Dynamic competitor capacity monitoring in the airline industry: a business intelligence-enabled approach for enhancing commercial strategies

The aviation industry is a highly competitive industry, with airlines constantly adjusting their capacity in response to changes in demand and other market factors. To stay ahead of the competition, it is essential that airlines closely monitor their competitors’ capacity adjustments and respond appropriately. To meet this need, a pilot project was undertaken to create a tool developed in Power BI to monitor capacity adjustments, trends, and strategies of Air France’s main competitor airlines on a weekly basis. All these elements can benefit different departments, including revenue management, network planning or corporate strategy. Revenue management can adjust pricing and inventory strategies, network planning can identify new market opportunities or threats in order to adjust its routes, and corporate strategy can gain insights on mergers and acquisitions, partnerships and other strategic initiatives. All in all, it has the potential to improve the competitiveness of both the airline and the Air France-KLM group.