The airline industry has generally followed a growth trend since its inception but the industry’s financial situation is not as healthy as rising passenger numbers might suggest. This book addresses the question of why airline profits are cyclical and examines the causes and dynamics that determine the profit cycle’s shape.

The air transport industry has high economic impact; it supports more than 60 million jobs worldwide. Since the early years of commercial air travel, passenger numbers have grown tremendously. However, for decades airlines’ financial results have been swinging between profits and losses. The airline industry’s aggregate net average profit between 1970 and 2010 was close to zero, which implies bankruptcies and layoffs in downturns. The profit cycle’s amplitude has been rising over time, which means that problems have become increasingly severe and also shows that the industry may not have learned from the past. More stable financial results could not only facilitate airline management decisions and improve investors’ confidence but also preserve employment. This book offers a thorough understanding of the airline profit cycle’s causes and drivers, and it presents measures to achieve a higher and more stable profitability level. This is the first in-depth examination of the airline profit cycle. The airline industry is modelled as a complex dynamic system, which is used for quantitative simulations of ‘what if’ scenarios. These experiments reveal that the general economic environment, such as GDP or fuel price developments, influence the airline industry’s profitability pattern as well as certain regulations or aircraft manufactures’ policies. Yet despite all circumstances, simulations show that airlines’ own management decisions are sufficient to generate higher and more stable profits in the industry. This book is useful for aviation industry decision makers, investors, policy makers, and researchers because it explains why the airline industry earns or loses money. This knowledge will advance forecasting and market intelligence. Furthermore, the book offers practitioners different suggestions to sustainably improve the airline industry’s profitability. The book is also recommended as a case study for system analysis as well as industry cyclicality at graduate or postgraduate level for courses such as engineering, economics, or management.

A Practical Guide to Airline Customer Service is a textbook written for airline executives and undergraduate students who are preparing for a career in the airline service industry. Those working in similar functions and fields can also benefit from this book. This book primarily focuses on the importance of customer service in the airline industry. This includes basic airline operations and essential communication skills, and how airline service agents interact with passengers at every contact point of the travel process. A Practical Guide to Airline Customer Service is a must-read for those who seek a rewarding career in the airline industry.

Airlines are buffeted by fluctuating political and economic landscapes, ever-changing competition, technology developments, globalization, increasing deregulation and evolving customer requirements. As a consequence all sectors of the air transport industry are in a constant state of flux. The principle aim of this book is to review current trends in the airline industry and its related suppliers, thereby providing an insight into the forces that are changing its dynamics. The factors that are reshaping the structure of the industry are examined with a view to identifying the key issues whose impact will be critical in the future. The book features two very distinct sections. The first contains short contributions from industry executives at CEO/VP level from airlines, aircraft/engine manufacturers, safety and navigational provider organisations, who have set out their take of where the airline industry is heading. This commercial input sets the scene for the book and provides the bridge to the second section, which is composed of 18 chapters written by distinguished academic authors. Each chapter presents a valuable insight into a specific area of the air transport industry, including: airlines, airports, cargo, deregulation, the environment, navigation, strategy, information technology, security and tourism. The shared objective of the authors is to describe and explain the core competencies that are determining the current shape of the industry and to examine the forces that will change its direction going forward. The book is written in a management style and will appeal to all levels of personnel who work for airlines across the world. It is also written for airport authorities, aerospace manufacturers, regulatory and government transportation agencies, researchers and students of aviation management, transport studies, tourism and the wider air transport industry.

Introduction to Air Transport Economics: From Theory to Applications uniquely merges the institutional and technical aspects of the aviation industry with their theoretical economic underpinnings. In one comprehensive textbook it applies economic theory to all aspects of the aviation industry, bringing together the numerous and informative articles and institutional developments that have characterized the field of airline economics in the last two decades as well as adding a number of areas original to an aviation text. Its integrative approach offers a fresh point of view that will find favor with many students of aviation. The book offers a self-contained theory and applications-oriented text for any individual intent on entering the aviation industry as a practicing professional in the management area. It will be of greatest relevance to undergraduate and graduate students interested in obtaining a more complete understanding of the economics of the aviation industry. It will also appeal to many professionals who seek an accessible and practical explanation of the underlying economic forces that shape the industry. The second edition has been extensively updated throughout. It features new coverage of macroeconomics for managers, expanded analysis of modern revenue management and pricing decisions, and also reflects the many significant developments that have occurred since the original’s publication. Instructors will find this modernized edition easier to use in class, and suitable to a wider variety of undergraduate or graduate course structures, while industry practitioners and all readers will find it more intuitively organized and more user friendly.

This book mainly focuses on defining profit models, on how many main kinds of profit models there are, how profit models can change a company, and how to tailor a profit model to the needs of a certain company. In this context, profit models are classified as fixed-income, remaining-profit and profit-sharing, admission, toll, parking, fuel and sharing fees, profit sources, customer pricing, auction, combined pricing, etc. The logic behind all these profit models will be analyzed in detail and numerous micro-cases will be introduced. All of the micro-cases discussed are the best profit model practices used by outstanding enterprises, mainly from China and the USA (including HomeAway, Priceline, Tencent, Sina, Google, the Voice of China, CSPN and so on). These models will be complemented by a wealth of figures and additional tools to help readers better understand the principle of profit models. As such, the book not only explains “why” entrepreneurs preferred to apply a specific kind of profit model and not others, but also answers “how” they derived that model.

This book is one of the first to explore aviation and aircraft leasing and its values establishing it as a standalone investable asset class within the larger real assets industry. Airplanes are a crucial but capital-intensive component of the global economy. The author, as an academic, researcher, appraiser, advisor and businessperson in the industry, bridges a gap in the existing literature with his analysis of the underlying aviation asset class return and risk profile. The book describes the characteristics, dynamics and drivers of the global, Asia and China specific aviation and leasing landscapes. Recent effects of COVID-19 on aviation and an analysis of the drivers affecting cross border mergers and acquisitions in the industry are also investigated. The book includes 20+ years of empirical aircraft valuation evidence and analysis of its characteristics establishing the aircraft and sub-segments as asset classes. In addition, characteristic comparisons to other real asset subclasses and benchmarks are examined. This book will be of interest to academics, financiers, investors, industry participants and more general aviation enthusiasts.