Independence air was a low cost air line

Independence air was a low cost air line that was owned by FLYi, Inc who had their headquarters in Virginia. Independence air operated from the year 1989 and it’s stopped its operations in 2006. Independence air mainly focused on the East Coast and the West coast.

The route network of independence air was based in Washington Dulles international airport. Unfortunately the company ceased its operation on January 5th 2006 at 8:24 p.m.

The company (independence air) had been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy from 7th 2005 there were some discussion that was taking place, which people thought would have saved Independence air but that did not happen.

Explanation of Independence Air business plan

Atlantic Coast Airlines is the predecessor of Independence air line. The independence air line company started has Atlantic Coast Airlines in 15th December 1989. It (Atlantic Coast Airline) was operating a feeder services as United Express for Delta Connection and United Air lines.

United with drew from contract after disagreement with Atlantic Coast. This forced Atlantic company to reinvent itself to a low cost independence air. The main objective of independence airline was to come with an air carrier with bargain base, off beat and a friendly service (Sharkey 2006)

The 4 Ps for the independence airliner is: For their Promotion – independence airliner carried out intensive promotion even before it was launched. On 20th May 2004, before they inaugurated their first flight, they signed a three year deal with Washington Redskins; the company was to become the official sponsor of Washington Redskins.

This was a marketing strategy for independence. In the summer of the year 2005 independence air line offered College students a Glide Summer travel pass.

After paying two hundred and fifty US dollars Customers were to fly free (after paying airport fees and taxes) from May 1st to August 31st on Saturdays, Wednesdays and Tuesday. This was not geared towards getting any revenue, it was purely meant to have customers fill in the empty seats.

The company also invested on a fleet of twenty promotional vehicles, which they dubbed “Jet trucks”. They modified pick ups trucks and painted them in airline’s livery and on the trucks bed they attached an aircraft tail.

The company also had some humorous touches which it added to flying experience like the company replaced the flight attendant safety announcement  with a version of celebrities such  Mary Matalin and James Carville which had earlier on been pre recorded.

On their Pricing, the company opted for a lower price as compared to their competitors, this was mainly meant to attract customers. They finally succeeded in attracting more customers, such that at their peak they were operating 600 flights on a daily basis.

Their pricing strategy was one of the factors that some scholars argued that failed, because whenever the price of fuel roused, they didn’t adjust their prices. When it comes to Place, Independence air mainly focused on the East Coast and the West coast. The route network of independence air was based in Washington Dulles international airport.

The company had many diverse Products in terms of the type of airplane that they were operating. Independence airline operated the following airplanes CRJ200, Bombardier, British aerospace jet stream 4100 turbo prop and several air buses.  (Williamson 2006 pp 19 -26).

Independence air line had many strengths and weaknesses.  Some of its weakness was: the company was faced with a lot of competition from its competitors who were charging a higher price for their ticket as compared to Independence airline examples of some of their competitors were United air line. The second weakness is that the company failed to undertake a more intensive promotion; this made them to loose some of their customers to united airline.

Lastly some critics also point out that the management of independent airline was also not effective. Some of its strength were the  company had a lot of capital that they invested,  the company had a sales and marketing team that was creative lastly lowering the prices of their services was also a strength to them because it made them to attract more customers.

While carrying out their Environmental and market assessment the company carried extensive studies on some of the companies that they thought will be their competitors.

These gave them an idea on how the market is and how they were going to enter into the market. Independence air line believed that it could easily prosper on its own because of the strategy that they were going to use to enter the market. They were confident that by reducing the prices of their services they will be able to attract more customers (French 2004)