Competitive Forces Analysis Of U.s. Airline Industry Essay

The airline industry is a hyper-competitive marketplace as many airlines have gone out of business

Overall, the five forces model suggests that the overall intensity of competition in the airline industry is likely to be severe. Back in the early 1980 's competition was very intense. During the late 1980 's the monopolization of major routes by a few major carriers, the limited availability of free landing spots at major hubs and the emergence of limited brand loyalty and tacit price agreements have all helped reduce the intensity of competition. However, as already mentioned, slumping demand in the early 1990 's plunged the industry once more into a severe price war. Airline travel is a commodity-type product, with limited potential for differentiation.

The last part of industry analysis is about rivalry. In aviation industry, the rivalry is very drastic. This industry develops slowly or even stagnant and it is mature in recent period. There is no new company established in developed areas and also there is no major firm going broken. Most of survivals are big companies. All of them have abundant capital and ample operating experience and hold a relatively fixed percentage of market. In long run, the number of airline companies does not change. In another word, the cake is divided up. However, people define business with a ward, for profit. If airline companies want to share more percentage of market, they must seize other companies’ part.

Five major passenger airlines dominate their industry by size (Grant, 2013, p. 479). But their size, legacy costs and hub and spoke business model created significant exit barriers (Grahm & Vowles, 2006, p. 108). New competitors not only started with no entry barriers but also few if any exit barriers. Legacy carriers had to identify new innovative strategies to augment their core business models to profitably compete.

American airline industry is steadily growing at an extremely strong rate. This growth comes with a number economic and social advantage. This contributes a great deal to the international inventory. The US airline industry is a major economic aspect in both the outcome on other related industries like tourism and manufacturing of aircraft and its own terms of operation. The airline industry is receiving massive media attention unlike other industries through participating and making of government policies. As Hoffman and Bateson (2011) show the major competitors include Southwest Airlines, Delta Airline, and United Airline.

1. There are a few trends in the US airline industry. One is consolidation, wherein existing players merge in an attempt to lower their costs and generate operating synergies. The most recent major merger was the United Continental merger, which is still an ongoing affair, but has created the largest airline in the United States by market share (Martin, 2012). Another trend is towards low-cost carriers. In the US, Southwest has been a long-running success and JetBlue a strong new competitor, but in other countries this business model has proven exceptionally successful. The third major trend is the upward trend in jet fuel prices, and the increasing importance that this puts on hedging fuel prices and capacity management (Hinton, 2011).

As soon as regulations for airline travel was lifted, new competitors emerged and existing companies scramble to satisfy their market control. With the explosion of airlines offering a list of new services as well as employing nonunion pilots and workers to cut costs and expand profit. Many airlines cater a variety of different social classes from super expensive flights to the cheap "no-frills" flights. The large airline companies, which had originally got accustomed to the government-set fares and the guaranteed that all costs would be cover, found themselves in disarray satisfy the services offered by the new competition. Despite that the deregulation was excellent for competitive airline businesses to offer many services that strategically cut costs for profit. It affected the customers with pricing, additional fees, and complicated service options. As of result, many airlines end up purchasing and merging other airlines to gain market control. The rest of the many airlines businesses filed for bankruptcies and liquidations.

Oligopoly Behavior in the Airline Industry. Case Analysis This case illustrates the pricing behavior of firms that are oligopoly whose market is characterized by the relative few participating firms offering differentiated or standardized products or services. Such firms in an oligopoly have market power derived from barriers of entry that wards off potential participants. As seen in the case, it is clear that because there are a small number of US Airlines firms competing with each other, their behavior is mutually interdependent – thus, the strategies and decisions by one airline management affect managements of the other airlines whose subsequent decisions then affect the first airline. In the airline industry, such oligopolistic

The airline industry has always been a fiercely competitive sector. Since the invention of low-cost carriers, also known as no-frills or

Low-cost carriers pose a serious threat to traditional "full service" airlines, since the high cost structure of full-service carriers prevents them from competing

The years since regulation have been rocky for the airline industry. Airline after airline has declared bankruptcy and either ceased existence or emerged as a weaker airline. The surviving airlines have done so by merging and protecting their territory with tactics not even dreamed of in most industries. Robert Crandall said it best when he noted, "This is a nasty, rotten business (Petzinger,1995)." You would think that with the competition allowed by deregulation that a large number of new names would exist, but that does not seem to be the case. Most Americans still travel on American, Delta, United, US Airways, or Continental (Kane, 2003). The only true champion of deregulation is Southwest Airlines, whose success is paving the way for others such as JetBlue, but the obstacles are enormous. Initially, the airlines went after each other by slashing fares and driving competitors out of business. The industry quickly learned that although this tactic was effective, it was not profitable, and it was more economical to focus on controlling the air out of a few cities (hubs) than to attempt to directly compete in every single market. Since most of the major airlines already had key cities in which they controlled most of the takeoff and landing slots, airlines could charge higher fares and take in greater profits without any real head to head

In this paper I will be analyzing the airline industry using Porter’s Five Forces. Porter’s Five Forces is a business management tool that allows firms to possess a clearer perception of the forces that shape the competitive environment of an industry, and to better understand what these forces indicate about profitability with regard to the microenvironment. The forces include Competitors, Threat of Entry, Substitutes, Suppliers, and Customers. When firms are able to widen their conception of competition beyond their direct competitors, and consider the broader economic fundamentals of their industry, they are able to form better strategy to better optimize their profitability. The airline industry is one characterized by low

Most dramatically, this consolidation has occurred through mergers which have created four dominate players controlling more than 75% of the total addressable market3. These include: Delta (with Northwest), United (with Continental), Southwest (with Airtran), and American (with US Airways). Additionally, establishment of partnerships and alliances have been utilized to create competitive advantage through cost sharing and increasing flexibility3. Major examples include the Star Alliance of United, US Airways and Continental and the Sky Team Alliance of Delta, Northwest and Air Alaska4.

The airline industry is in a state of oligopoly, bordering onto the state of imperfect competition. The various aspects that have a bearing on the nature of competition will be covered subsequently.

If the airlines want to cope with the competitors, they need to invest large financial resources to build the