eBusiness Systems Innovation and Change in the Passenger Airline Industry
type: CreativeWork
description: The purpose of the research is to identify to what degree the radical change and innovation of recent years in the passenger airline industry is driven and enabled by information and communication technology. The legacy airline industry environment is characterised by regulations imposed by governments, quasi government bodies, industry bodies, conventions, and alliances. Traditionally the airline business model drivers focused on technology, safety and control. Historically airlines had a strong focus on passenger revenue optimization systems, revenue accounting systems, and passenger reservation systems, combined with aircraft routing and scheduling algorithms, and supplemented with aircrew allocation and tracking systems. A major innovation of the airline industry was the deployment of a worldwide network of airline computer reservation systems in order to provide global access by the airline's agents to its seat inventories and prices. As the network was developed and controlled by the airline industry, it further enabled the incumbents to effectively control the market. The emerging open structure of the Internet provided alternative distributions channels for a new airline business model. Theses airlines based their strategy on capturing a large segment of the consumer market by offering low airfares as alternatives to the relatively high fares of the incumbent airlines. As an alternative to the relative expensive global distribution systems, the new airlines used call centres and the Internet as their distribution channel, thereby creating an efficient market, and diminishing the stronghold the incumbent airlines had on the industry. Change is taking place within the airline business models in order to restore equilibrium and new airline business models have appeared. The focus of this research is to identify the new drivers that are either based on, or directly related to, Information and Communication Technology. These drivers are the new airline business m…
abstract: The purpose of the research is to identify to what degree the radical change and innovation of recent years in the passenger airline industry is driven and enabled by information and communication technology. The legacy airline industry environment is characterised by regulations imposed by governments, quasi government bodies, industry bodies, conventions, and alliances. Traditionally the airline business model drivers focused on technology, safety and control. Historically airlines had a strong focus on passenger revenue optimization systems, revenue accounting systems, and passenger reservation systems, combined with aircraft routing and scheduling algorithms, and supplemented with aircrew allocation and tracking systems. A major innovation of the airline industry was the deployment of a worldwide network of airline computer reservation systems in order to provide global access by the airline's agents to its seat inventories and prices. As the network was developed and controlled by the airline industry, it further enabled the incumbents to effectively control the market. The emerging open structure of the Internet provided alternative distributions channels for a new airline business model. Theses airlines based their strategy on capturing a large segment of the consumer market by offering low airfares as alternatives to the relatively high fares of the incumbent airlines. As an alternative to the relative expensive global distribution systems, the new airlines used call centres and the Internet as their distribution channel, thereby creating an efficient market, and diminishing the stronghold the incumbent airlines had on the industry. Change is taking place within the airline business models in order to restore equilibrium and new airline business models have appeared. The focus of this research is to identify the new drivers that are either based on, or directly related to, Information and Communication Technology. These drivers are the new airline business m…
author: Van de Zwaag, Frank
keywords: Airlines -- Management, Electronic commerce
date published: 2004
date modified: 2026-07-27T18:46:13Z
provider: AUT University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: AUT University