ABSTRACT
European railway companies are confronted with first entries into their formerly protected monopoly markets of long distance passenger travel, requiring them to adapt their competitive strategies – a situation the European airline industry has been confronted with several years before. In order to arrive at viable strategy recommendations for railways we compare post-regulation airline and railway market and product characteristics. We argue that the airlines reacted primarily by two major measures: the reconfiguration of their route networks and an increased application of cooperative strategies. Although an analysis of the underlying industry conditions shows that these strategy components are not easily transferred to the railway sector, some selected elements of these concepts promise to contribute to a more competitive positioning of the former railway monopolists.
