For approximately the past 20 years, since the deregulation of the Australian Aviation industry, the Australian Domestic Market has been profitable. The past half year has brought to light the first negative effects of fierce competition between Australia's airlines the Qantas group and Virgin Australia Holdings Pty Ltd (VAH) (which will be further referred to in this document as Virgin Australia) in the form of loss which can be seen in the below figure.
In recent years, the Australian Domestic market has been predominantly a duopoly style market with Qantas Group and Virgin Australia being the main competitors contributing to market share. Virgin Australia entered late after deregulation and offered the first real competition to Qantas Groups monopoly hold of the marketplace, beginning first operation in 2000 as Virgin Blue. Qantas held a monopoly position in the Australian market up until 2000, as a FCC (Full Cost Carrier). After deregulation and the end of the two airline policy, Qantas group could now bring in a LCC (Low cost carrier) in 2003 to service a newly developing market of leisure travel. Virgin Australia made the call to compete in the same market by creating their own LCC in 2007, Tiger Airways. The Qantas Group for many years has occupied around 65% market share, with Virgin Australia and Tiger market share growing each year.
In the past year, according to BITRE data, there has been an increase of 1.7% for the amount of total passengers carried on the Australian Domestic network. Accompanying the increase in total passengers carried was an appropriate increase in RPK (Revenue Passenger Kilometres) at 2.0% and an increase of ASK (Available Seat Kilometres) at 3.2%. This data tells us that the past year ...
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The following value chain, which focuses on Spirit Airlines, is representative of most of the firms in the Ultra Low-Cost Airline industry. Spirit is the industry leader in many areas such as operational efficiencies/cost structure, aircraft fleet management, brand/network and growth. The firm, however, trails industry foes in areas such as customer service and operational reliability and recoverability. While most in this segment pursue the cost-leader competitive strategy, Spirit has demonstrated the most effective model to date – whether the model is the most sustainable remains to be seen.
The new trend in airline industry to use fuel efficient, high -tech aircraft is of a major concern for Air Canada. It has been under immense pressure to replace its fleet aircraft with more efficient Boeing 777 aircraft. However, the airline has purchased some Boeing777 aircraft, but these new purchases are used only for more profitable international routes depriving Air Canada’s domestic consumers of the facility. Furthermore, the varied fuel price has affected pricing policy significantly as its promotional policies are more price point based as compare to consumer based.
• Qantas had to make an increased profit and pay a dividend to its shareholders which increased over the years of management
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...
Snow, K., Bash, D., and Barrett, T. (2001, September). Congress approves $15 billion airline bailout. Retrieved February 8, 2008 from http://www.cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2001/fyi/news/09/24/airline.bailout/
For economic factor, Qantas Airways Limited was stable because the economic in Australia was in good
Qantas is the oldest airline in the English speaking world. It was founded by the three aviation pioneers Hudson Fysh, Paul McGinness and Fergus McMaster as the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service in 1920 and has grown from one aircraft which offered air taxi services and joyrides to a vast, complex fleet operating all over the world. By 1930 Qantas’ air routes had expanded to reach up to North Eastern Australia and was later purchased in 1947 by the Australian Federal Government.
Kathleen Hanser, `The Secret Behind High Profits at Low-fare Airlines'. http://www.boeing.com/commercial/news/feature/profit.html [accessed 15 May 2003]
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).
With only a few large companies across the globe (Boeing, MD, and Airbus), the commercial aircraft industry essentially exhibits the qualities of an oligopolistic competition with intense rivalry. Here is an analysis of competition in the commercial aircraft business using Porter’s Five Forces.
DuBois, S. (2012, February 17). The real threat facing the airlines - Fortune Management. Fortune Management Career Blog RSS. Retrieved April 29, 2014, from http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/17/the-real-threat-facing-the-airlines/. Tom, Y. (2009). The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'.
AirAsia Berhad (AirAsia) is a leading Low-Cost Carrier in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region. AirAsia focuses on providing high-frequency services on short-haul domestic and international routes. The main goal of this paper is to analyse the business strategy of AirAsia as a low-cost airline. This paper aims to apply the management process of strategy and analyse the three levels of strategy by which AirAsia is able to maintain its reputation as the top Low-Cost Carrier (LCC) in Asia. This paper will then show how innovation is a key aspect in AirAsia’s strategy, and will finally consider the external environment framework in which AirAsia is succeeding.
Airline industry is affected by no. of factors such as fuel price fluctuations, high fixed costs, strong influence of external environment and excessive use of marginal costing by carriers. Recessions in the industry tend to last longer, while recovery periods are generally shorter. Over the past nine years, it is observed that industry has made losses for five years and during the profitable years margins were on a lower end. The airlines industry is acutely sensitive to external events such as wars, economic instability, government policies and environmental regulations.
When an airline does not have a sustainable competitive advantage, it does not have any properties of differences from there competitor and turns to a dangerous price war. The sustainable ...
There are other ways in which airlines customers are segmented. The airline services are divid...