Serving the Needs of a Market: A Strategic Analysis of the Flight Operations Engineering Department within the Airline Industry

Over the past decade, the global airline industry has been suffering from negative returns, over-capacity, and extreme competition. This paper develops strategic recommendations on how a new entrant can serve the needs of this industry by implementing a strategy that allows it to differentiate in such an established and saturated market with the goal of disrupting the status quo, gaining market share quickly, and eventually becoming a market leader. First, the airline industry is analyzed in terms of its competitive environment and the factors that influence an airline’s financial performance. This analysis leads to the conclusion that the most influential factor in an airline’s fiscal performance is its operational efficiency. In order to examine the sources of operational efficiency, focus is then given to the flight operations engineering department within airlines. A series of interviews were conducted to build an understanding of this department’s purpose, its activities, and its pain points. Based on this understanding, this paper concludes with strategic recommendations on how to develop and launch a product to service the needs of the flight operations engineering market.