Cheap airline services Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Cheap airline services - Essay Example Cheap airline services generally imply long haul carriers that offer cheaper terms of travel as compared to the average conventional flights. The basic approach has often involved the elimination of certain luxuries, comforts, and services normally associated with luxury airlines. Other approaches involve the introduction of complex methods of determining the cost of travel (Bisignani, 2006, p 45). Some of the problematic issues that attend to the introduction of the cheap airline services involve claims of hidden charges, concerns over the levels of safety and matters of comfort for these airline services. Further, in the liberalized market economy, a flight that is regarded as budget within one region may qualify as expensive in another. This is because there are no structural universal regulatory mechanisms in the global airline business, which could be relied upon for an objective and all-inclusive interpretation of the essential meaning of cheap airline services. Introduction The desire to make airline services affordable and accessible continues to attract various approaches and strategies among different companies spread in different countries across different periods. Studies show that the emergent of the low cost carriers from the mid-1990s led to significant changes in the airline industry particularly within the United States and Europe (Chandler, 2002, p. 4). The idea of cheap airline services often implies a wide range of meanings within different contexts. Although the general idea of offering cheap airline services has some universal connotations, the various strategies employed towards this objective illustrate a highly localized application of the same in terms of the strategies, methods., and the relative levels of success for companies that have attempted to engage in this kind of business (McCartney, 11). Some of the common characteristics of cheap airline services include reduced fare, point-to-point airline services, lack of seat assignme nt, secondary airports flights, lack of free meals or drinks, higher flights frequency, and short flights. These characteristics are usually conducted in various ways depending on the airline’s chosen operational strategy. The terms â€Å"cheap airline services† is often used interchangeably with various other terms that carry the same meaning. Other attendant synonyms include low-cost carriers, budget carriers, no-frills, cheap flights, and discount flights (Flouris & Walker, 2005). Regardless of the different adjectives, the baseline often implies the provision of airline services that cost significantly lower than the average carrier. Generally, cheap airline services are usually conducted in ways that show high levels of efficiency in terms of time and costs. The increased levels of efficiency are important to substitute on some of the areas affected by reduced fares. On this score, it becomes necessary to consider the fact that some of the issues explored in this study are basically aimed at exploring the kind of structures that underpin matters of strategy and revenue with regard to the low cost carriers. Literature Review Multiple studies have attempted to explore the manner in which the low-cost carriers have affected the global airline industry. Academic inquiries have attempted to explore the different kinds of strategies employed by companies that entered the budget airline sector. Studies show that various strategies have been followed by a mixture of results by different countries and across different times (Mentzer, 2000, p. 34). Generally, the literature shows that