Marketing
In my assignment, I am going to talk about US airlines.
U.s airline group owns this major airline company whose headquarters are in Temple, Arizona. Its operations are both domestic and extensively international networks throughout South America, North America, the Middle East and Europe. As a member of Star alliance, the airline makes use of 285 regional jet aircraft, 346 mainline jet aircraft and turbo-prop aircraft.
The airline provides has put in place hourly service between New York, Boston and Washington D.C. It ranks sixth among the United States’ largest airlines. Her primary hubs include Philadelphia, Charlotte, Pittsburg, Las Vegas and Phoenix. In each day, she operates 3,800 flights linking 240 destinations in Central America, North America, Europe and the Caribbean.
The company has a variety of boarding priorities i.e. first class/envoy, divided miles preferred members star gold members. In the general boarding-zone 1, there are exit row seats with no under-the-seat storage and bulkhead seats. In zone 2, there are row seats that have under-the-seat storage, the choice seats, the US Airways Premier World MasterCard® holders and US Airways® Visa Signature® card holders. In zone 3-5, zones are boarded back to front.
Through U.S airways, people are able to send gift cards. They offer travel insurance that caters for things like lost baggage, travel delays, trip cancellation and many more. With UATP, one can purchase tickets over 200 airlines all over the world, with free travel, customized reports and baggage insurance granted. One can also purchase tickets using their Paypal account on usairways.com
Formerly in 1939, the company had its headquarters in Pittsburg and served Ohio River valley. Since it switched from airmail to passenger services, the company was rebranded all American Airways becoming Allegheny Airlines.
In 1979, Allegheny’s name changed to USAir owing to the Airline Deregulation Act passage in the previous year. This gave the company the capability of expanding its services to the southeastern part of the United States. USAir emerged to be the customer launch for the Boeing 737-300 whose capacity was greater so as to cater for the growing customer capacity especially the Florida markets. During this time, USAir was the largest DC-9 aircraft operator in the world. Due to this, it made an approach to McDonnell Douglas with an intention to negotiate a new airplane design. Preceding the negotiations, McDonnell broke down and Boeing proposed a 737 variant. The company then adhered to the Boeing during the time of its development delivering the first plane on November 28, 1984.
In the late 80s, USAir expanded purchasing Pacific Southwest Airlines in 1986, that were based in San Diego and also Piedmont airlines that were based in North Carolina. The PSA offered its first route services to the West coast and Piedmont offered its own to the East coast especially the Charlote and Belmont hubs which later remained to be the USAir’ key hubs in the years that followed. The acquisition of Piedmont was the largest airline amalgamation of the time making USAir feature among the largest airlines since it operated a total of 5000 flights in a single day. Owing to the acquisitions, USAir cut off PSA’s California hubs and Dayton and Syracuse hubs in Dayton.
At the onset of 1990, the company had its headquarters consolidate hence they moved to an emergent building at Crystal City in Arlington Town near the Airport in Virginia from Washington National airport. However, the maintenance and operations headquarters still maintained at Pittsburg international airport.
The USAir services were expanded to Europe in 1990s with flights to Paris, London and Frankfurt from its core hubs. On forming partnerships, the company started selling the Trump Shuttle as the “USAir shuttle” and made an acceptance of a large investment that was extended from the British Airways that was initiated in one of the emergent transatlantic alliances leading to the painting of several 767 aircraft in the British bedizen but were operated by USAir. The amalgamation between British Airway and USAir ended in a court battle upon British Airways announcing its intendment to coalesce with American airlines.
In order to introduce a new corporate identity, the airline made it public that it would rebrand its name to US Airways on November 12, 1996. The new logo was styled in a way that it adopted a stylized version of the United States flag. The intention of this was to apply the new branding to ticket jackets and terminals. It was planned by the airline that the aircrafts were painted medium gray and deep blue with white and red accent lines. In the same year, the airline introduced a single-class subsidiary that was famously known as Metrojet which challenged the Eastern low-cost carriers that expanded eastwards
Prior to the re-branding of the US Airways on November 6, 1996, the
Airline ordered for up to 400 airbus A320-series shrunken body aircraft with 120 firm orders during the order signing time. This made it be regarded as the biggest amplitude aircraft request ever. The airline went a step further and ordered for another 30 airbus A330-series wide-body-aircraft, with a former firm order for seven of the Airbus A330-300 airliners. These orders replaced the old aircraft with newer more efficient aircraft and aided in re-branding and repositioning US Airways’ endeavors.
The US Airways purchased the Trump Shuttle remains in 1997 hence steadily expanding their flights to Europe towards the decade’s end. Even though the airline made huge profits in the mid-1990s, its operation concentration was in the U.S. Northeast and the lofty operation costs made it possible for the company to coalesce with another airline.
On the onset of the new millennium, the U.S Airways retired some of its aircraft so as to reduce costs and simplify its fleet. Whilst doing this, many of its older planes were replaced with the emergent Airbus A320-family aircraft.
The U.S Airways disclosed its intentions to be acquired by UAL Corp for $4.3 million the United Airlines Company-which at the time was the largest commercial carrier in the word. This freaked off many audiences and objection was drawn from consumer advocates, labor unions and antitrust regulators. This got the negotiations stalled hence both airlines lost money and the deal altogether but sure to be blockaded by the federal government. UAL also made its withdrawal on the purchase offer on July 27, 2001 and had to pay the U.S Airways a $50 million penalty due to its withdrawal from the deal.
Since no more finance was available, the U.S Airways started looking for merging and financing partners in 2003. Eventually, the U.S Airways merged with America West Airlines in 2005. This amalgamation was treated as a reverse US Airways takeover by America West Lines under the FASB rules and regulations. Under the harsh financial conditions, America West made an initiative of a merger with a carrier that was larger and it liberated them out of bankruptcy hence creating what is today US’s fifth largest airline when revenue is concerned. The name-US Airways was maintained even after the merger because it was believed that the name had a better reputation worldwide as opposed to the America West name. US Airways management discharged the pensions for its 6,000 pilots between the late 2003 and the early 2004 into the federal pension program (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation). The company was the pioneer airline to annihilate the pilots’ pension. In 2003 owing to a trial run of marketing in-flight food, US Airways dumped free meal service on those flights that were domestic on the year that followed.
US Airways excerpting its economies of scale as the core carrier and largest airport tenant in 2003-2004, it lobbied for reduced transaction fees at Pittsburg International Airport. In 2004, US Airways made an attempt to put up a Latin American gateway at Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood, publicly declaring to 10 Caribbean and Latin American cities. The endeavor was drastically unsuccessful and dwelt for a very short time because of Fort Lauderdale’s accessibility to American Airlines’ hub at Miami international Airport and its well spread out Latin American network.
Deadlock consultation with organized labor and fuel costs, majorly the Air Line Pilots Association, customarily the pioneer group to the concessionary agreement, compelled the US Airways another second round of Chapter 11 bankruptcy conservation proceedings in September 12, 2004. Boundless employee discontent and high rate of employee sick calls faced blame from then Airline for the shortage of staff during the 2004 Christmas holiday. A disaster in public relations speculated that there could be a liquidation of the Airline. However, it was found out by USDOT that the problems primarily emerged from poor management of the Airline.
A survey carried out in 2007 by Consumer reports showed that US Airways ranked last in customer satisfaction. US Airways stopped offering beverages to its customers on August 2008. Due to this, they were to purchase their own coffee or soda for $1 and $2 respectively. Other shuttle flights went on with free beverage offering. However, US Airways carried on with the serving of free complimentary drinks in March 9th.
US Airways leads in service complaints. I.e. there are 4.4 complaints per 100,000 customers. It also has a very destitute record of customer complaints’ address. The customer service department answered only 50% of the telephone calls. By September 2007, the US Airways deteriorated since Pittsburg International flights per day reduced from 500 with 12000 employees to only 68 flights a day with 1,800 employees. On October 3, 2007, US Airways Group Inc. said that it could reduce mainline flights at Pittsburg International Airport from 31 a day to 22 and also minimize regional flights from 77 to 46 a day on the beginning of January 6, 2008 hence leading to a reduction of the airport spoke in its network.
Works Cited
"American Airlines, US Airways unveil $11 billion merger". Reuters. February 14, 2013. Retrieved February 14, 2013.
"AMERICAN AIRLINES AND US AIRWAYS TO CREATE A PREMIER GLOBAL CARRIER -- THE NEW AMERICAN AIRLINES" (Press release). Fort Worth, TX & Tempe, AZ: AMR & US Airways Group. 14 February 2013. Retrieved 2013-02-14.
"S&P puts US Airways on credit watch | AIRLINE BIZ Blog | dallasnews.com". Aviationblog.dallasnews.com. July 27, 2009. Retrieved September 5, 2010.
"US Airways-United Merger is 'off at this time'". Usatoday.com. Retrieved -2012-10-14.
"Delta Reinforces New York Commitment with Plan for Domestic Hub at LaGuardia Airport - Aug 12, 2009". News.delta.com. Retrieved September 5, 2010.
"USAir to Become US Airways". USAir. November 12, 1996. Archived from the original on January 28, 1997. Retrieved April 29, 2010.
OPPEL Jr, RICHARD A. (August 3, 1999). "Hedge Fund May Seek Sale of US Airways". The New York Times. Retrieved May 27, 2010.
