The Future of airlines Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Future of airlines - Essay Example The security concerns shown by many passengers and increasing surveillance by the security agencies not only mean scheduling delays but airlines are also facing a general increase in the overall discontent of the customers. What will be the future of airline industry and how it will shape itself into future is a big question for strategists as well as futurologists as the fast changing business environment envisages completely new and revolutionary changes into it. However, before discussing what changes may take place in airline industry as well as well as the individual business practices of different airline firms. This paper will present an analysis regarding the future of airline industry and how it shape into future and what course of action industry will take over the different external as well as internal issues which industry is currently facing. It is being argued that the US airline industry is the victim of its own past success. The industry thrived on intense competition to lower the fare to attract as much passenger traffic possible however due to lack of government support in terms of increasing the overall capacity of the airports and runways, the increasing passenger demands were not adequately met due to which industry started to suffer a sharp decline from its previous position. The event of 9/11 aggravated the situation further by adding other dimensions to the overall air travel and that was of safety. There are many issues which are of concerns for most of the industry experts regarding the future of airline industry including the increasing concerns over customer services, safety of the customers which has become an increasingly important concern, changing technology as well as overall economics of doing the business. Further, due to safety concerns, the demand for the private jets especially light jets is increasing. The use of lightweight jets are predicted to be used air taxies to cover short distances at relatively low costs and more accuracy without loss of time. Apart from above factors, globalization, shifting of economic activity to countries such as China, Brazil, Russia etc, current credit crunch in most of the developed countries, ageing population with lesser requirements of air travel, corporate social responsibility as well as ethical consumerism are all the different factors which are said to be contributing towards defining the future shape of airline industry. The above graph1 suggests that the recent activity in airline industry is decreasing with the passage of time. Not only passenger traffic is consistently decreasing but the freight is decreasing too due to high oil prices. It is also because of this reason that most of the airlines have started charging baggage surcharge as well as reduced the amount of meals served in order to remain competitive in the face of reduced passenger and freight traffic. The above scenarios suggest that different factors which have been mentioned above are already taking their toll over the progress and growth of the industry. Corporate and Social Responsibility Corporate social responsibility is not a new concept and its relevance to the airline industry is as long as the concept itself. What is important however is the fact that corporate and social