August 19
Can you match these airline slogans to its original carrier?
| (A) “We’re flying better than ever!” | (1) National Airways |
| (B) “You’re gonna like us!” | (2) Western Airlines |
| (C) “We have to earn our wings every day.” | (3) Northwest Airlines (Northwest Orient) |
| (D) “If you’ve got it, flaunt it!” | (4) Eastern Airlines |
| (E) “It’s the ONLY way to fly!” | (5) Aloha Airlines |
| (F) “What we serve is YOU!” | (6) Pacific Southwest Air (PSA) |
| (G) “The friendliest name in flight.” | (7) America West Airlines |
| (H) “The world is going our way.” | (8) Braniff Airways |
| (I) “You’ve got a lot going for you when you fly ME!” | (9) Pan American Airways (PanAm) |
| (J) “We gotta be tough to make you smile.” | (10) Trans World Airways (TWA) |
(Answers at the bottom of this post)
What do all of these slogans have in common?
They belong to airlines that are now defunct. It’s a sad but true legacy in American history. According to Wikipedia, since the deregulation of the airline industry in the US in 1978, over 200 airlines have either merged, filed for bankruptcy or gone out of business altogether. Warren Buffet has even been quoted as saying that the airline industry is the most difficult to manage.
There have been loud calls among politicians to re-regulate the industry, thus placing pricing caps and fare restrictions squarely in the hands of the U.S. government. As it stand right now, it appears that the suggestion is merely a threat and there doesn’t seem to be any momentum in Congress to move in that direction. But is re-regulation a good idea?
Some would argue that the mere fact that so many airlines have failed in the past 30+ years indicates a flaw somewhere in the business model that airlines have come to build their business on. Others point to the low-cost carriers (namely Southwest Airlines and jetBlue Airways) as examples of how the business should be run. Is that a fair comparison?
When you look at the legacy carriers up against the low-costs, you will see stark differences. In the case of Southwest, it operates a single aircraft type, the Boeing 737 series. For an airline like United Airlines, it operates various configurations of six different aircraft models: Boeing’s 747-, 757-, 767-, and 777-series aircraft, along with Airbus’ A-319 and A-320 models. Immediately you can surmise that United’s cost structure would be significantly higher.
One could argue that United should only operate one or two aircraft types to significantly lower its costs, but is that practical? For instance, a B-747 cannot land in such places as Jackson, WY or Orange County, CA simply because the runways aren’t long enough to handle the size of the aircraft. And a B-757 or A-320 certainly cannot fly non-stop from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia. It’s obvious that the larger, international carriers have larger aircraft needs than those of their low-cost counterparts.
Yet time and again, people insist on comparing these LCCs to the larger carriers and try to make the argument that legacy carriers should be as successful and run as efficiently as LCCs. Just this example alone should be evidence enough that the comparison is flawed and unsustainable.
In the nearly 100 years of flight, businessmen and women haven’t quite yet figured out the right formula to make an international airline completely successful, both financially or strategically. The pending merger of United and Continental will be a significant test to see if the future “world’s largest airline” can be the new gold standard of airline travel. The recent combination of Delta and Northwest has been a decent example of what can go mostly right in an airline merger. The U.S. Airways/America West Airlines marriage is a prime example of what can go wrong.
Only time will tell which path the NEW United Airlines will take.
Answers to the above quiz:
A-9, B-10, C-4, D-8, E-2, F-7, G-5, H-3, I-1, J-6
)) in spirit!” Suzie D., Continental Employee
