Airline Operations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Airline Operations - Essay Example As a report a year after the 9/11 attacks stated, "the costs of the terrorist attacks have been borne disproportionately by a few industries, especially airlines, tourism and insurance" (Makinen, 2002, p. 2). First of all, no airlines flew anywhere in the United States for one week after the 9/11 attacks. This involved a backlog in flights and plane maintenance/positioning that took months to overcome once flights started. The US Congress gave the airlines access to $15 billion, in the form of $5 billion in short-term emergency assistance and $10 billion in loan guarantees. However, the attacks of 9/11 seem to have sped up economic woes that were already occurring, and led to major reorganizations such as the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of US Airways (Makinen, 2002, p.2). Reports for airline finances in 2002 were dismal, with US Airways filing for bankruptcy and United Airlines soon following suit. However, several airlines such as JetBlue reported better earnings than expected, solidifying a trend that had been occurring in recent years. One of the major results of th... One of the major results of the 9/11 attacks, and one that has yet to fully return to normal, was the rapid decrease in the amount of business travel on airlines. Business travelers were some of the most profit-making customers for airlines, and these often offset the barely breaking even or loss-making performance associated with vacation related and other consumer travel. This loss of business travel may be related to the fact that telecommunications technology has meant that real-time meetings through video conferencing has become the norm rather than the exception. The fact that 9/11 occurred, making business travelers less certain about flying because of safety concerns may have compounded a situation that was already occurring with the rapid advance in communications technology. Large corporations have also learned that they "don't need to pay those higher, unrestricted fares . . . there is always going to be some business travel that needs flexibility to change flight plans . . . but the policy of many large corporations will be to book in advance to save money or to justify it when you don't" (Corridore, 2004, p.1). The traditional airlines such as United and American have also been facing great competition from low-cost competitors such as Jet Blue, that have started to move into transcontinental flights. For example, JetBlue offers numerous non-stop California-East Coast flights for little more than $100 one-way. A customer can also change their flight (through changing the time or just canceling) up to a minute before the flight with a nominal ($25) charge and the remaining balance to be used for future flights (jetblue, 2006) . The increased use of web-sites that have been created from scratch with the idea of making buying/changing a flight very