Thesis (Ph. D.)--European Business School, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-249).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1983. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 175-193).

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M.BIE)--Unitec New Zealand, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 165-173).

With a dramatic decrease in oil prices over the past few years, the opportunity for increased profitability within transportation companies has become a relevant topic of discussion. Oil is a commodity that influences the price of gas and jet fuel. As commodity prices, and oil prices in particular, have collapsed, one would expect transportation companies to benefit from a decrease in operating expenses and experience an increase in profitability. Through this thesis, I seek to prove that despite a dramatic decline in the price of oil, airline companies have not benefited due to their engagement in hedging activities, and therefore have not experienced an increase in profitability. My dataset includes a collection of operating expenses and operating profit for the four major domestic airline companies over the past seven years. These companies include Southwest, Delta, United, and American Airlines. I tested my hypothesis through regression analysis, and used fuel derivative gains or losses as the independent variable and operating profit as the dependent variable. Although my results are not significant, my analysis indicates that operating profit has, in fact, decreased through this recent period of declining oil prices, due to an increase in operating expenses through airline companies’ hedging activities.

In many ways, the foodservice industry is barely at the beginning of its own "Industrial Revolution." The Industrial Revolution of 150 years ago was basically a transfer of skills from the hands of craftsmen to machines. The foodservice industry is today transferring skills from the hands of skilled craftsmen, the chefs, to the machines of the bulk processors. With unarguable certainty, the saucier is being replaced by pre-processed fresh and frozen vegetables, the chef is being replaced by fully prepared entrees, the waiter is being replaced by the waitress, the waitress by the cafeteria or fast food counter aide, the server by the vending machine, the executive chef by the food production manager. As the volume of public feeding increases every day, the need for new technologies in foodservice management becomes increasingly urgent. Men are being replaced by machines for the first time in the history of our industry. "Mass production" is a term which came into widespread usage in the early 1900s, and derived largely from America. There has never been a precise, widely adopted definition of the term, yet for most people mass production means the manufacture of products in large quantities by means of purpose-designed manufacturing facilities. Mass production has been adopted as a generic rather than a specific term. In the interests of clarity and simplicity we shall refer to this aspect of mass production as quantity production.

The paper presents a partial ethnography from the work setting of commercial jet aircraft. Data was collected through participant observation in the work role of stewardess, mostly on prestige overseas flights. The flight is therefore the unit of study and has been treated as a social occasion for sociological analysis. Post flight diaries were written up, additional data came from other airline sources, i.e. manuals of procedures, etc. The perspective is directed from the cabin crew as a performance team. The analysis is based on the everyday activities routinely performed as orderly events commonsensically produced by the persons located in the setting. The everyday work day's distinctive features i.e. crew impermanency, flight time and space pressures, excessively long on-duty periods, temporal marginality of duty periods, and stress norms, are described as a base from which to discuss team performances. The requirement to set up work units very quickly, crew impermanence and team performances are positively correlated to the need for members to know something about each other. Status dimensions and job specific preferred characteristics are therefore a relevant part of each person's floating biography which is occupationally positively functional as a base from which coworker selection is made. A setting orientation to ethnicity is an outcome of the presence of representatives from many cultural groups in the passenger population. Competency in the enactment of everyday activities is problematic and communication/interaction difficulties arise as a result. The lack of organizational structures to provide relevant kinds of information on passenger populations (relevant as defined by the members of the cabin crew) necessitates that they form cognitive visual maps of the setting and participants. It is suggested that this is typical to other occupations and settings. Other demographically related problems are discussed. Space and flight time pressures as related to territoriality, conflict behaviour and coercive practices used by the crew to maintain the social order are analyzed in terms of regions. An outcome of a lack of physical barriers is the socially constructed barriers of access to regions. Standardized patterns of work organization and social relationships are used to effect their fluctuating definitions. (They are mapped for visual reference.) Processes of personalization of participants is presented; contrastively, impersonalized service relationships are perceived to be an organizational work requirement, and are socially created by distinctive communication patterns for the purposes of getting the job done prior landing. Lastly, a flight is analyzed as a 'safe but dangerous' fateful event, organizationally constructed, and dramatized by the cabin crew. Ritual observance of passage of the take-off and landing stages of the occasion are imposed on all participants. Two products of safety management are the policing practices and gallows humor flight attendants are habituated to perceive as an everyday routine part of their job situation. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to determine whether the level of passenger fares effective on the North Atlantic routes bears close relationship to the cost of operating these routes; and, second, to test a hypothesis that rate making under the International Air Transport Association regulations on the North Atlantic results in a passenger fare/ cost spread in excess of that existing in the Canadian transcontinental commercial air service. While these objectives are intended to reflect general relationships which have existed for some time in both of these markets, only recent statistics are employed to exemplify them. The 1966 data are used throughout the study supplemented by 1965 and 1967 information where deemed necessary. The assumption is made that the aircraft operating costs, or direct costs, incurred in airline operations on the North Atlantic in 1966 were similar to those experienced in providing the Canadian transcontinental service as the aircraft used (DC-8 category) and the average stage length of the routes were similar in both markets. However, as demonstrated through the study, there are differences in the regulatory and economic conditions between the two markets which might have influenced development of these markets, resulting in different application of pricing principles in each. The cost and performance data for selected types of turbo-jet and turbo-fan powered aircraft operated by U.S. carriers on International/ Territorial routes in 1966 are tabulated and analyzed by individual cost category. The analysis progresses from general grouping to specific types of DC-8 equipment and to cost analysis of Pan American World Airways Inc. flying DC-8 aircraft on Atlantic routes in that year. A comparative analysis is first performed on statistics relating U.S. international and Canadian North Atlantic cost experience in 1966. The second part is concerned with comparison of cost levels between Canadian North Atlantic and transcontinental services. In the final phase, various cost concepts are introduced and the available data grouped according to criteria of direct and indirect costs, out-of-pocket and fully allocated cost categories. The fully allocated costs of the North Atlantic and transcontinental Canadian services are compared with passenger fares effective in each market in 1966. It is concluded that the level of passenger fares effective on the North Atlantic routes in 1966 bore very little relationship to the cost of airline operations in that market in the same year. An example presented in the thesis indicates that one-way economy passenger fare between Montreal and London was set at 140 per cent of fully allocated cost of operating this route, at the average load factor of 60.3 per cent. The cost/fare spread in the North Atlantic services, at 40 per cent over fully allocated cost of operation, is much higher than that experienced in the Canadian transcontinental service, at 15 per cent over fully allocated cost. While the conclusions might be valid for other IATA carriers operating on the North Atlantic, it must be borne in mind that only Canadian and U.S. carriers’ cost and performance data were analyzed in the thesis. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

Diploma thesis "Strategic alliances of airline companies" contains global alliances. The accent is put on Czech Airlines and their joining of alliance SkyTeam. The thesis is divided into for parts containing characteristics of strategic alliances, actual alliance groupment and examination of the entrance of Czech Airlines into SkyTeam.