I admit, the title is a bit provocative but here are my thoughts, primarily for the EMEA region:

• Since deregulation airlines have been focused on outsourcing nearly all activities but the flying. Result: Every other aviation related business generates great profits Example: Reservation systems, ground handling, catering etc. Granted, in some remote location it makes sense but most of the time extensive outsourcing is more expensive than an in-house operation.

• Usually most decisions taken by CEO’s are very short sighted with no long term planning. Result: Airline groups end up with 6 sets of everything generating billions of unnecessary expenditure. Example LH Group: Every member airline has different seats (not in all classes), different cabin layouts, phone apps, systems, policies, products etc. New brands are being introduced just to change everything after a few years again (Germanwings / Eurowings). In terms of standardisation across subsidiaries, no airline group has managed to offer the same “product” across the group. Or are 14 years not long enough to implement the changes (LH/LX)?

• Instead of being innovative CEO’s love to point fingers to the LCC and the ME3 after they watched them growing over the years until they suddenly realise, oups… In the meantime service levels have been cut to a point whereas flying Ryanair is more comfortable than flying any legacy airline.

• Airlines are so slow in taking decisions or reacting to changes, it almost hurts. Example: LH and SQ only now decided to offer better connectivity after watching Emirates for years.

• Usually businesses try to be different than their competitors to stand out. Not in the airline industry. If one airline introduces a change of some sort all others will follow like a herd of sheep.

The list could go on and on and on but I think the problem with most European airlines is not the competition from the LCC and the ME3, it is mainly their inability to get their house in order. HQ’s are wasting fast amounts of cash as a result of poor planning, not streamlining processes and implementing strategies which they just copy from their competitors.

Thoughts?

Quoting senatorflyer (Thread starter): The list could go on and on and on but I think the problem with most European airlines is not the competition from the LCC and the ME3, it is mainly their inability to get their house in order.

In the case of airlines like LH and AF, it's hard to get your house in order when your workforce is so pissed, that they strike at the drop of a hat.

I wasn’t talking about the cabin crew or pilots more about their HQ and operations.

Quoting senatorflyer (Thread starter): Every member airline has different seats (not in all classes), different cabin layouts, phone apps, systems, policies, products etc.

One need look no further than AF/KL Group to see a perfect example of this obscene level of inefficiency.

Quoting senatorflyer (Thread starter): I admit, the title is a bit provocative but here are my thoughts, primarily for the EMEA region:

It's worth bolding, underlining, and coloring that bright red because the answer varies significantly by region.

I think in Europe, a lot of the inefficiency comes from history and national pride. AF/KL have different fleets (though they're starting to converge) and brands, and LH/LX do as well to a degree. I think the challenge many of them are facing is whether to maintain distinct brands with those associated costs, or be more vanilla and homogenize.

Quoting LH707330 (Reply 5):

Different brands are understandable, but looking at the bigger picture it seems every airline within a group is doing whatever they want rather than having a standardised central approach when it comes to “products” (seats, apps, systems and many more things). The colour of the carpets or the seats can easily be in different colours for the different airlines within a group. But the questions is why don’t they cut the number of suppliers and standardise the seat models in the first place to take advantage of purchasing power and maintenance?

Quoting senatorflyer (Reply 2): I wasn’t talking about the cabin crew or pilots more about their HQ and operations.

Can you take one without the other? There are a lot of elements of an entrenched unionized workforce that limits what HQ can do to make dramatic changes. The ability to reduce/retract those changes in that type of environment is especially punishing adding even more risk.

Finally, I would say there isn't much rationale for upper management to take larger risks. Modest improvements and steady profitability is what makes for a long career at the top and these execs will make more money holding the job for longer than they will if they take a risk one year that pays of big but hurts the next year and they get axed. Add quarterly reporting to the mix and it makes it worse. How many airline decisions look good for the next quarter?! These guys have had too long of careers to take unnecessary risks when they get to the top and risk losing it.

Its why we always need new blood and new competitors.

tortugamon

Quoting DL747400 (Reply 3): One need look no further than AF/KL Group to see a perfect example of this obscene level of inefficiency.

I'm not sure if that is great example, as, to my understanding, KL is doing whatever they can to streamline their operation, improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs, whereas AF is still stuck with battles between management and unions, and not being able to 'see the forest (market realities) through the trees (decades of built-up bureaucracy)'.

Had AF/KL spent the first 4 years of their merger 'standardizing practices and products', come the economic downturn, and what has consequently occurred in the airline market, you'd likely have both AF & KL in the same condition AF is in today, as when AF/KL have standardized practices, that has generally meant AF creates a new practice tailored to them, and then does something akin to poor home renovations to said practice to make it work, kind-of, for KL. Hence, had they standardized practices, you would have AF in KL colours flying ex-AMS.

So, to the point of this topic, IMO carriers in a group need to have their houses in order separately before they start standardizing, as, unless they are standardized already, or begin the standardization immediately upon merging (NW/DL or US/AA) they are likely better off at this point (in reference to carriers mentioned in the topic starter) of remaining as they are in relation to each other and working on righting their own ship. Once you have that, then begin standardizing.

[Edited 2016-01-07 12:04:26]

Quoting DL747400 (Reply 3): One need look no further than AF/KL Group to see a perfect example of this obscene level of inefficiency.

Despite the popular belief, they have used their synergies quite well, you must understand AF kept KL distinctively separate due to concerns that the KLM brand would disappear. Sure on board products would be different, but back of house all the call centres, engineering companies, contracts etc are all under Air France-KLM Group. Even the last order of A350s and 787 were for the group, not an individual airline. The HQ was moved to Paris, while KLM kept their local HQ in Amstelveen. All counters, offices, and contractors are shared by the group and not one airline.

The recent refurb of cabins showed the standardisation of premium classes with AF and KL now using the Zodiac Cirrus, IFE is now supplied by Panasonic in all new cabins. KLM is said to be a very lean business and has always looked at gaining any efficiencies. The problem lies within the corporate culture of Air France which is deep-rooted. Management can make decisions, but if its going to cause a massive strike, it needs to be implemented creatively through negotiation. The biggest cost for AF is staff, the group on a whole have already gone down from 112,000 employees to something below 100,000 employees. What no one comments on here is how AF turned around what I believe a loss making and dated KLM after the merger.

As for being the worse businesses, I wouldn't say so because many of these legacies have been around for decades. While that doesn't mean anything, they are still preferred for travel. As with any business it must get with the times and adjust with trends. This is difficult with an industry of this size and airlines of this size as well.

And to add some provocative counter factuals:
- I don't think you would regard Emirates as being consistent if you'd flown in their multiple different seat style J cabin across their fleet. Even AA has ditched 7 across seating in J and is getting rid of it from their remaining 772 fleet.
- And 15 years after VS and BA pioneered it, the ME3 still don't have Premium Economy. Hell, even LH and SQ have installed it.
- It's really not true that flying Ryanair is more comfortable and convenient than flying Euro legacy carriers, is it?
- It is very easy to be fast moving when you have very little in the way of labour law to contend with, support rather than interference from government and vast supplies of cheap, if not free capital. Despite this Etihad were in a break even or loss making position until recently, and it will be interesting to see what happens now (the state of) Qatar has fiscal deficits. All legacy carriers have had to deal with labour rights earned by long standing employees given those rights in different eras. The US ones have the benefit of more flexible US labour law and Ch11 bankruptcy to drive the labour force to come to compromise. Euro legacies have extraordinarily high restructuring costs and obstacles - you can't really blame AF and LH for their respective countries' and the EU's daft labour regulation.

The ME3 would be vaporized in a heartbeat by the obstacles most legacy carriers face, and arguably right now legacy carriers are performing far better than the ME3

Quoting LH707330 (Reply 5): I think in Europe, a lot of the inefficiency comes from history and national pride. AF/KL have different fleets (though they're starting to converge) and brands, and LH/LX do as well to a degree. I think the challenge many of them are facing is whether to maintain distinct brands with those associated costs, or be more vanilla and homogenize.

As long as the flights operate wholly within the EU/EEA or to countries with open skies agreements with the EU/EEA it would be possible to merge brands. But as soon as you start operating flights outside this area bilateral treaties govern who can fly where.
For example EasyJet, a pan-European airline and brand, flies to Turkey (outside the open skies zone), but only from the UK, its country of registration.
The TUI group (a multi-national holiday company) is in process of rebranding all its European airlines to the group name, but retaining separate operating certificates for each country. They fly to only a few countries outside the open skies zone, and mostly as regular charters. It might be harder for airlines competing with other countries' national carriers in the scheduled sector to go to a single brand across multiple certificates without allegations that treaties are being broken.

[Edited 2016-01-08 06:38:49]

Markets work well in a lot of circumstances. They do not for airlines. There is no economic theory that says markets always perform well.

Flying passengers on the west coast, for example, was not the source of profits. Flying mail was, and after they started using larger planes there was room for passengers. Without the mail - only loss.

For a long time the dynamic that an empty seat can still bring in some cash resulted in the average seat tended to sell for $15 less than an airline needed to make a profit. Computers have helped toward selling each seat for a little more. Breaking down services and imposing fees has also helped.

All of those bankrupting airlines uniting has given pricing power to airlines - For Now.

Pilot unions have limited pursuing efficiencies, but I suspect is not the biggest problem.

Airports, terminals, flight control, maintenance, ground transportation to airports are frightfully expensive.

As per the legend that bumblebees cannot fly, we humans do not do all that well

But all of this aside, it is impossible without the 'air business' to imagine the current world economy and all of the benefits that accrue to all of us - rich, poor, and mostly in the middle.

Quoting senatorflyer (Reply 6):

That's basically what I was trying to get at, thanks for saying it more clearly.

Quoting senatorflyer (Reply 6): Different brands are understandable, but looking at the bigger picture it seems every airline within a group is doing whatever they want rather than having a standardised central approach when it comes to “products” (seats, apps, systems and many more things).

IAG are moving towards full standardisation in aircraft specification excepting branding across their operating airlines. So, for example there were three suppliers of cockpit windows to the 320s of the three operating companies, BA, IB and VY. According to Slide 64 of the IAG 2014 Capital Markets Day presentation accessible in the 'Economic and Financial Information sub-section of the Investor Relations section of the IAG web site. Click on 'IAG Presentations', then '2014' and finally 'Markets Day' here:

http://www.iairgroup.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=240949&p=irol-presentations

Slide 64 says:


"Cockpit windows: 3 airlines & 3 suppliers:

"Experience with all suppliers: we can select the most reliable - 30 kg difference per aircraft between lightest and heaviest (representing €2,800 fuel burn saving per aircraft per year)"


(Note that the above saving was calculated on the basis of the oil price as at October 2014. It will be wrong today following the decline in crude prices over the intervening 15 months,)

Slide 51 of the same presentation discusses the harmonisation of fittings and equipment taking the example of 12 item categories (including, for example, "Toilet water / tap systems") in the Door 1 area of British Airways, Iberia, Iberia Express and veuling 320s.

The whole issue of fleet harmonisation was covered by as many as 15 slides (Slide 67 to Slide 81 inclusive). The objectives of this harmonisation are:

1. Maximise IAG buying power strength

2. Use their supplier history across all IAG operating airlines to purchase from the most reliable supplier

3. To be able to switch aircraft between operating airlines within seven days by changing branding and seating layout (but not seat type)

4. Assign new aircraft to the most appropriate airline not on the day of ordering but on the day of delivery

I believe this is moving pretty close to the ultimate level of efficiency while maintaining key individual airline branding. However this will only reach the highest possible level as fleet replacement is achieved and as new aircraft of the same type are delivered all with exactly the same specification excepting external and any internal branding and the operating airline's required cabin layout (but with standard cabin furniture and fitting)..

As the above is implemented so activities such as BA single-aisle Airbus aircraft being maintained at Iberia Maintenance Madrid is becoming a more regular IAG operating feature and is reducing costs by, in this instance, improving the utilisation of IB mx and reducing payments by BA mx for work currently carried out by external suppliers.

In other areas full integration has already been achieved. For example IAG Cargo now operates across the operating airlines effectively replacing merging what were British Airways Cargo and Iberia Cargo - see Slides 24 to 34 of the 2014 IAG Markets Day presentation that report 80 per cent integration as of 15 months ago.

Quoting senatorflyer (Thread starter): Thoughts?

Quoting frmrCapCadet (Reply 13): Markets work well in a lot of circumstances. They do not for airlines. There is no economic theory that says markets always perform well.

Indeed, from its beginnings international air transportation was never intended --- and is still not intended -- to function as a free-for-all, "anything goes" marketplace. Airlines engaged in international flying are subject to numerous influences and stakeholders not at all governed by profit considerations, and our ability to fly safely and conveniently between countries and across continents has developed under various protectionist paradigms (even today's Open Skies, when carefully melded with ATI agreements, furthers protectionist ends   ). Cartels continue to make the world go round in commercial aviation.

A derivative truth of this reality is that airlines are, in general, rather poorly run companies by the standards of similarly sized companies. To be sure, 21st century airline managers are applying business principles more aggressively than ever before, and the profit margins we're seeing in the carriers of the Americas are downright impressive. However, the possibility of vastly greater competence in airline management would also necessitate levels of freedom for airlines that policymakers and others simply won't grant.

Quoting pa747sp (Reply 16): Airlines don't usually have the luxury of making long-term decisions.

I disagree. They always face the challenge of having to take decisions that will impact their business way longer than those taken in nearly all other businesses.

Airlines order aircraft with long lead times and then often have to face a postponed delivery date. So, for example, BA announced their initial order for 24 787s on 27 September 2007. Today, eight and a quarter years later they have taken delivery of exactly half of these frames. And the decision they took in financial terms was huge. Each 787 has a list price of between US $244 and US $275 million. At list prices the aircraft they ordered back then are priced at over US $6.3 billion.

Airlines use their aircraft once delivered for very long periods. For example BA ordered their first 772s on 21 August 1991. They took delivery of their first 772 frame on 20 May 1996. They took delivery of their last 772 frame on 31 July 2009. In November 2015 they announced that they planned to operate the aircraft in their sizeable 772 fleet for 30 years. This means that the decision to purchase the 772 in 1991 will directly impact their business until 2039 or 48 years later.

Few companies outside of commercial aviation have to plan for up to a half century into the future when taking an absolutely huge financial decision such as that described above. Indeed the problem here is that those that have to plan for up to 50 years ahead are never around to see if their forward planning was a total success or not.

In my career I have been a Business Planner in the UK for a major American corporation (not in the aviation sector). We produced detailed one-year and five-year plans, outline ten-year forecasts. We never produced longer plans. So none of our detailed plans would cover the lead time from the ordering to the delivery of some new aircraft.

Quoting avek00 (Reply 17): However, the possibility of vastly greater competence in airline management would also necessitate levels of freedom for airlines that policymakers and others simply won't grant.

Management competence may not be affected by the environment the airline exists within. Management competence is about the ability of the management to run the airline well, given the objectives that the airline seeks to achieve. If the airline is a state-run business that seeks to provide social and economic benefits to the citizenry as a primary consideration, then that is the yardstick by which it should be measured. If the airline is a private company owned by shareholders, then the measurement of management competency will be considerably different. In both cases though, the management could excel or fail, as a consequence of the skills of the individuals and the group, irrespective of the environment that the airline operates within.

Quoting senatorflyer (Thread starter): The list could go on and on and on but I think the problem with most European airlines is not the competition from the LCC and the ME3, it is mainly their inability to get their house in order. HQ’s are wasting fast amounts of cash as a result of poor planning, not streamlining processes and implementing strategies which they just copy from their competitors. Thoughts?

To be honest, it is not very clear what your argument is. If you claim that American carriers are better than those in EMEA, that's probably not the case. American carriers managed to be profitable and show some improvements only in the past 3-5 years. There have been so many bankruptcies among the American carriers in the past 30-40 years and the bankruptcy protection in the US is the only reason why you see so many airlines still operate today. Since the start of the airline business in the US, airlines have been losing money overall rather than making money.

But in a competitive environment, you will always see winners and losers at one point in time. It is a pretty common industry dynamics for new comers to eat market share and profits from established players, which then try to regain their position by various means, in the case of aviation by new planes, new products, alliances, miles, more destinations, etc. Just because right now some carriers appear to be weaker doesn't mean that they always have been weaker or always will be weaker and vice versa.

Lastly, national culture comes into play how companies are run. Many countries in the world are not capitalist and don't have the money-making mindset. Obviously, they are forced to change sooner or later but it takes time.

Quoting VV701 (Reply 18): I disagree. They always face the challenge of having to take decisions that will impact their business way longer than those taken in nearly all other businesses. Airlines order aircraft with long lead times and then often have to face a postponed delivery date.

I agree with you in this regard. I left out this aspect of the airline business for the sake of brevity in my reply. But you are right, airlines face the problem that in ordering aircraft they have to look way out in to the distance, and yet the environment they work in can change rapidly.

This has let to the position that airlines are uniquely sensitive to short term problems, and have to respond to them, but they can be constrained by long-term aircraft purchases. This has lead to airlines tending to not make long-term decisions in other areas for the sake of giving some degree of flexibility to respond to any short term crises.

An example would be when I worked for NZ. Though they were aware they needed to replace their in-house reservation system for years, they kept postponing it because they simply couldn't make the commitment to the expenditure when they didn't have large cash reserves and when they needed to invest in a new fleet. This meant that they had to cobble together ad-hoc fixes and upgrades to their system to integrate it with the web site and various other changes to the business. Many airlines face these sort of problem continually, unable to invest in long term fixes because of short term cash flow requirements.

Just 4-5 years ago, this German woman applying for a job in another field was lecturing me about how Lufthansa should be hired to lecture to AA, DL, etc because clearly Americans do not know how to run an airline.

This was a common perception post-9/11 until full consolidation began the age of giant profits.

The US legacies were criminally underrated in terms of technical P&L management skill, operational forecasting etc with respect to other industries. Information business techniques developed by airlines in the 1980s are revolutionizing business today under marquee names such as "big data" and "real time customer analytics," about 30 years after airlines fully solved their business management needs. Airlines are some of the best optimized businesses ever done. An airline like Delta or Alaska is operating within just a few percent of theoretical optimum. Get into another business and people have NO idea what they are doing compared to what these airlines are doing.

Just as the US airlines were misunderstood, I would believe great talent is within the European legacies. But they still may be doomed by labor politics. A+ performance will look like D performance to the unaware.

The old JAL definitely comes into this category.
Current airlines:
1) SAA
2) Thai Airways.

Quoting VV701 (Reply 15): Cockpit windows: 3 airlines & 3 suppliers: "Experience with all suppliers: we can select the most reliable - 30 kg difference per aircraft between lightest and heaviest (representing €2,800 fuel burn saving per aircraft per year)"

A bit OT, but why are different suppliers even an option for parts like that? Shouldn't Airbus evaluate the various options and pick the best one? This has got to make secondhand aircraft purchases/induction a challenge if there are variations in suppliers for so many things.

I'm trying to understand the functional advantages and tradeoffs between 3 types of windshields. Considering how many types have even gone to sole engine suppliers, it's especially intriguing to see this variation.

[Edited 2016-01-09 10:14:25]

Quoting steve6666 (Reply 10):

"- It's really not true that flying Ryanair is more comfortable and convenient than flying Euro legacy carriers, is it?"

Please see:

"Lufthansa to offer less legroom than Ryanair"

http://www.businesstraveller.com/new...to-offer-less-legroom-that-ryanair

Quoting VS11 (Reply 20): airlines have been losing money overall rather than making money.

IF you lump them altogether, yes. However, if you separate them out, I can tell you this...........DL was profitable for the first 30 years I was with the company '71-'01. I'm sure you can separate WN out of that group, also, considering their profitability.

The same holds true for the airline bankruptcy theory. DL had ONE bankruptcy in their entire history.