Correspondence: Larry R. Weatherford, College of Business, University of Wyoming, Dept. 3275, 1000 E. University Ave., Laramie, Wyoming 82071 USA E-mail: LRW@uwyo.edu

¹is a Full Professor at the University of Wyoming. He holds a PhD from the University of Virginia. He has received several Outstanding Teaching Awards and also has a best-selling textbook, Decision Modeling with Microsoft Excel, published by Prentice-Hall. He has published 22 scholarly articles and presented 60 papers on six different continents to professional organisations. He has consulted with such major corporations as Walt Disney World, Hilton Hotels, Star Alliance, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Lufthansa German Airlines, Swiss International Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines, Air New Zealand, Lan Chile, South African Airways, Unisys Corporation and Choice Hotels.

Received 5 October 2008; Revised 5 October 2008; Published online 17 April 2009.

Abstract

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.