Bud He t Airlines
-
Upload
arun-prakash -
Category
Documents
-
view
213 -
download
0
Transcript of Bud He t Airlines
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 1/27
Budget Airlines – Ryanair
High Technology Entrepreneurship & Strategy
Mukund BhagavanOguz Ertekin
Peter GeijermanVasily Kuznetsov
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 2/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 2
European Airlines.. ......................................................................................................3
Nature of Competition in the Airline Industry..........................................................4
Value Chain.............................................................................................................7Cost Structure..........................................................................................................7
Customers................................................................................................................9
Airlines..................................................................................................................11
Ryanair......................................................................................................................14
Entry Strategy........................................................................................................14
Construction of Value Chain.................................................................................. 16
Perceptions of Key Success Drivers....................................................................... 17
Market reactions........................................................................................................19
Analysis .................................................................................................................... 21
Choosing Firm Boundaries ....................................................................................21
Managing Growth..................................................................................................23
Future Landscape of the Airline Industry ...............................................................26
References.................................................................................................................27
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 3/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 3
European Airlines
Since its conception after World War I, the European airline industry went through
consolidation around the 1950s and consisted mainly of nationally owned airlines. Air
travel between any two countries within Europe was regulated through pooling
agreements, which basically allowed the national carriers to share revenue, capacity and
profit. Domestic travel was also strictly regulated and since the respective governments
had interest in the national airlines through equity stake, they discouraged entry of new
airlines. While there had been advances in aviation, significant barriers existed for entry
into the scheduled flight services between major European cities.
The first attempt to break through this stronghold happened in the 1960s through the
introduction of chartered airlines that addressed consumer’s frustration with high airline
prices and need for cheap fares. Chartered airlines were able to get around regulatory
because they were non-scheduled flights. In response, the incumbents set up their own
chartered airline subsidiaries to capitalize on this new opportunity.
In the early 1970s, the US went through a deregulation of the airline industry that freed
up pricing and route scheduling and reduced barriers for entry and exit. Following
deregulation, competition forced down prices for the average consumer. The freeing up
of the airline industry and its ensuing benefits to customers in the US put pressure on
European governments to take a similar path. Beginning in 1987, over a period of several
years, the European airline industry was completely deregulated allowing any European
carrier to fly between any two destinations. Much earlier, the UK, as a result of change in
government, ushered in deregulation of the airline industry in the hope that it would
benefit consumers through cheaper airfares.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 4/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 4
Chronology of deregulation
Dec 1987 “December 1987 package” - First phase of liberalization in Europe, ends
bilateral capacity sharing between national carriers
June 1990 “Second Package” - price controls, capacity and market access restrictions
lifted
Jan 1993 “Third Package” Complete deregulation with the advent of the EU open
market, any European airline can fly anywhere
When flight travel originates or terminates in a country outside Europe, regulations
governing this travel are still set on a bilateral basis with that country. For example, the
US negotiates separate bilateral flight treaties with each European country and the
airlines are still bound by regulations listed in these treaties. There is a natural division
for European airlines – the intra European market that is completely deregulated today
and the extra-European routes that are still regulated through bilateral agreements. Given
this key distinction, our analysis will focus on approach to opportunity in the deregulated
intra-European market.
Nature of Competition in the Airline Industry
We apply Porter’s 5 forces framework to analyze the competitiveness in the intra-
European airline industry. As the industry evolved significantly after deregulation, the
timing for our analysis is right after deregulation, i.e. 1993.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 5/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 5
Threat of new entry (medium)
Regulation was the most significant obstacle for new entry until the airline industry was
completely deregulated in 1993. Existing players through wide networks had low costs
through economies of scale. Other deterrent to entry was access to scare resources. Afterderegulation, economies of scale and access to scarce resources (landing at airports) were
some of the major deterrents of entry. However the ability to outsource some of the
operations reduced the benefit of economies of scale increasing threat of new entry.
Rivalry (Low)DuopoliesUsed pricing signalingas a mechanism toavoid intense rivalry
Supplier Power(Medium)
Airports had some bargaining power Other suppliers suchas agents were toofragmented
Threat of entry(Medium)
Regulated until 1993Airports were scarceresourcesHigh fixed costs,some EOS
Buyer Power(Low )
Buyers a fragmentedgroup
Substitutes(Low)
Some substitutes suchas buses/ fast trainsfor leisure travelers;
but speed of travelkey for businesstravelers
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 6/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 6
Substitutes (medium)
The incumbents focused on business travel for much of their revenue generation, and
since business travelers required speed (high performance), other options such as trains
and buses were weak substitutes. This was especially true for travel from the UK to
continental Europe.(Eurotunnel wasn’t built until eh late 1990s). However they were a
viable alternative to price sensitive consumers.
Supplier power (medium)
Suppliers in this industry are the employees, aircraft manufacturers and airports.
Employees wielded some power through unions; Since maintenance was significant cost
item, airlines were interested in purchasing same kind of planes. Given that there were
only two aircraft suppliers – Boeing and Airbus, they both had high supplier power. Sincemajor airports were a scarce resource, they too had significant buyer supplier power.
Travel agents were another group here, however fixed commissions and high
fragmentation meant little leverage.
Buyer power (low)
Buyers were a fragmented group and had little bargaining power.
Rivalry (low)
Until deregulation was completed in 1993, the national carriers dominated most European
routes. Even after deregulation there was a period of time when most of the dense intra-
European routes continued to be operated as duopolies. As a result, there was little rivalry
for intra-European routes, and meant comfortable profits for the incumbents.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 7/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 7
Value Chain
Airlines and their partners undertook the following set of activities to provide
transportation:
Supplies consist of procuring materials (sourcing) and undertaking maintenance of
flights. Operations ensure flight operations (piloting, flight attendance, etc) and the
support from ground operations (passenger handling, cargo, catering, etc). Marketing and
distribution are closely interlinked and involve market analysis, advertising, value
appropriation through pricing. Distribution was done through travel agents (online and
offline) as well as direct to consumer.
Cost Structure
The airline industry is characterized by high fixed costs in equipment, labor and facilities.
In the long-term, some of the excess capacity is fixed assets can be disposed throughreductions in workforce, subleasing of aircraft, etc.
The most significant operating costs that airlines face are labor costs, cost of fuel and
charges for landing and en-route navigation.
- Compensation levels are a key determinant of labor costs and flight staff at European
airlines was generally paid high remuneration levels in comparison with American
and Asian airlines. Flight crews were paid by productivity, and productivity intraditional airlines was measured by number of flight hours. Also resistance from
labor unions made it difficult for airlines to usher major reforms.
- Airlines have had little influence over fuel prices. The larger airlines were able to get
lower price for volume consumption. While Airlines could plan their purchases and
OperationsFlight oper.Ground oper.
SuppliesMaintenancePurchasing
MarketingPromotion.Sales
DistributionReservationTicketing
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 8/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 8
buy at an airport where it was least expensive, the cost of carrying the fuel diminished
any savings gained.
- Due to air travel congestion at airports near large European cities, landing charges
were especially high. For example, in the early 1990s landing charges at London’s
Heathrow International was several times that of New York’s JFK. Among other
costs, depreciation, ticket distribution and ground handling were other significant cost
sources.
After the European airline industry was deregulated, most major airlines saw little
difference in the unit costs for all of the costs resources mentioned above except for labor
costs. Since they were using the same airports, the cost of other resources was equal
across airlines. Therefore cost cutting often focused on cutting labor costs.As we will see, Ryanair was able to leapfrog competition with a strategy that let them cut
costs beyond just labor.
Strategic implications
The business model adopted by the national airlines internalizes certain cost structures
that cannot be removed without disrupting the whole value proposition:
- To provide connectivity the hub-and-spoke system is designed so that arrivals and
departures are clustered in waves over the day, minimizing the waiting time for
transfer passenger. This inevitably causes a lower utilization of both human resources
and the aircrafts 1
- The interdependence of flights in the networks means that the airlines have to
internalize a large amount of variability, forcing them to have a higher reserve
capacity, since a delay in one flight will effect a large number of other flights, causing
high costs or leading to the airlines not providing the service they charge large
premium for - The loyalty programs, a means of competition among the major airlines, had become
an increasing burden, that constitutes a respectable part of their costs 2
1 “Hyped hopes for Europe’s low-cost airlines”, McKinsey Quarterly 4, 20022 “Frequent-flyer economics”, Economist , May 2, 2002. “Fly me to the moon”, The Economist, May 2,2002.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 9/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 9
Customers
The airline customers have traditionally been divided into two groups – business
travellers and leisure travellers . Different strategies have been developed in order to
create and capture maximum value for and from these customer groups, and the industry
structure has, as will be discussed below, reinforced this segmentation of customers.
Business Travelers
The business traveller is targeted with such product features as:
- frequency
- flexibility
- connectivity
- service – airport and in-flight- loyalty rewards
The business travellers need for frequency and flexibility comes from the relative
unpredictability of the need and timing for travel in business. It is provided by dense
flight schedules (frequency) and booking facilities and rules (flexibility) allowing for last
minute booking, rescheduling, cancellation, reimbursement etc.
The need for connectivity arises from the business travellers need to go from one given
point (the location of one’s own corporation) to another given point (the location of the
customer). Though the macroeconomic argument that business interact where
communication (among other factors) make it possible, today’s business landscape in
general makes the travel a function of the business and not the other way around.
The services offered to the business traveller range from on ground facilities such as
lounges with faxes, Internet connection, fast line check-in etc. to in-flight services such as
hot meals newspapers, spacious seating allowing to work or rest.
The loyalty programmes have become an increasingly important component in the
airlines competition for business travellers. These programmes have the effect of locking
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 10/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 10
in a customer (the company) by locking in the consumer/decision maker (the business
traveller) by offering free miles to the traveller, thereby increasing loyalty to a certain
airline and increasing the price sensitivity of the decision maker.
The growing internationalisation of business and the integration of the European markets
have increased the market for business travel and the market is expected to grow by up to
40% by 2010 3.
The business travellers have been the target group of almost all major airlines because of
the higher profitability and the better fit between the customer needs and the structure of
the services provided.
Leisure Travelers
The leisure traveller is targeted with such product features as:
- price
- attractive destinations
- bundling with hotels and activities at destination
For the leisure traveller price has a much higher relative importance for the decision on
if, where and how to travel, since the leisure traveller is paying out of his own pocket,
and travelling often involves the whole family. More time consuming but lower priced
means of transportation are considered as substitutes. The possibility to plan ahead gives
a lower WTP for flexibility , and the level of comfort and service is more easily traded
down for a cheaper ticket. The frequency is of much lower importance as long as it fairly
well coincides with the planned length of the stay (which normally last much longer than
the ordinary business stay).
The traditional leisure traveller looks for a destination that can offer the desired features,
often sun and sea combined with a certain service infrastructure such as hotels, bars,
3 Air Transport Action Group, “Fast facts”, www.atag.org
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 11/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 11
restaurants, nightclubs etc. The air travel has been a component of a more complicated
bundled product, with implications on the supply side (below).
Leisure travel is a function of population density and economical well being in the
departure area and of the attractiveness to the travellers of the destination. This makes
leisure travel dependent on macroeconomic factors, on social factors as changing
vacation behaviour, more individualistic and less family travel, big cities as tourist
attractions etc.
Airlines
Major Carriers – Specializing in business travel and yield management
The major carriers have specialized in serving the business traveller and have – in order
to provide the flexibility, frequency and connectivity desired by the customer – developed:
- the hub and spoke system, designed to concentrate traffic to a limited number of
airports, thereby decreasing fixed costs and to gain higher utilization of aircraft by
pooling travellers from many connecting flights into one
- the CRS-systems (international booking networks) which enables the airlines to link
the point-to-hub-to-point flights together
- the code sharing programs which allows an airline to sell tickets to a destinationserved by another airline belonging to the same alliance. The international
competition is to a large extent concentrated to four big alliances.
To fill up seats, cheaper over-the-week-end tickets are sold to leisure travellers to almost
all of the scheduled flights as well. This is however not the focus of these players.
Capturing Value
Although the flexibility, frequency and connectivity are provided for the business
traveller, they are surely appreciated by the leisure traveller as well. The airlines
however, have no other choice than to restrict the service provided to leisure travellers by
internal rules in order to capture more of the value provided to the business travellers. By
introducing limitations such as requirements to book long time in advance, a rule that
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 12/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 12
forces you to stay over a Saturday night etc., the airlines are able to prevent the business
traveller from benefiting from the services at the economy price, and thus are able to push
the prices up the demand curve, which proves to be very inelastic. (The upper limit to this
strategy would theoretically be the cost for the employer to have an employee out of
office for an extra day or two, including higher compensation and hotel expenses etc.)
Charter Airlines – Specializing in leisure travel and product bundling
The charter airlines – selling a commodity, point-to-point transportation service – are
much more dependent on the complementary services provided to their customer. When
the leisure traveller buys a ticket to go to a certain destination, he almost always do so
because he has bought a service provided at the destination, and the ticket is in most of
the cases sold through a third party, bundled with other products – being the actual objectthe customer is purchasing. The operators don’t schedule their flights, other than to the
day and approximate time of take-off, usually operate from smaller airports or in
unattractive slots on major airports. They fill their planes in advance by selling seats in
bulk, often to closely related agents.
The industry has historically been dependent on other industries providing the services
that created the demand for the travel such as hotel packages etc. The travel agencies had
the customer relationship and bundled the air ticket with products from other providers,
giving them an advantage in capturing value, making the air travel more of a commodity.
As a response, the charter airlines have in many cases integrated forward.
Changes in social behaviors and the internationalization of society have now created new
types of leisure travelers. The modern leisure traveler takes on many of the functions
earlier provided by the airlines, such as booking of hotel and recreation at the destination,
made possible by the adoption of the Internet of both consumers and service providers.These changes makes leisure travelers less dependent on travel agencies, something that
also make the airlines less dependent on the agencies for selling their tickets. There is a
trend of de-bundling the leisure travel products.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 13/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 13
Low Cost Airlines
By exploiting the ’white spots’ between the two models described above, the low cost
airlines provide a scheduled point-to-point service at routes with enough travellers to
sustain a scheduled flight. They provide the benefits of frequency, more flexibility than
the charter airlines but no connectivity. The service level is lower than the major airlines
and some of the charter airlines. They run no loyalty programmes. The low cost allows
them to focus on price, and hance to expand the market.
Due to the different natures of the service provided and the different customers targeted
there is very low level of competition between the major airlines and charter airlines. The
low cost carriers compete for business traveler that travel mainly and repeatedly on the
haul they are operating, while they cannot compete for the majority of business travel.
They compete more directly with the charter airlines for independent leisure travelers
looking for the lowest priced tickets.
Different Value to Different Customers
The elements of the service provided by the low cost airlines are embedded in the service
provided by the traditional business and leisure travel providers. The low cost airlines are
targeting another mix of consumer preferences and income level - from which the airlines
focused on business traveller are locked out from because of their price discriminating
operational models (providing more than half of their revenues). The more independent
leisure traveller - less willing to pay for the add on services provided by the travel agents,
is more likely to use a scheduled low cost service to reach a destination where all the
other arrangement have been done through the Internet.
Another important feature of the low cost airlines is that they touch a price-point that
actually expands the market instead of only stealing market share from the incumbents.They are priced in a range that makes them a real substitute for many of the on-ground
transportations preferred by the price sensitive travellers.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 14/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 14
Differentiation
While the traditional industry is an oligopoly where the players swiftly adopt any
successful innovations the competitors implement, and where the close interdependence
created by code sharing, common booking systems etc prevent full competition it is hard
to differentiate. This might well be one of the factors driving the industry profitability
down 4.
The low cost carriers have benefited from this difficulty of their competitors to
differentiate themselves in their marketing by provocative campaigns directed directly to
the consumers, profiling themselves as the ‘consumer’s friend’.
The different approaches to distributions are of no less importance in understanding how
the low cost carrier differ from the traditional carriers. The business traveler targeted by
the major airlines normally doesn’t spend a lot of time searching the market but outsource
this to a travel agency – a push system in the ticket distribution from the airlines’ point of
view, where agencies have to be courted in order to benefit from their customer relations.
The low cost traveler buys the ticket directly through the Internet and the carriers create
demand by targeting travelers with direct advertisements promoting the low cost feature.
Ryanair
Entry Strategy
Ryanair has been the pioneer in the European low-cost carrier industry. It started
operating in 1986 on the Ireland-UK route. It adopted a classical airline business model
focusing on customer service. In order to gain foot in the market it priced 10% below the
duopoly of Aer Lingus and BA. When Ryanair began operations on their Waterford-Gatwick and later on Dublin-London routes, they primarily chose to differentiate in two
ways. They did offer meals and amenities comparable to what Aer Lingus and British
Airways provided, however they focused on first-rate customer service, and a single,
4 Best practice Best strategy, McKinsey Quarterly 2, 2000
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 15/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 15
simple fare with no restrictions. They distinctly targeted the large Irish immigrant
population working in England, who had to suffer through a 9-hour long rail or ferry
journey to visit home because they could not afford to fly. This target customer
segmentation not only clearly identified their niche market, but it also elevated them to a
“hero” status among the poor immigrant population, for standing up to the big players.
This factor raised their psychological and social barriers to exit and strengthened their
commitment.
In 1987, after 2 years of start-up losses they posted their first profit. At this point they
became a more credible threat and faced intensified competition from the flag carriers in
the markets where they competed. This period was characterized by struggle for survival
and incremental but unstructured cost reduction efforts in search of the “right” businessmodel which culminated in heavy losses until the Jan 1991 cash crisis.
In 1991 the shareholders appointed Michael O’Leary to turnaround Ryanair. Under the
new leadership Ryanair reemerged as a passenger transportation company not constrained
by the typical business model (ferries, railroads, busses). Following the EU airlines
deregulation, in 1997 Ryanair entered the routes between the British Isles and the
Continental Europe. It has focused on North-South routes transporting primarily leisure
travelers.
Business Model
Ryanair adopted a strategy targeting not only existing airlines’ customers but also
customers of other modes of transportation as well as people who didn’t consider
traveling because of prohibitively high prices. The key competitive advantage of the new
business model was pricing 50-90% below competitors. To sustain this competitive
advantage Ryanair had to adopt a cost structure different from its competitors so thateven if the competitors responded with price war Ryanair would be still operating at
profit. Unwilling to change the existing operations model the incumbents could not match
the new Ryanair prices.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 16/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 16
To support the strategy of the low-cost low-fare airline Ryanair redesigned the process by
flying point-to-point. It also avoided head-to-head competition by serving unconventional
routes from secondary airports. Ryanair has substantially redesigned its product to offer a
low-cost low-fare. It cut all the frills, increased the number of seats on the plane, reduced
costs by introducing direct sales, standardizing the fleet and increasing the personnel
productivity. It compensated the foregone revenues from ticket sales by the revenues
from onboard sales and extensive advertising (even on the exterior of the planes).
Impact on the Transportation Industry
Essentially Ryanair created a sub-segment of the passenger transportation industry for
itself. It was a segment with economics and customers different from the traditional
airlines. It competes with the existing airlines because their markets overlap. Its truecompetitors are all modes of transportation, but primarily the cheaper on-ground modes
and the low-cost carriers that mimicked Ryanair.
Construction of Value Chain
The outsourcing of non-core activities (e.g. ground handling, partial maintenance) and
keeping distribution chain in-house made Ryanair’s value chain different form the
traditional value chain. The logic behind this model was to keep the costs down. It is
worth mentioning that Ryanair didn’t compromise safety and maintenance in its ferocious
pursuit for cost reduction.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 17/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 17
RYANAIR’S VALUE CHAIN CONSTRUCTION
Standardizedfleet’
Signed long-term contractsin theeconomicdownturn
MarketingOperationsSupplies Distribution
Purchasing Maintenance Groundhandling Flight Reserva-tions Ticketing
Bothoutsourcedand in-house;
“No-frills”concept didn’tapply tomaintenance
Outsourced Product ivi tyhigher thanindustryaverage
Controversialmarketing
Not integratedin theindustry-widereservationssystmes
Direct sales
Perceptions of Key Success Drivers
The key success driver of the management was the ability to focus. To focus in the long-
term on setting low-fares, sustaining low-cost position and finding extra revenues from
ancillary services. And, to focus in the short-term on the most critical issues and keeping
the organization flexible in order to respond to the issues.
Organizational Success Drivers
The key organizational success factor has been the focus on low costs, which is an
integral part of the Ryanair’s corporate culture. For examples, employees are encouraged
to bring pens from home or lift pens from hotel rooms.
The low-cost spirit is also reflected in the compensation system. Most of the employees
(except of the maintenance workers) are paid based on productivity (number of flights,
sales on-board etc.). Ryanair doesn’t pay pilots based on their tenure which is an industry
practice. In order to motivate employees the management promotes primarily from within
and encourages employees’ involvement in management through Employee
Representation Committees. It also updates employees on the current state of affairs and
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 18/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 18
the challenges the company is facing by communicating daily performance and other
information through TV stations in the offices.
Flexibility is another key attribute of the Ryanair’s organization. The company rotates
personnel between jobs depending on the company needs.
Competitive Success Drivers
The primarily competitive key success driver of Ryanair is its low cost structure. An
additional success driver is focus on ancillary sources of revenues such as on-board sales
and advertising both inside the aircrafts and on the exterior.
Source: Association of European Airlines, Civil Aviation Authority, McKinsey analysis
RYANAIR’ COST ADVANTAGECosts per available-seat-kilometer (ASK), 2001, cents
Top 3 majorflag carriers
(international)
1. Ov erhead
• Lower generaladministrativecosts
21 3 4 5
0.512.0 1.7
0.80.6 2.6
1.3
4.5
6 Ryanair
2. Distribution
• Direct sa les only• No fees for 3 rd
party computerreservationsystems
• No commission onticket sales
3. Passengerservices
• Direct s ale s only• No fees for 3 rd
party computerreservationsystems
• No commission onticket sales
4. C rew cost s
• Low compen-sation costs
• H igher crewproductivity
• R educ ed crewcomponent
5. Airport charges,ground handling
• Lower ai rportcosts through useof secondaryairports; lowertaxes
• Lower ground -handling costs
6 . Seat density
• 15% more seatper aircraft
Ryanair’s cost advantage
Ryanair’s cost advantage
Consumer Success Drivers
The primary driver here was the use of yield management to gain new customers through
fare drops rather than to find opportunities to raise fares without loosing customers.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 19/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 19
Market reactions
Ryanair’s growth comes from taking away market shares from other transportation
companies and from creating new segments. For example, by 1999, Ryanair became the
biggest carrier on the Ireland-UK market, by taking over traffic from ferries, BA and AerLingus as well as by boosting the overall market. A famous example of creating market
segments is Ryanair’s launch of London-Carcassone flights, which led to creation of a
Euro200M tourist market in a medieval town in the South-West of France. 5
Following deregulation, Ryanair was able to disrupt the European airline industry and
change the basis of competition. Here we revisit how the nature of competition changed
following Ryanair’s entry.
Threat of new entry (increased)
Deregulation lowered the barriers to entry. At the same time, new routes need to reach a
critical mass before they can be profitable and many routes can only sustain one airline.
Hence, Ryanair was able to gain a first mover advantage on several routes. Ryanair’s
success prompted a wave of imitating start-ups and charter operators (e.g. AirBerlin)
entering low-cost carrier market. Most of them are loss-making and many did not last
long (Debonair, AB Airlines, ColorAir). In fact, as McKinsey Analysis shows “excluding
Ryanair, the European low-cost segment accumulated losses of almost $300 mln from
1996 to 2001). …Ryanair and easyJet between them account for more than 88% of the
scheduled low-cost market in Europe. In US, SW alone holds 50% of the US low-cost
market. This pattern suggests that a winner-takes-all dynamic favors the first entrants,
which can use low prices to stimulate demand and build brand power” 6
Supplier power (decreased)
It also decreased the suppliers’ power because the owners of these airports were willingto accept essentially any offer. However, Ryanair’s exponential growth and profitability
make the airports negotiate the high airport fees as they renew their contracts.
5 Gimeno, Javier et al; European Airline Industry: Ryanair in 2003, INSEAD, 2003, p.36 “Hyped hopes for Europe’s low-cost airlines”, McKinsey Quarterly 4, 2002
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 20/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 20
Rivalry (medium)
It also managed to keep the degree of rivalry relatively low by competing directly only on
a limited number of routes (as opposed to other low-cost carriers such as easyJet). For
instance, at the end of 2002 it faced competition only on 43 out of 85 routes. 7 On less
profitable routes the incumbents withdraw or shift towards full-fare business travelers.
For instance, BA withdrew from the Dublin-London route after Ryanair began its
turnaround. On more profitable incumbents responded with low-fare spin-offs. For
instance, BA launched Go and KLM launched Buzz, Virgin – Virgin Express. Most of
them could not compete with low-fare airlines and went bankrupt. Essentially they
operated a low-fare high-cost business model, since they could they could not abandon all
the frills (such as pre-assigned seats, food and drinks on-board) or were constraint by the
use of a heterogeneous of non-standard airplanes inherited from its incumbent parent.
Virgin Express went bust in 1999, Buzz was acquired by Ryanair in 2003, Go – by
easyJet in 2002. Some traditional airlines adopted elements of a low-cost carrier strategy.
For example, in 2002, SAS dropped its business class for intra-Scandinavian flights, and
started operating part of its fleet on a point-to-point basis. Incumbents also responded by
presenting the deals Ryanair stroke with its airports as a government subsidizing. Most of
the airports Ryanair flies to are owned by local or national governments. “The European
Commission launched an investigation to see whether the discounts Ryanair receivedfrom Brussels-Charleroi airport amount to illegal subsidies. A decision is not expected
until September 2003, but O’Leary says he’s “confident Ryanair will be vindicated.” 8
Power of substitutes (increased)
At the same time, the power of substitutes for Ryanair’s services has increased since it
competes for cost-conscious leisure travelers. The buyers’ power is as low as before the
deregulation and Ryanair’s entry.
7 Gimeno, Javier et al; European Airline Industry: Ryanair in 2003, INSEAD, 2003, p.128 Kerry Capell; Ryanair rising, Business Week, June 2, 2003, p.20
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 21/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 21
Analysis
We’re looking at a family that got into the airline business mainly because they had some
cash and experience through their earlier career with a flag-carrier airline. While they
attempted to capture a share of the market through lower prices, they had no competitiveadvantage over incumbents that could help them sustain in a price war. They faced fierce,
almost predatory, competition from the incumbents early on, and burned a lot of the Ryan
family money for years, trying to survive against the big players. This is a fascinating
success story highlighting flexibility, discovery/learning driven planning and
determination.
Choosing Firm Boundaries
Ryanair’s “innovation” can be described as the discovery of the extremely high demand
elasticity of the European leisure traveler at price levels comparable to other means of
transportation, and close scrutiny of each element in the traditional airline cost structure
to attain that level. Although it seems they set out with the goal of direct competition with
rail and ferry transportation, they went through a few phases in perfecting their business
model. In the process they gradually realized that the available market was much greater
than what they originally envisioned and adjusted their “firm boundaries” accordingly.
The 1991 cash crisis proved to be a key turning point for Ryanair. In desperation,
O’Leary was appointed deputy CEO and the third phase began: Radical cost cutting and
drastic price reduction on existing routes followed by expansion into continental Europe.
The new price levels managed to hit the sweet spot of the demand curve, volumes
exploded and the company returned to profitability. Ryanair had completed its
transformation from a niche airline serving the poor Irish immigrants to mainstream
super-low-cost European carrier targeting mostly the leisure traveler.
In retrospect, back in 1985 launching into a business that they ended up evolving to
would have posed several risks. However, they managed to spread these risks over time
and plan according to their learnings and discoveries.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 22/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 22
Interdependence risks
- Scope and timeframe of airline deregulation.
- Secondary airports. Will they be able to reliably handle additional traffic? Do they
have the necessary infrastructure to support higher passenger volumes?
- Internet availability. Although Internet was not even in the radar screen in 1985, some
for of low-cost booking mechanism needed to become available to be able to bypass
costly travel agents. Even the “call center” concept was new in Europe.
- Aircraft technology. Emergence of an “industry standard” aircraft. Improvements in
aircraft reliability, maintenance requirements and fuel economy to support low-cost.
- Development of IT technologies to enable better capacity utilization and scheduling.
Integration risks
- Customer awareness. Realization of affordable new means of transportation, air vs.
rail/ferry/car.
- Customer education. Learning to plan and book their own flights through call centers
and/or Internet.
- Existence/development of complementary forms of transportation to/from remote
airports to points of general interest.
Most of these risks have been largely eliminated today, although there is still potential for
increasing passenger volumes as cheaper complementary transportation becomes
available to/from remote airports.
Appropriability
We have mentioned above several key ingredients to maintaining cost leadership. Each
one of these factors in isolation is easy to replicate, however in order to create overall
value and be competitive one has to replicate the entire package which requires strong
corporate culture. This cultural aspect is what makes imitation so difficult and is also one
of the main reasons why many new entrants have failed.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 23/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 23
Complementary assets
Key complementary assets are 1) secondary airports, 2) ground handling and 3) aircraft
maintenance, all of which have been outsourced. These are also assets that are freely
available. Secondary airports to a certain degree are the potential scarce resources,
however current projected levels of passenger traffic to secondary airports and the
potential to second source suggests that they are unlikely to gain much bargaining power.
Launching across Europe - Crossing the Chasm umm.. Channel
Once they had perfected the art of operating a low-cost airline, after 6 years of continuous
profit, Ryanair launched their first route to continental Europe in 1997. They were
targeting the larger market of British and Irish tourists looking for sunnier skies in other
parts of Europe. They also launched a route to Sweden that let them capture shortvacationers shuttling across large cities. Throughout their growth they stubbornly stuck to
the elements of their strategy that helped them keep their costs low.
Although the move to expand into continental Europe was a risky one, and targeted a
slightly different customer segment than their “adoption drivers,” they did not change
their business model significantly, nor did they abandon their original customer base. In
that sense the move was merely and application of the internal competence they
developed over the years to a larger market rather than a strategic shift in their business
model to enable explosive growth.
Managing Growth
Key enablers of Ryanair’s business model are high degree of standardization, and point-
to-point operation coupled with obsessive scrutiny of operating costs. These factors, for
the time being, seem like competitive advantages that the traditional carriers are not
likely to be able to replicate. They have to deal with two major sources of variation whichturn out to be significant cost drivers, and which they simply cannot eliminate without
radically changing their business models.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 24/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 24
Limitations to standardization
Because of the much larger variation in the geographies, distances and passenger
volumes they serve, traditional airlines are limited in the degree to which they can
standardize their fleets. This imposes all the additional cost of qualifying, purchasing,
maintaining, training resources required for a heterogeneous fleet.
Limitations to scheduling
Hub-and-spoke structure inherently introduces bottlenecks at the hubs both in space and
time. Even if very large airports are chosen or built to serve as hubs to avoid spatial
constraints, external effects such as weather will always cause variation in arrival and
departure times. This is a direct consequence of the hub-and-spoke structure and small
variances in arrival times lead to ripple effects that could explode. Cost of trying tocontrol such variations and dealing with consequences once they do happen is an
additional burden that the traditional airlines must carry. Once again, their large network
of destinations they must serve precludes them from adopting a point-to-point structure.
The low cost carriers’ proposition of a point-to-point service excludes the costs of
connectivity. With a fast growing industry and a diminishing supply of pilots (decreasing
air forces) the utilization of the pilots is becoming more and more crucial. Thanks to their
high turnaround time, made possible not only because of operational excellence but also
by the fact that there are no connections to match, the low cost carriers have up 50%
higher utilization of their crews than the traditional carriers. The variability is directly
transferred back to the customer, by not compensating for delays.
There are also limitations to the no-frills and point-to-point service that Ryanair faces.
Long-haul effects
As flight distance increases the competitive advantage that low cost airline begin to erode
for three reasons. First, traveler’s willingness to trade off convenience for lower costs
will be lower. People are less willing to fly without food and in a crammed seat on longer
routes (e.g. London – New York). Second, as the distance increases, direct variable costs
such as fuel, pilot time etc. make up a bigger portion of the total cost leaving less room to
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 25/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 25
play with, in percentage basis, by cutting back on frills. And finally, it is much harder to
maintain a point-to-point network on a large scale without making connections. Low-cost
airlines would incur the additional costs if they tried to provide connections in addition to
having to solve the issue of transporting between remote and major airports.
We believe that the biggest threats to Ryanair and other low-cost airlines are
- Consolidation and repartitioning of routes among the major carriers to reduce excess
capacity. By trimming excess capacity and avoiding direct competition, traditional
airlines may be able to bring their prices to levels that are on the same “indifference
curve” as those of the customers served by low-cost airlines, i.e. those same
customers may be willing to pay some premium for better service and convenience.
- Gradual adoption of key low-cost practices by traditional airlines.- Adoption of better costing mechanism by traditional airlines to reflect costs related to
connection handling and associated scheduling risks. As mentioned above, scheduling
restrictions and assumed risks associated with providing connections constitute a
large cost inherent in the hub-and-spoke structure which is currently mostly allocated
evenly across all operations. Traditional airlines may move to relax their scheduling
at the expense of longer layovers, offer more point-to-point-like service in local
geographies and charge passenger separately for routes that require connections. Even
then they would have an advantage over low-cost carriers since they often do not
serve those routes, and they service secondary airports which offer no connections.
- Saturation of availability of high-volume point-to-point routes. Few low-cost airlines
were able to identify and move in to “low-hanging-fruit” type potentially high-
volume point-to-point routes. However, as the number of low-cost airlines and their
networks grow it will become increasingly hard to find routes that will “break even in
3 hours”, which has been one of Ryanair’s own success criteria for a new route.
For all of these reasons, we believe, Ryanair’s business model seems sustainable for the
time being, however not scalable to a size much larger than that of today’s, at least until
advances in aircraft technology makes it feasible and economical to serve point-to-point
networks across the globe.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 26/27
High-Tech Entrepreneurship & Strategy – Budget Airlines / Ryanair 26
Future Landscape of the Airline Industry
Is consolidation inevitable? Will there be a few major traditional airlines, remnants of
flag-carriers, confined to long-distance transcontinental routes, abandoning local point-to-
point service to low-cost carriers? They fly the “hubs,” low-costs service the spokes? But
then how difficult is it for the low-cost carriers to take over the large network? Is this a
Western Union story all over?
Consolidation does seem necessary if not inevitable. And, full-service airlines may very
well find themselves pushed out of the local leisure travel segment and into longer
distance and business segment. However, we don’t believe that the Western Union
analogy applies here, since the key advantages that the low-cost airlines have require
their “local networks” to be disjoint from those of the major airlines. Instead, we believe
a new – third – segment is being created in addition to the traditional full-service business
travel and charter operations.
8/12/2019 Bud He t Airlines
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bud-he-t-airlines 27/27
References1 Air Transport Action Group, “Fast facts”, www.atag.org2 Best practice Best strategy, McKinsey Quarterly 2, 20003 Doganis, Rigas: The Airline business in the twenty-first century, Routledge 20014 “Frequent-flyer economics”, Economist , May 2, 2002. “Fly me to the moon”, The Economist, May 2,2002.5 Gimeno, Javier et al; European Airline Industry: Ryanair in 2003, INSEAD, 20036 “Hyped hopes for Europe’s low-cost airlines”, McKinsey Quarterly 4, 20027 Kerry Capell; Ryanair rising, Business Week, June 2, 20038 Rivkin, Jan: Dogfight over Europe: Ryanair (A), Harvard Business School, 20009 Rivkin, Jan: Dogfight over Europe: Ryanair (B), Harvard Business School, 200010 Rivkin, Jan: Dogfight over Europe: Ryanair (C), Harvard Business School, 200011 Seristö, Hannu: Airline performance and costs:an analysis of performance measurement and costreduction in major airlines, Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration, 1995