What are the key points to maintaining airline profitability & worker happiness?
 

I am curious as to what everyone knows / thinks are the key points to running a safe, profitable, happy airline or aircraft business in the commercial sector (I.e. not government funded air ambulances)

It seems that many airlines are in a race to the bottom for the cheapest possible ticket price. In many (most?) industries, rivals tend to find a happy medium and avoid starting price wars with their rivals because it ends up hurting both companies. They set prices which the market will bear and avoid discounting needlessly. This does not seem to be the case in large passenger operations.

How do successful, happy airlines do that keeps regular profits rolling in without pissing off their staff? Are there some specific sub-industries that bring in a lot more profit than others? What are they and why are they successful?

ask Herb Kelleher...he's one of the very few that pulled it off...

paradoxbox
 

"rivals tend to find a happy medium and avoid starting price wars with their rivals because it ends up hurting both companies" ...
... summarises the situation in the 1970s and 80s when fares were fixed and could be read in the back pages of the ABC.

Deregulation allowed the carriers that knew how to cut costs to go about their business unheeded. I don't think EasyJet spends too much time worrying about the future of Alitalia, nor should it.

I can now fly shorthaul for a fifth of what I paid 30 years ago. The efficient Low Cost Carriers have fleet sizes (and crew numbers) unheard of when deregulation was launched.

Are the employees of successful companies happy? I don't know but they're probably relieved that they were not laid off by a failed High Cost Carrier.

The safe, profitable and happy airline. There were a few in their fledgling days but none remain on my current list that tick all the three boxes.
Whilst safety is the most important it is also the easiest of the three conditions that can practically be dealt with.
Profit/gain is the sole motive for business. A commercial air carrier`s objects are not charitable, their`s are to make a profit and make a return to their investors. How are then happy with their returns.
Happiness for the fare paying passengers is largely governed by the lowest fare and a limitless supply of free booze and upgrades to the best seats in the cabin.
Happiness to the managers and the work force is ever increasing bonuses and wages, limitless holidays and ever shorter working hours.
Given the considerable difficulties involved in such a balancing, juggling, tight-rope act, our scientific world has produced experts in the field of happiness. Such is the eminent Professor Richard Layard a Labour Peer and professor at LSE. Who after the publication of his book, Happiness: a New Science, earned the nick name the UK government`s " happiness tsar". At the age of 80+ he lives in a house covered in roses where a picture of the Dalai Lama, the patron of the Happiness Movement, hangs on the wall of his sitting room, so says the FT in their 2014 article.
Here is the link to the FT article:
https://www.ft.com/content/b1d0b140-...1-00144feabdc0

As far as I am concerned the learned prof`s theories on happiness are far beyond me. I prefer Ken Dodd`s version, his song "Happiness".

Roses, well they sort of wilt after a while don`t they.

Days off & Dollars...