Airline Profitability: Struggling to Take Off

Subject: Company Information
Pages: 2
Words: 581
Reading time:
2 min

Profitability denotes the state or situation of yielding a monetary profit or benefit. It is the fundamental objective of every business undertaking. Devoid of profitability, business ventures will not endure for a long time. Thus, evaluating the present and past success and planning future profitability is extremely essential. Boosting profitability is among the highly significant endeavors of business directors. Business managers continually seek for means of altering the business to enhance profitability. Attributable to improved success, the airways across the globe keep on operating on the stiffest of margins, although their profitability is persistently better than anticipated (Krueger par. 1).

Description of the Analysis

Increasing profitability for the airline companies has at all times been difficult. Aspects such as increasing oil prices, a huge number of competitors, and growing customer ways of life and inclinations have posed tremendous difficulties to airline businesses. The majority of airline companies have recognized the requirement for a drastic policy change to guarantee survival and affluence. Such policy changes demand cost decrease through effective fleet arrangement, maximized network development, and considered interlining, in addition to rising profits through advanced inventory organization progression, marketplace segmentation, merchandise differentiation, effectual pricing, and better customer care. The International Air Transport Association (IATA), the lobby organization in the airline sector, has of late heightened its estimate for airways profitability to around four billion dollars (Krueger par. 1-2).

Rising fuel costs and a fiscal environment typified by a European liability calamity, sluggish Chinese development and uncertainties regarding the revitalization in the United States are assisting in pulling the sector’s profitability far off the earlier set eight billion dollars though the officials of the IATA are convinced that airline companies are beginning to carry on in a better way. Attributable to the present fuel costs, the reality that airline companies are still making huge profits calls for remarks. Around six years ago, making a profit with the costs of fuel at 110 dollars per barrel would have been unimaginable (Krueger par. 1-2). The airline industry has restructured itself to survive by venturing in novel fleets, implementing more effective practices, cautiously addressing competence, and merging. However, irrespective of these endeavors, the profitability of the airline sector still rests on a knife-edge as the profit margins at times fail to meet the cost of capital.

Report on the Findings

At some point in the future, the forecast for European airlines will be murky as most of the airline companies are anticipated to suffer collective losses of about one billion dollars in a year. The International Air Transport Association affirms specific challenges in quality-class travel in Europe, which demonstrates a 3.5 percent yearly drop. In contrast, the prediction for airline profits in the United States has been shifted upwards by half a billion dollars to about two billion dollars, because of stiff capacity management. On the other hand, it is in the Middle East that operations in the airline sector have highly advanced. The profits of local airline companies in the Middle East are about to get to 0.7 billion dollars yearly, and their global traveler traffic rose to more than sixteen percent (Krueger par. 3-4). The airline companies in the Middle East have witnessed their rate of global traveler traffic increase gradually from about five percent in 2002 and the next ten years are expected to make the number grow considerably higher. The challenges facing the supply chain, in addition to the constitution of the airline sector, emanate from the failure to achieve economic returns.

Works Cited

Krueger, Alan B. “Airline profitability: Struggling to take off.” The Economist, 2012. Web.