No, no - that's not what I meant. AI's middle management does precisely the same job that middle management does at any other airline, whether it be LH, UA, SQ, or G8. Their strategy might be different, but there isn't an airline I know of which does yield management significantly differently from each other - they raise prices when they can sell tickets at a higher price, and they lower prices when they can'tI don't know if I agree with that. The staff at AI have been trained at their jobs, often very well. Revenue management has a very specific job - to maximize revenue. A pretty decent job of this can be done by applying what you read in a textbook - not much innovation or critical thinking required.



Oh, I agree. However, since they have lots of staff (who have presumably been trained at their job), I'd assume that they would actually be doing something... It would be political suicide for AI to shed staff. I wouldn't expect anything else from them. Do I think expanding to correct that ratio is a good idea? No. But the hands of AI's management are tied...

Yeah. This whole situation is really weird...

Well, I think that "pretty decent" job is not good enough in a highly global, competitive industry. And you can't seriously be telling me that you can learn how to run an airline (or even its pricing strategy department) by reading a freaking text book???? Are you shi**ing me? In my mind, you lost almost all your credibility with that one statement!!!!!

Seriously dude, you really need to learn to value experience and wisdom a lot more than you currently seem to do. Statements like airline management can be learnt from reading a textbook or that you can turn around AI if made CMD truly expose you as extremely naive and foolish.

You've got to be freaking sh!tt!ing me.

That right there is spoken like someone who has next to no real world professional experience in any industry, let alone aviation. Any professional worth his salt in any industry will tell you that what textbooks "teach" you pales in comparison to what you learn by doing. Besides, if you think there's not much innovation or critical thinking required in revenue management (or any middle management role in Aviation), then I'll respectfully suggest you stop blogging about the industry ASAP.

Ok, clearly you can't learn how to run an airline well from a textbook. My point was that the way yield management is done is very similar across different airlines...

I do value experience quite a bit. I didn't mean this statement in the way that you guys took it... And the CMD/AI statement was tongue in cheek...

There is innovation required to be good at any position - the only way to be successful is to be better than your competitors, and you obviously can't be better than your competitor if you are doing the same thing... There is a lot of innovation and critical thinking required in any industry, and aviation is an industry that is more complex than most...

I doubt that. Airlines with mainly O/D routes (like AI) will do yield management a lot differently than airlines that leverage the hub-spoke model to connect different parts of the globe via their superhubs (like EK) to airlines that do a mix of both (SQ, CX, BA)

No, we took it the way you wrote it, that a pretty good job of yield management can be done by reading a textbook.

Then why would you say there's "no innovation or critical thinking required"

Not really - Whether it is CX or EK, if the airline has a monopoly on the route, it is pretty much guaranteed to be more expensive than the connecting options. That's because people are willing to pay more for a more convenient nonstop option.

I wrote badly... I didn't actually mean it the way it sounds. My fault of course.

And they, in turn, manage yields very differently from those that have a significanty short-haul element to their hub-and-spoke network.

AF and LH, for example, have to come up with vastly different cost and revenue allocations than SQ and CX do, who, in turn, employ very different models from EK and VS.

Here's the strategy the three airlines need to adopt

Air India: Die immediately.

Kingfisher: Die. Or croak. Same end result.


Jet: (a) Solve your identity crisis, (b) work very, very hard indeed on training your staff to be competent in the basics and (c) do whatever it takes to plug the leak of premium passengers making a bee line towards the competition.

As they stand today, Jet are an airline within an airline around the same airline� ooh I want to be a bunny rabbit� alongside another airline that�s really the same airline, which used to be another airline but yearns to become some other airline but in reality they�re all the same airline.

They still expect that to actually work?

Well its not about being expensive, its about managing yield. And my point (which you didn't get) is that there's nothing similar about yield management across different airlines, and largely depends on what business models they have and the markets they are serving within that business model.

It is not about one route (DEL-ORD) where AI is expensive than other carriers. And, if it were about exploiting the monopoly (of being a direct flight) on a particular route, what gives when AI is expensive than Qatar, Etihad, Jet and Emirates on the MAA-JFK route for random dates in April, when each of them have a one stop flight between the two airports.

The next time I am in the USofA, I'd be happy to set up a meeting with AA rev management if you would be willing to come to DFW. They'll surely tell you how it is a nailbiting job to get the last penny in. Incidentally, this same guy did not know he was holding back my upgrades as an AA EXP, but he was just doing his job and we had a laugh about it.


On one hand you say the babus of AI are trained to do the job in the para above and they just need to do their job right and it will all fall in place, on the other hand you say it would be difficult for them to do the right thing make up your mind on what your point is.

I know that revenue management is a difficult and important job. It came out all wrong when I wrote it, and I've been regretting ever since. Yes, I agree with everything you guys have said.
AI's staff are trained to do the job, yes.
It is difficult, no - impossible, for Air India's management to shed staff, because the government won't let them kill jobs. So in that sense, they aren't able to do their job of bringing the airline to profitability.. However, that doesn't mean that they don't know what they should be doing...

Have you seen a definitive theme emerge over the last few days alone ?

Yes, actually. In a conversation with someone, I'll say something stupid/half-baked in a rush, often completely unrelated to the topic. They'll call me on it. My credibility goes out the window, because I just said something really stupid/half-baked...

I'm working on that - I'm going to focus on thinking before I write. When instead of rushing, I actually think things out, they usually sound much more intelligent coming out of my mouth

It's not purely about the statements being stupid or half-baked. It's about the basis of making those statements and the way they're presented.

Reading from some random document found on the Internet and combining that with fantasy is not a basis for anything anyone's going to buy, especially when others' experiences have been to the contrary and your experiences don't exist in a meaningful way. And then using that as the basis for presenting something as gospel truth, well....

Right. I'll keep that feedback in mind for future posts... Thank you