Best Jobs in Airline Management

As companies that fly people from place to place, airlines are most often associated with aircraft. This means, of course, that the most visible jobs at airlines are pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and ramp agents.

These roles are crucial to airlines and other aviation firms, who rely on their flight operations to stay in business. However, equally as important are the backdoor office jobs that ensure flights keep running smoothly. Airline management plays a number of critical roles in continuing growth over time.

Financial Planning

Airline margins are notorious for being razor-thin. The number one determinant for which airline a passenger chooses to fly is price, so companies need to keep costs as low as possible with just the right amount of upsell to ensure they can make money without losing ground to competitors. Knowing how to balance all the fiscal intricacies of an airline is an incredibly detailed, important job.

Financial planners are critical to airlines’ success because they have a keen eye for financial trends and predictions over the long term. They take a holistic view of a company’s fiscal health and consider a number of factors to determine how to best move forward. Being able to recognize themes and patterns makes adjusting to future possibilities easier, allowing airlines to ensure long-term stability.

Airlines hold quarterly calls to disclose their financial performance to shareholders and the public. Financial planners work diligently to prepare and perfect these reports, and they provide critical financial background information to other management personnel who are planning strategy updates based on the published results.

Financial planners prepare for airlines’ future to ensure their viability and success. Many airlines to date have failed due to poor financial decisions, and the biggest and best today are those whose financial planners ensure a steady, strong foundation for success.

Pricing and Revenue Management

Pricing flights is a fascinating subset of financial planning. Instead of looking at a complete fiscal picture, the pricing and revenue management department considers how much to charge passengers for flights.

A number of factors must be considered when determining how much to charge for a flight. Besides competition, airlines consider things like the day of the week a flight departs on, the departure’s time of day, how long a trip takes, how far in advance a ticket is booked, and more.

Broadly speaking, airline prices are broken down into a number of fare classes considering an array of factors. These fare classes tend to have notable trends based on flight bookings. For example, a flight will be bumped into a higher (more expensive) fare class when either a certain number of people book a ticket or when a flight comes within a certain time of departure. This means that two people sitting next to each other may have paid significantly different amounts for a flight depending on when they booked their ticket.

Again, airline financials are detailed and intricate, and determining how to price a flight is no exception. Pricing analysts decide how to set the price and fare classes for a given flight in order to maximize the revenue from each leg flown.

Crew Scheduling

Multiple crew scheduling debacles at multiple airlines over the last few years highlight the importance of seamless, efficient planning. Airlines need crews in the right place at the right time to keep flights running smoothly, and crews need to be able to move from one base to another (or from a base to an outstation) at a moment’s notice to pick up an airplane or sub for another crew.

Crew schedulers ensure that each flight can be fully staffed and ready for departure on time. They are in constant contact with line holders and reserve crew to keep track of where they are, and they must adjust quickly during cancellations, delays, and other irregular operations to ensure full, timely recovery to normal flight operations.

Pilot prepares aircraft for departure (Photo: Shutterstock)

Many airlines have made significant updates to their crew scheduling system over the years. Airlines have gone from paper time cards, consistent phone calls, and hand-to-hand turnovers to mobile apps that update instantly. Regardless of the expansion of technology, human crew schedulers are still essential to overseeing operations and responding to irregularities in the system.

Network Planning

The most important things airlines do is fly. An essential part of doing so is identifying which routes have the highest revenue potential long-term. Airlines must consider items such as passenger demand, aircraft availability, and important events or seasonal occurrences that impact demand.

The most successful airlines are often those that can corner niche routes and segments before their competitors. This can attract a specific, loyal customer base before other companies can, thereby setting a strong base for future continued growth.

Route planners use data from a wide variety of sources to identify which city pairs have the greatest untapped potential. They incorporate data such as the balance of leisure and business travel on each segment to identify not only which routes have the most demand but also which routes fit best into the entire network and fleet structure.

There are a wide array of management jobs available to those interested in non-crew aviation careers. Working in airline management can be incredibly rewarding and lucrative, without requiring the employee to be away from home for days or weeks at a time. Rather, they allow people the chance to work in the industry and pursue their passions in what some may consider a more stable, predictable lifestyle.

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John McDermott

John McDermott is a commercial pilot pursuing a career in professional flight. His passion for aviation began in an Ann Arbor bookstore with a tale of enemy pilots during World War 2, and he hasn't looked back. Besides flying and writing for AirlineGeeks, John volunteers with Professional Pilots of Tomorrow and travels whenever he gets the chance.

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