low-cost carrier in the world (Wharton, 2010). To expand the business operations, Southwest Airlines took over AirTran in 2010 as a strategy to gain more market share for the Southeast region and international flights. However, the acquisition of AirTran brought upcoming challenges both internally and externally for Southwest Airlines. In this case analysis, the objectives are focusing on the change process post the merger with AirTran, and evaluating alternatives to address the impacts of the merger.
The airline industry not only transports passengers across the country and world but it also moves cargo from location to location. The largest segment for the airlines is general commercial passengers and business travelers. In 2004, there were 15 major airlines with 12 of those being mainly passenger carriers, the remaining three being cargo carriers. In addition to the large airlines (Delta, United, American, Southwest, Northwest), there are numerous low-cost regional carriers that have tapped into the larger carriers’ customer base. These smaller companies generally fly from smaller airports and serve a smaller amount of destination cities. Calling them a no-frills air carrier would not be far from the truth. Their goal is to move customers f...
“Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.” William Pollard’s, a 20th century physicist, words show us the power of being proactive, and igniting change to strengthen a company’s productive climate (Sellers, Boone, Harper, 2011). Acme Airlines flight attendants lacked incentive to improve the quality of their work, as a result of distrustful management and overall frustration within the company. Acme took successful steps to rebuild their FA program into a more relationship oriented work environment. Through an understanding of effective leadership, we will use the
When a business aims to be as successful as possible in selling its products and services, it must examine in detail whether or not the products will be attractive and necessary; if the price is optimal; if the product is being distributed in the best locations; and finally, how interest and awareness can be created for the products. In order for a business to target all of these elements to the right people at the right time, it must employ the right type of marketing mix: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. In a dysfunctional time for the airline industry, most airlines, especially major carriers, are adapting the concept of "doing less with more." One low-cost carrier, JetBlue, is changing the domestic aviation landscape in this regard and is defying the odds. Here is a company that has examined each marketing mix elements carefully, has adapted them to its customer’s needs, and is succeeding because of this approach.
The Southwest Airlines company and its culture is one that is often cited in today 's business classes. The airline is widely known to be “different” compared to many of its competitors, a result of its founding values and strong corporate culture. This culture developed early in Southwest’s history and was deeply entrenched due to the competitiveness of the airline industry, as well as due to some of the pressures experienced as a result regulatory issues and stiff competition.
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...
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).
David Neelman realized his vision of creating an airlines company that is focused on customer service by starting JetBlue. During the startup phase or entrepreneurial stage, typically most of the companies go through the activities of marketing the service and /or product. But Neelman, perceptive of the industry needs, went about raising enough capital before starting JetBlue, as airlines industry is a capital intensive industry. His entrepreneurial style and previous experience enabled him to identify the core value of the service “To improve the passenger experience at a low cost” that he wanted JetBlue to provide. Neelman wanted to utilize technology to bring better customer experience at a low cost. Some of the technological activities that JetBlue planned include state-of-the-art revenue management system, paperless tickets etc. His in-depth experience enabled him to identify the external factors that would affect the business such as simple check-in and boarding process, hassle free ticketing procedures etc. This emphasized his knowledge of adapting to the ever changing customer needs. Neelman instilled the culture of...
Porter stated; “for an airline to succeed in the marketplace, it must have a sustainable competitive advantage” (Porter M. E., 2008). The airline industry is the highest competitive industry, and I believe a sustainable completive advantage is essential to succeed in the future of the aviation industry. The competitive advantages that an airline embrace, needs to be based on the airlines strategy and differentiation to competitors. Emirates displays how it has a strategy and how the airline gets ahead of its competitors through how unique it is.
Several large scale, interrelated conditions have affected the airline industry over the past several years in such a manner that every carrier has had to respond in order to remain viable and competitive.
Customer experience directly influences the sustainability of Asiana Airlines. Any business solely depends on customers to thrive. The customer service quality is paramount in Asiana airlines. The airline ensures that the customers are satisfied with service delivery in various ways. For instance, the introduction of Netflix streaming for a passenger aboard is a great step towards the sustainability of the airline. The initiative is important for the passengers because they are kept busy while aboard. According to Reader & Ridout (2013), the airline’s KLM technology will enhance the airline’s sustainability. As traveler centered advancements proceed swiftly, there are constantly
The Singapore Airlines needs to thoroughly understand the plans being pursued by the British Airways, Cathay Pacific, and Virign Atlantic in improving the comfort and quality of service it provides to its customers. The Singapore Airlines needs to continue differentiate itself by examining the strengths/weaknesses, and key points of these and other competitive airlines.