American Airlines and their International Business Practices

American Airlines and their International Business Practices

“American Airlines continue to add travel options for New York customers this winter. The world's largest airline launches seasonal nonstop service from John F. Kennedy International Airport to San Jose, Costa Rica, today. On Friday, American begins nonstop flights to Caracas, Venezuela, and on Saturday it adds nonstop flights to La Romana in the Dominican Republic as well as to Grand Cayman. "As American strives to be New Yorkers' airline of choice, we're working to provide customers with the services they value," said Tom Gleason, American's regional vice president-Eastern Division. "As winter settles into the northeast, people want to head south toward warmer weather. Even though we offer more flights to the Caribbean and Latin America than any other airline, we're going one step further by reducing the need to change planes to get to some of our most popular destinations.” (http://www.amrcorp.com/)

The management and the authorities of the American Airlines have also made attempts to become one of the renowned names in the airline industry and they have also achieved their desired status but still they are unable to gain competitive advantage as compared to the continental airlines (Donald, 2001, 10). The authority of our airlines strictly believes on the fact that the management of the business and its activities is very important because effective management of these activities will generate more and more profits and revenues with in an organization (Donald, 2001, 11). It has been noted that the personnel managers have failed to keep run the business activities effectively therefore; the organizations need to have proper and effective strategies. Without the use of proper strategies competitive advantage will not be gained by the organizations. The observations and analysis is an essential requirement to develop creative and competitive strategies (Donald, 2001, 12).

“A competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering consumers greater value, either by means of lower prices or by providing greater benefits and service that justifies higher prices (Donald, 2001, 13). Competitive Strategies Following on from his work analyzing the competitive forces in an industry, Michael Porter suggested four "generic" business strategies that could be adopted in order to gain competitive advantage. The four strategies relate to the extent to which the scope of a businesses' activities are narrow versus broad and the extent to which a business seeks to differentiate its products.” (http://www.tutor2u.net)

“Air travel remains a large and growing industry. It facilitates economic growth, world trade, international investment and tourism and is therefore central to the globalization-taking place in many other industries. In the past decade, air travel has grown by 7% per year. Travel for both business and leisure purposes grew strongly worldwide. Scheduled airlines carried 1.5 billion passengers last year (Donald, 2001, 14).

In the leisure market, the availability of large aircraft such as the Boeing 747 made it convenient and affordable for people to travel further to new and exotic destinations. Governments in developing countries realized the benefits of tourism ...