Case Study - Large Airline
IATA, the International
Air Transport Association, reports that only a mere handful of the worlds 1600+
commercial passenger airlines succeed at achieving financial and economic
returns consistently in the medium to long term.
Our client, a highly
recognisable international airline brand is one such, as well as a great
success story in aviation history. Repeatedly, an award winner in every aspect
of its operations, it is well known for innovative full service, outstanding customer
satisfaction and safety record. Behind the scenes, the airline is equally
fastidious of its management of revenue and cost.
The challenge High Perform
took on was to support short term decision making by designing a business model that could generate short term profitability analytics of its operations at
fluctuating levels of demand and ticket pricing, identify and quantify the cost of sub-optimal
utilisation of structural, fixed and variable resource capacities.
Although the airline had several
financial models, their focus was mainly on revenue. On the cost side, most airlines are content on monitoring
major costs such as crews, aviation fuel and finance leases. Astute
operators are aware of and act on optimising the efficiency of all spending. In
an industry where margins are wafer thin, this can make the difference between superior
performance and mere survival.
This was the first time management had attempted
to ascertain route and flight cost and profitability at a granular level on a
dynamic basis using actual and forecast seat reservation data. Anecdotal
evidence is that it was also a first for an airline to use detailed transactional level 'big data'
(passenger by class by flight) in a financial modelling exercise of
this nature.
It will come as no
surprise that year after year this airline achieves exceptional financial results and continues to grow from strength to strength, an outcome of its
unwavering pursuit of operational excellence. The contribution to better
decision making provided by advanced profitability analytics is not to be
discounted.