Airline Management, Strategies for the 21st Century

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Summary: Strategies for the 21st century?
Review: In this book you will find NO answers to questions like "How the airline business and the aviation markets of this century will look like". Instead of future aspects and ideas you can read all about the very basics in airline economics. But that's not enough. Most of the facts and figures are from the mid 90's. Poor! Bottom line: The title doesn't match with the content at all!

Rating:
Summary: A Must For Any Aviation Professional!
Review: This book went into great detail regarding the economics, finance, and other managerial perspectives of the airline industry. Included were several helpful tables, graphs and statistics. This book complemented an airline operations course I recently completed at college, within an aviation management program. This book serves as a great reference and will not collect dust on my shelf! Dempsey exhibits remarkable expertise throughout the chapters in this book. Anyone planning on going into any kind of aviation career should read this to remain knowledgeable of current situations within the airline industry. Overall, this has been the best aviation textbook I've read throughout my undergraduate training.

Rating:
Summary: A commendable introduction to the airline industry
Review: This is the first academic book on the airline industry that I read and I still consider it the most readable one. However, as other reviewers have correctly pointed out, the book's title is blatantly misleading: This is by no means a manual delineating airline strategies for the 21st century but rather a thorough introduction to the airline industry and to the U.S. airline industry in particular. Apart from the odd subtitle, though, the book does live up to the expectations by brilliantly explaining the basics of airline management, and some chapters - especially the ones on airline economics, planning and price - are written so well and are so easy to understand that I would like to recommend Mr Dempsey and Mr Gesell's work to any student aiming to make himself familiar with the peculiarities of the airline industry.

Still, there are two minor omissions in this book that deserve to be noted. Firstly, the book having been published in 1997 only scarce mention is being made of the internet's role as a competitive tool used to enhance direct distribution within the industry; considering that nowadays more and more airlines are relying on internet technology in order to contain their operating costs, this is a point that truly needs to be updated. Secondly - and as has already been pointed out - the book's industry analysis focusses on the situation in the U.S., thus for the most part leaving aside the European and Asian markets where the airline industry tends to be heavily regulated and where the challenges airline managers are up against can be very different from the ones in the U.S.

All in all, however, this book offers a detailed and surprisingly readable introduction to the airline industry, and anybody who as yet has not read anything on the subject will not be disappointed in choosing the work by Mr Dempsey and Mr Gesell.