Entries in the Category "Airlines management"
Now on my last blog, anything i want to say but don't have a chance?
In this blogging assignment, i have mentioned alot related to 1 major course material which is the structural frame of a company. This is because the structure of a big airline interested me the most. I wanted to see how each level is organize within each company. I also read a lot of successful stories about a lot of company's CEO.
Something i didn't have a chance to mention and would love to are:
1) talk more about the political frame about airlines
This is a very good topic that i just realize right now near the end of the blogging assignment, i feel like political beliefs of airline companies should be very interesting.
2) companies' beliefs and values
I did mention some shared beliefs and values through out the blog, however, i should have ask the flight attendent Kelly when i had a chance.
how to run an airline company
I actually read a airline software that listed what each airline needs, however, they are too long and i cannot post it here.
At the end, i love this assignment and i have really learned a lot during the course of the whole process. I enjoyed it very much.
Non passenger airline- UPS
So far in the blog, I have only mention about passenger commercial airlines. In this blog, I am going to mention something about Transporting airport. UPS is one of the largest delivery company in the world. They are also the 9th largest airline in North America. These planes deliver about 14.8 million packages per day. As a result, the management level has to be very careful.John Beystehner, the Chief Operating Officer of UPS, is also the president of UPS Airlines.
To manage these airlines, UPS is very proud of themselves to meet stage 3 noise regulation with 100% on its fleets. They spent multi-billion dollar to do so. In fact, 92% have already meet Stage 4 noise regulations. At the same time, UPS is to develop a powerful computer network that can be efficiently dispatches UPS vehicles.
Another thing forget to mentions: How do you get paid?
Another story of mine I have to tell, I am sorry if it get boring.
The story start with.......
I Hate HOUSTON or I should hate Delta Airline. So i was flying back from Salt Lake City to Boston thru Houston. I was on a small planes that unusally fly from Cleveland to Washington's distance. The whole flight is about 2 hours and 50 minutes from SLC to Houston. With an hour away from Houston, the pilot told us that Houston airport is closed due to weather. Eventually, the pilot told us every 5 minutes with the airport runways cleared and being shut down. Finally, the pilot mentions, we will have to fly surround Houston for 45 mins, however, our plane does not have enough fuel to surround for 45 mins. As a result, we will go to Austin, Texas and wait for the runways clear up and we need to add more fuel. So at Austin, we were there for about 3 hours. I was sitting on the last row and the flight attendent were sitting there, so we have a good chat. She is a mom at SLC that only fly the route from SLC to Houston. I was asking why is the door open because it was summer and the plane is getting hot. She stated that the when the plane is on the ground, they have to leave the door open. It is Delta's policy. She mentioned that they got pay only when the plane's door shut.
On the same day or the one after, Delta declare bankrupty with Northwest Airline.
One interesting things i should mention earlier
I remember when our class is talking about Union, it reminds me of one of my experience with United Airlines. During class and in the reading, Professor Piderit and the book mentions that the percentage of workers in union is decreasing. We have mentioned that workers works for airline need to be unionize because of overtime and non fixed schedule.
The last summer, i had an interview with United Airline. Before the interview, the recruit gave a speech about what is the different between a line and a hub airport. She also mentioned that if one got hire, one have to joined the union within 45 days or the company might ask you to leave.
Airline management software??
For major airlines like United, they would have their programming team to have specific programs to track the general accounts of United and other information such as flight departure and arrival time and such. However, for smaller airline that I or a lot of others may never heard of, for example: alaska seaplanes, EC Air, Kam Air,Smokey Bay Air... they might not need a team of professionals to keep track of the arrival and departure time since these companies might only have 5 planes on their fleets. All these companies would use a software agency to do their management. The airlines I mentioned are customers of SkyVantage Software and consultant company. These software helps the airline provide Airline reservation system, flight operations system, revenue/yield management and general airline management services.
In their website, SkyVantage mentions "SkyVantage Corporation offers industry-leading products and services, consulting and reservation system hosting that specializes in helping small to medium and start-up airlines reduce operating costs, maximize revenue and efficiently manage their business. Our airline applications use the latest technology to help airlines reduce operating costs, maximize revenue and manage reservations and operations functions."
one way to get into the airline management field
So far, i have talked about a lot of the structural frame of the major airline's management. Here, I want to talk a blog to talk about a way prospect managers can get into the airline management industry. For some aviation schools, they offer degree and courses of airline management. Some of the most well-known aviation school would garantee a entry to mid level airline management jobs once graduate. Vaughn College of aernautics and technology's website, the school describe the course: "The airline management program is targeted toward meeting a need in the airline industry for qualified managers who have specialized training in this profession. Graduates of this program will be able to secure entry-level to mid-level management positions in airlines."
Air France corporate structure
i was trying to take a look at how do different country name their executives. In northwest airlines and american airlin, a lot of the names start with VP. Now, let's take a look at international level and see what these VP calls.
in England, British Airways
CEO, CFO, and CIO are the same as US's, however, they don't use the name Vice President of... instead, they us Director as a name.
When i get to Air France, the company has two different pages about their top level employees. 1. Executive committee and 2. board of directors. For executive committe, they are all the VPs and CEO, CFO. However, what is interesting is the board of directors. The Air France Board of Directors include 18 members and they are...
6 senior managment administrators
5 independent administrators
1 administrator representing French State and,
6 employee representatives
take a look at non-major airlines
Mesa Air Group, base at Pheonix, AZ, is the regional airline of the year in 2005. A lot of us might not have heard this company. Mesa Airlines has a countable route it services. You can find their route map as
Next time when you fly America West, United, US Airways, and Delta, if you are on a connection flight, you can take a look at the passenger safety card and you might have a good chance of sitting on a Mesa Air plane.
What do they do?
Let's take a look at what each of the senior VP do for Northwest Airlines:
CEO Douglas M. Steenland
Duty: oversee relationship with 16 airline partners (SkyTeam Aliiance), government affairs, larbor relations include its unions, and human resources
EVP of Marketing and Distribution
Duty: oversee company's planning, scheduling, domestic pricing and marketing and loyalty programs...
VP of international, alliances and IT+ Cargo
Duty: company situation with Skyteam + venture KLM, domestic and international in-flight services, and NEA Cargo
VP and CFO
Duty: corporate finance, financial analysis, strategic, accounting, investor relations, fuel management, tax and insurance.
VP of Operation
Duty: technical operation, engineering, flight operation, customer serive and material management
VP of General Counsel
Duty: major role in handling airline's two successful bankruptcy proceedings
VP of tech.
Duty: all things on a plane
Northwest vs. American airline's corporate structure
For airlines, there are a lot of VP executives:
Douglas M. Steenland
President and Chief Executive Officer
J. Timothy Griffin
Executive Vice President-Marketing and Distribution
Philip C. Haan
Executive Vice President-International, Alliances and Information
Technology & Chairman, Northwest Cargo
Neal Cohen
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Andrew C. Roberts
Executive Vice President-Operations
Barry P. Simon
Executive Vice President and General Counsel
Kris Bauer Senior
Vice President-Technical Operations
Michael J. Becker
Senior Vice President-Human Resources and Labor Relations
David M. Davis
Senior Vice President-Finance and Controller
Jim Friedel
President-Northwest Airlines Cargo and Senior Vice President-Pacific
Mary Carroll Linder
Senior Vice President-Corporate and Brand Communications
Daniel B Matthews
Senior Vice President and Treasurer
Andrea Fischer Newman
Senior Vice President-Government Affairs
Timothy J. Rainey
Senior Vice President-Flight Operations and System Operations Control
Kenneth J. Hylander
Vice President-Safety and Engineering, Chief Safety Officer
Anna Schaefer
Vice President-Finance and Chief Accounting Officer
there are a total of 14 VP executives in northwest airlines.
HOWEVER, America airlines has 13 VP executives in the Board of Directors, and AA has a total of 14 senior management, 31 regular management VP + 3 for American Eagle to make a total of 48 VPs.
from flight attendents Kelly 2
After she told me the overall strutural about continental. I asked some more specific questions. The conversation are as follow:
Me: Kelly, so I know that we are on a flight that fly from Cleveland to Las Vegas. Are you always flying this route?
Kelly: No, i fly everywhere. However, some flight crews will just fly a specific route.
Me: So do all flight attendents are on the same "level" or if international crew are more prestige?
Kelly: No. No matter what you fly, same route, all over US, or all over the world. It is just our choice. As a result, international crew will not be over us.
Kelly also stated that differnt airlines has a different system. She says in some airline (she didn't specifically tell which one), smoe first class attendent has more say than regular economic class attendents.
from flight attendent Kelly 1
On the way back from Las Vegas, I was on flight CO480. It was a Boeing 757 which means the plane has a little rest room/kitchen for flight attendents. I was lucky my seat is on the last row which I can always see what the attendents are doing. After two hours of flight duration, the attendents had already served beverages and drinks, attendent Kelly was sitting alone back in the plane watching magazine. So, i decided to go back there and asked her some questions about flight attendent and Continental. Before I asked any question, I introduced myself and stated that I had a project about airlines management. Eventually, she is very nice and would love to help me on that. I started my question about the stuctural frame of continental (attendents department). Kelly told me Continental has about 2000 flight attendents. Each of the attendents will assign to a supervisor. Each supervisor manages around 300-500 attendents. Then when I asked where does her supervisor work and how would she contacts him if needed. Kelly stated that her supervisor is in Houston hub and every flight attendents belong to a continental hub and their supervisor would work in that base. She mentioned that for Continental Airlines, the big hubs are Newark, Cleveland, Houston, and i remember she says something about Salt Lake City.
Southwest Employee are HAPPY or should BE
We know that southwest airline is known for cheap flight and efficent service. One of the main theme in management is that if employee are happy, they will perform well while their morality is high. In southwest, i am confidently their frontline employee are happy. IN 2005, sourthwest retire its final 737-200 series aircraft. Becasue of that, Sourwest Airline bring 1000 sourthwest employee together to celebrate the "good-bye" to 737-200. Southwest also assign 95 lucky employee to flee the last 737-200 flight. We can see that Southwest Airline is a company that care about its employee a lot. In the website, their celebration is hugh that it should cost them a lot of money. however, its celebrationi with employee will increase the morality. In a marketing point of view, the celebration is advertising that southwest is using new airplane and they can do extra advertisement.
new comer JetBlue CEO Letter
The following entry is more like a marketing journal but....
Recently, I was taking United from Boston back to Cleveland through DC. When I was in the security screen and waiting, two businessmen were talking about their flight to NY. I heard them saying that there was a cheap airline that just went bankrupt, and as a result, the only airline that operates from Boston to New York is United. (I strong believe there are others. Maybe they were talking about JFK, because I personally took continental from Boston to NY Newark before.) However, they said United is almost in monopoly and they jack up the price in that weekend from 1xx to 450 which they paid and they were not happy. Now that Jet Blue is coming into the service, the price should go back down.
Jet Blue Airlines has been around the industry for only 6 years, however, its services have expanded to 33 cities and it operates more than 340 flights a day. On Jetblue.com, the CEO has stated that they are looking forward to expanding their routes. Recently they have bought the new airplane EMBRAER 190; it is a mid size airplane with luxury seats and entertainment in the cabin. It flies between Boston and New York.
On Feb 24th, 2006, Rob Maruster was appointed to the position of Senior VP of Airports and Operational Planning. The VP of Airports and opertaional planning's responsibility is for strategic operational plannng. His boss is the President and Chief Operating Officer, Dave Barger.
JetBlue Operations:
All seats are assigned (not Southwest), all travel is ticketless, fares are one-way and overnight stays are never required.
Continue reading "new comer JetBlue CEO Letter"
Prank call continental airlines 18005233273
I have a flight to go to Las Vegas on Monday. I already know the departure and arrival time. However, i wasted 5 mins to call Continental Hotline and ask the guy what is is. At the end, i say "Heyy Steve, may i please ask you a question. I am currently attending CWRU and in management class. I am doing a project about airlines management. May you please tell me your duty and your boss's?" Steve answer me withh his duty is generally modifying customers flight. However, he sites that nowaday, a lot of people are doing those things online. The only call they get are somethings that customer not expecting. When i ask about how about your manager and i ask if he controls other calling department like baggame claim or customer complaints department. He answers that his boss will do nothing much except just over him.
Continental CEO
Before 1994, Continental Airlines has bad reputation and they are in financial debt. They have never really recover from its bankruptcy. He has all the simple belief and he thinks they will turn the company around as he writes the book "From worst to first". He believes that his employees should be happy in order for continental to succeed. At the end, Continental was named the 2001 airline of the year and it is 100 best companies to work for in america and #1 in customer satisfaction. At the same time, before he retires in 2004, he was names top 50 CEO for 3 cnsecutive years.
In this case, we can see that restructuring a company doesn't need fancy ideas, he beliefs in simple management rule and he thinks the company is lacking and he is trying to fix them. At the end, Continental becomes one such successful company.
Star Alliance management structure
Entry 1 has talk about how Star Alliance has work like a company as its own. However, i have find out that all the workers in star alliance are still associate with their mother company. For example, Star Alliance was under restructure in 2001 and a lot of new VP get reassign. One of them is LLouise McKenven and it is the VP of Marketing in Star Alliance. However, he is not just working for Star Aliiance, he works for his parent company- Air Canada at the same time as a Marketing communication. Another example would be Richard S. Merkatz, VP of Sales and he has been working with United since 1974.
Star Alliance
Star Alliance is a group formed by 16 airline companies around the world. Star Alliance benefits both customers and the 16 companies. For consumers, any millages on any of the airlines companies can transfers within the star alliance system. For the companies, it attract a lot of customers buying their tix and also it will lower the operations cost as we see a lot of flight now are combined by two airlines. However, i always thought star alliance is just a name that all 16 companies co-share, NEVER THE LESSS
On a recent article found on United.com, the article title is Star Alliance completes its structure- new CEO to lead management team. I find it very interesting becasue as i say before i never really know Star Alliance is a company and it is separate from all its members.