Airline Industry Value Chain

Support activities:

Firm infrastructure: The firm infrastructure is the planning and control systems in terms of for example finance, accounting and strategies the firm might apply.

- For an airline these activities includes the financial policies, accounting and accounting standards they follow, regulatory compliance, legal matters that might come up and if they have some community affairs for example, that will also be under firm infrastructure.

Human resource management: This is the part of the value chain containing the recruiting of new employees, the training, and motivation of the employees and how to reward them.

- For an airline you need to recruit and train the pilots, the crew, the agents that work on the ground, the ground crew handling the baggage, the mechanics.

- Also, they need to recruit and train the people having the office jobs as well, like the ones analyzing the routes and how much the routes yield and the financial analysts to mention some of them.

- This is becoming increasingly important for the airline, especially for a company like Qantas that are in financial trouble which means they have to cut wherever they can, but it is very important to have a satisfied work force.

- There are also strong unions in Qantas as well and that means the employees have bargaining power towards the management and they have to discuss important matters which means the human resource management is very important for such a big company.

Technology development: This part concerns the issues of technological innovation, training and knowledge. This is an area which is very important for most of the companies nowadays considering the increasing amount of technological solutions. This means that if you do not keep up with the developments, you will soon end up in the aftermath and the company will lose track to the other companies and eventually lose customers.

- In the airline industry this concerns the computer reservation systems for example (Se om jeg kan finne ut hvor mange prosent som bestiller billetter på nettet).

- Another technological thing that are becoming increasingly is important, especially on long haul routes, is the developments of inflight entertainment. People might choose one airline instead of another because of the choice of inflight entertainment. This contains all from the selection of movies and tv series, but also possibilities of charging your lap top, possibilities to connect your iphone and increasingly also internet connection.

- A proper flight scheduling system is also important for an airline to secure the most efficient use of all the aircrafts and the routes. In connection to that, it is important to have a solid yield management system. That means you should be able to always monitor what routes and which flights gives you the best returns and that will give you a good indicator on how to reschedule

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