Survey results from airlines that use revenue management software systems

To our knowledge, even though vendors have been successfully selling revenue management (RM) software systems to major airlines and smaller carriers for more than 20 years, no one has ever surveyed the airlines to assess their satisfaction with the current systems. After years of consulting with many of these air carriers, the author felt that it would be helpful to the airline industry (and maybe the vendors) to do such a survey. We had a 66 per cent response rate, representing carriers with a wide variety in annual revenues (big, medium and small carriers) and a wide variety in the region of the world where they are headquartered. The results indicate that: (1) Six different RM vendors were chosen by the airlines who responded. (2) The mean length-of-use for these RM systems was 8.2 years. (3) More than 97 per cent of their flights were being processed by the RM system. (4) User analysts actively managed about 63 per cent of the flights. (5) Overall satisfaction with the vendors was 3.49 (mode was 4) on a scale of 1 (very unsatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied). (6) Satisfaction with training provided by vendors was 3.31 (mode was 2). (7) Satisfaction with technical support by vendors was 3.34 (mode was 3). (8) Satisfaction with user friendliness of graphical interfaces was 3.32 (mode was 3). (9) 27 per cent of carriers had changed vendors over the years. (10) More than 50 per cent of the airlines had purchased separate group modules, about 1/3 had purchased network modules and pricing support systems and approximately 1/5 had purchased a 'low fare' module. Additional, in-depth statistical analysis and summarised answers to open-ended questions on the RM systems' strengths and weaknesses are also presented.