The various types of airline personnel include:

Flight crews, responsible for the operation of the aircraft. Flight crew members include:

Pilots (Captain and First Officer: some older aircraft also require a Flight Engineer/Second Officer and/or Navigators)
Flight Attendants (led by a purser on larger aircraft)
In-flight Security Personnel on some airlines (most notably El Al)

Ground Crews, responsible for operations at airports. Ground crew members include:

Airframe and Powerplant technicians. Often the ratings are termed as 'A' and 'P' technicians.
Avionics technicians/engineers
Flight Dispatchers
Baggage Handlers
Rampers
Gate Agents
Ticket Agents
Passenger Service Agents (such as airline lounge employees)

Reservations Agents, usually (but not always) at facilities outside the airport.

Most airlines follow a corporate structure where each broad area of operations (such as maintenance, flight operations, and passenger service) is supervised by a vice president. Larger airlines often appoint vice presidents to oversee each of the airline's hubs as well. Airlines also tend to employ considerable numbers of lawyers to deal with regulatory procedures and other administrative tasks.

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Each operator of a scheduled or charter flight uses a distinct airline call sign when communicating with airports or air traffic control centers. Most of these call-signs are derived from the airline's trade name, but for reasons of history, marketing, or the need to reduce ambiguity in spoken English (so that pilots do not mistakenly make navigational decisions based on instructions issued to a different aircraft), some airlines and air forces use call-signs less obviously connected with their trading name. For example, British Airways uses a Speedbird call-sign, named after the logo of its predecessor, BOAC.


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Code sharing is the most common type of airline partnership; it involves one airline selling tickets for another airline's flights under its own airline code. An early example of this was Japan Airlines' code sharing partnership with Aeroflot in the 1960s on flights from Tokyo to Moscow: Aeroflot operated the flights using Aeroflot aircraft, but JAL sold tickets for the flights as if they were JAL flights. This practice allows airlines to expand their operations, at least on paper, into parts of the world where they cannot afford to establish bases or purchase aircraft.

Since airline reservation requests are often made by city-pair (such as "show me flights from Chicago to Düsseldorf"), an airline who is able to code share with another airline for a variety of routes might be able to be listed as indeed offering a Chicago-Düsseldorf flight. The passenger is advised however, that Airline 1 operates the flight from say Chicago to Amsterdam, and Airline 2 operates the continuing flight (on a different airplane, sometimes from another terminal) to Düsseldorf. Thus the primary rationale for code sharing is to expand one's service offerings in city-pair terms so as to increase sales.

Virtually all international airlines practice code sharing.

A more recent development is the airline alliance, which became prevalent in the 1990s. These alliances can act as virtual mergers to get around government restrictions. Groups of airlines such as the Star Alliance, Oneworld, and

SkyTeam coordinate their passenger service programs (such as lounges and frequent flyer programs), offer special interline tickets, and often engage in extensive codesharing (sometimes systemwide). These are increasingly integrated business combinations-- sometimes including cross-equity arrangements-- in which products, service standards, schedules, and airport facilities are standardized and combined for higher efficiency. One of the first airlines to start an alliance with another airline was KLM, who partnered with Northwest Airlines. Both airlines later entered the SkyTeam alliance after the fusion of KLM and Air France in 2004.

Often the companies combine IT operations, buy fuel, or purchase airplanes as a bloc in order to achieve higher bargaining power. However, the alliances have been most successful at purchasing invisible supplies and services, such as fuel. Airlines usually prefer to purchase items visible to their passengers to differentiate themselves from local competitors. If an airline's main domestic competitor flies Boeing airliners, then the airline may prefer to use Airbus aircraft regardless of what the rest of the alliance chooses.

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Where an airline has established an engineering base at an airport then there may be considerable economic advantages in using that same airport as a preferred focus (or "hub") for its scheduled flights.

In view of the congestion apparent at many international airports, the ownership of slots at certain airports (the right to take-off or land an aircraft at a particular time of day or night) has become a significant tradable asset for many airlines. Clearly take-off slots at popular times of the day can be critical in attracting the more profitable business traveler to a given airline's flight and in establishing a competitive advantage against a competing airline. If a particular city has two or more airports, market forces will tend to attract the less profitable routes, or those on which competition is weakest, to the less congested airport, where slots are likely to be more available and therefore cheaper. Other factors, such as surface transport facilities and onward connections, will also affect the relative appeal of different airports and some long distance flights may need to operate from the one with the longest runway.

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Airlines assign prices to their services in an attempt to maximize profitability. To do this well requires yield management technology and pricing flexibility.

They use differentiated pricing, a form of price discrimination, in order to sell air services at varying prices simultaneously to different segments. Factors influencing the price include the days remaining until departure, the current booked load factor, the forecast of total demand by price point, competitive pricing in force, and variations by day of week of departure and by time of day.

A complicating factor is that of origin-destination control ("O&D control"). Someone purchasing a ticket from say,

Melbourne to Sydney for $A200 is competing with someone else who wants to fly Melbourne to Los Angeles through Sydney on the same airplane, and who is willing to pay $A1400. Should the airline prefer the $A1400 passenger, or the $A200 passenger + a possible Sydney-Los Angeles passenger willing to pay $A1300? Airlines have to make hundreds of thousands of similar pricing decisions daily in their markets.
In contrast, low fare carriers usually offer straightforward, preannounced, simple prices. They can do this by quoting prices for each leg of a trip; passengers simply add them together to construct a full journey.

The advent of advanced computerized reservations systems in the late 1970s, most notably Sabre, allowed airlines to easily perform cost-benefit analyses on different pricing structures, leading to almost perfect price discrimination in some cases (that is, filling each seat on an aircraft at the highest price that can be charged without driving the consumer elsewhere). The intense nature of airfare pricing has led to the term "fare war" to describe efforts by airlines to undercut other airlines on competitive routes.

Therefore it is important that new airfares can be published quickly and efficiently to the airlines' sales channels. The airlines use the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO) for this purpose, who multiple times per times per day distribute information for the latest fares for more than 500 airlines to Computer Reservation Systems across the world.

Computers also allow airlines to predict, with some accuracy, how many passengers will actually fly after making a reservation to fly. This allows airlines to overbook their flights enough to fill the aircraft while accounting for "no-shows," but not enough (in most cases) to force paying passengers off the aircraft for lack of seats. Since an average of ⅓ of all seats are flown empty[citation needed], stimulative pricing for low demand flights coupled with overbooking on high demand flights can help reduce this figure.

Airline From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Full-service airlines have a high level of fixed and operating costs in order to establish and maintain air services: labor, fuel, airplanes, engines, spares and parts, IT services and networks, airport equipment, airport handling services, sales distribution, catering, training, Aviation insurance and other costs. Thus all but a small percentage of the income from ticket sales is paid out to a wide variety of external providers or internal cost centers.

Moreover, the industry is structured so that airlines often act as tax collectors. Airline fuel is untaxed however due to a series of treaties existing between countries. Ticket prices include a number of fees, taxes, and surcharges they have little or no control over, and these are passed through to various providers. Airlines are also responsible for enforcing government regulations. If airlines carry passengers without proper documentation on an international flight, they are responsible for returning them back to the originating country.

Analysis of the 1992-1996 period shows that every player in the air transport chain is far more profitable than the airlines, who collect and pass through fees and revenues to them from ticket sales. While airlines as a whole earned 6% return on capital employed (2-3.5% less than the cost of capital), airports earned 10%, catering companies 10-13%, handling companies 11-14%, aircraft lessors 15%, aircraft manufacturers 16%, and global distribution companies more than 30%. (Source: Spinetta, 2000, quoted in Doganis, 2002)

In contrast, Southwest Airlines has been the most profitable of airline companies since 1970. Indeed, some sources have calculated Southwest to be the best performing stock over the period, outperforming Microsoft and many other high performing companies. The chief reasons for this are their product consistency and cost control.
The widespread entrance of a new breed of low cost airlines beginning at the turn of the century has accelerated the demand that full service carriers control costs. Many of these low cost companies emulate Southwest Airlines in various respects, and like Southwest, they are able to eke out a consistent profit throughout all phases of the business cycle.

As a result, a shakeout of airlines is occurring in the U.S. and elsewhere. United Airlines, US Airways (twice), Delta Air Lines, and Northwest Airlines have all declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and American has barely avoided doing so. Alitalia, Scandinavian Airlines System, SABENA, Japan Air System, Air Canada, Ansett Australia, and others have flirted with or declared bankruptcy since 2000, as low cost entrants enter their home markets as well. Some argue that it would be far better for the industry as a whole if a wave of actual closures were to reduce the number of "undead" airlines competing with healthy airlines while being artificially protected from creditors via bankruptcy law.

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Airline financing is quite complex, since airlines are highly leveraged operations. Not only must they purchase (or lease) new airline bodies and engines regularly, they must make major long-term fleet decisions with the goal of meeting the demands of their markets while producing a fleet that is relatively economical to operate and maintain. Compare Southwest Airlines and their reliance on a single airplane type (the Boeing 737 and derivatives), with the now defunct Eastern Air Lines which operated 17 different aircraft types, each with varying pilot, engine, maintenance, and support needs.

A second financial issue is that of hedging oil and fuel purchases, usually second only to labor in its relative cost to the company but with the current high fuel prices it has become biggest part of total airlines expenses. While hedging instruments can be expensive, they can easily pay for themselves many times over in periods of increasing fuel costs, such as in the 2000-2005 period.

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