Historia De Dos Lineas Aereas En La Era De La Información

Airlines are one of the most competitive industries in the service market. For that reason there’s no chance for failing in the quality of the service provided, each mistake could mean a customer loss in behalf to the competitors.

This case describes an incident related with passenger’s services, personnel training and schedule coordination due to the inadequate use of the information technology tools, generating many complications with the traveler’s itineraries and the airline operations.

Professor McPherson reminded how back in the mid 80’s he traveled with a London-based airline, which provided him with an outstanding service through the whole journey, since that time he became a loyal customer of this airline for almost a decade.

By the mid 90’s Professor McPherson purchased a full fare thicket on his preferred airline, the one he trust, to travel to London and Frankfurt, because of his Gold member status, first class ticket and past experience on this airline he expect a high class service. Hence, even with the flight delay and the bad weather conditions he thought that the airline was prepared to handle his itinerary and get him to the destination on time.

The passenger was not worried, because hi was conscious of all the technological advances, development of information technology and global communication out there, and how they had change the way people and companies do its work, improving their services and being more efficient in all areas. McPherson assumed that the airline had evolved at the same peace as IT, but this assumption was wrong; the airline was not prepared and he missed his connection flight.

Some of the things in what the London airline failed were:

1. They did not have an efficient system that alert them about which passengers are taking connecting flights, the time left to make the connection, when necessary provide assistance to passengers with tight connections so they can get to the gate on time.

2. A contingency plan in such cases, like having all the possible flights available to take the traveler to their destination.

3. The airline did not have dedicated personnel to take care of the First class/gold member passengers, who paid very expensive tickets and most of the time are business travelers.

4. Lack of coordination between gate agents and aircrafts.

The Atlanta-based airline strategy makes the difference as compared with the London-based airline. The first one saw an opportunity coming with the network era and start finding ways to differentiate its offerings from the other airlines.

Furthermore, they assemble the resources and build the capabilities needed to achieve their goals, such as inter-organization information systems, global interconnectivity, real

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