EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Legacy carriers fight back: Pricing and product differentiation in modern airline marketing

Tim Hazledine

Journal of Air Transport Management, 2011, vol. 17, issue 2, 130-135

Abstract: The adoption of the low-cost carrier business model has applied competitive pressure on established network or “legacy†carriers, by offering fares at prices that legacy carriers find it difficult to match and still cover their fixed costs. This paper reports how two medium-sized national airlines-Air New Zealand and Air Canada-have coped with the low-cost threat by, in effect, turning their fixed costs into profit centres. Features such as full regional networks, long-haul connections, frequent flyer programs, membership in global alliances, lounges and business class cabins can be bundled into products which can be marketed and sold profitably to business and even some leisure travellers, and which cannot be easily replicated by low-cost carriers. Although not panaceas, the innovations of Air New Zealand and Air Canada to the competition they face in their domestic and trans-border markets demonstrate the possibility of an effective legacy carrier response to the low-cost carrier business model.

Keywords: Airline pricing; Low-cost airlines; Legacy airlines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969699710000943
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jaitra:v:17:y:2011:i:2:p:130-135

DOI: 10.1016/j.jairtraman.2010.10.008

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Air Transport Management is currently edited by Anne Graham

More articles in Journal of Air Transport Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:jaitra:v:17:y:2011:i:2:p:130-135