ABSTRACT
This chapter presents four scenarios for the airline industry to maintain strategic early warning systems, confront management's assumptions, and provides management with an opportunity to test the robustness of its corporate strategies, and enable management to understand and respond faster and more effectively to dramatically changing environments. The Information Technology suppliers ensured that the systems worked flawlessly, providing credibility to the connectivity aspects promised by the new paradigm airlines. The new paradigm airlines are significant players in small, medium, and long haul domestic and regional markets. A few legacy carriers in each global region demonstrated that it was possible to transform themselves into lower cost, lower fare, and customer focused airlines. Legacy carriers knew from market research that a large percentage of their passengers were becoming price sensitive. The homogenous aircraft approach for increasingly different market segments left network carriers with shrinking yields and unprofitable routes.
