E Commerce. Impact of Internet for the airline industry.

Executive Summary Aviation and air services industry is a large, competitive, and challenging industry, characterized by high capital and labor requirement, together with customer participation during transactions hence service fulfillment. Providing great reach and the potential for rich interaction, the internet is a natural medium for travel transactions. Airlines are turning to e-commerce to keep business flying, and the reason they are focusing on selling tickets through their Web sites is that it is the cheapest distribution channel. From the customers perspectives, Internet have revolution the way of buying flight ickiest.

Customers can now purchase their tickets directly from the airlines via the Internet using intermediaries and/or subsidiaries in order to find the possible cheapest ticket. Moreover, online discount travel services, such as Principle and Hotelier, allow airlines to dump excess inventory. They can use these channels, along with their own online specials, to drive traffic to less-popular routes, such as flights with inconvenient connections. Airlines are also using electronic channels to keep business travelers informed of potential delays and schedule changes.

Furthermore, Industry players use different technologies to differentiate their services to customers, to create customer loyalty, and serve them faster and in more convenient ways than their competitors do. Therefore, flight companies have developed some tools to communicate with their customers as in-flight broadband service and new mobile service, Air Flight industry is moving into an environment characterized by an abundance of information – the new source of airfare information is the Internet, especially the WWW.

Therefore any player in this industry needs to produce informative materials n digital form, which can be disseminated using the new information technologies. 1. 0 Introduction Few inventions have changed how people live and experience the world as deeply as the invention of the airplane. Until now, the airline industry has progressed to the position where it would be hard to think of life without air travel. It has shortened travel time and altered the concept of distance, making possible for people to visit and conduct business in places once considered remote.