Correspondence: Scott D Nason, American Airlines, 4333 Amon Carter Blvd, MD 5276, Ft Worth, TX 76155, USA. Tel: +1 817 967 1501; Fax: +1 817 967 1651; E-mail: Scott.nason@aa.com

¹Scott D. Nason is American's Vice President — Revenue Management. He is responsible for all of American's passenger pricing and yield management activity, which includes managing the allocation of seats among various fare categories and overbooking. Prior to this, Nason was Vice President — Information Technology Services and was the first Chief Information Officer for American Airlines. He held various positions in Operations Research, Airline Profitability Analysis, Crew Resources, and Operations Planning before being named Vice President-Operations Planning and Performance in May 1991.

Received 14 July 2008; Revised 14 July 2008; Published online 8 August 2008.

Abstract

This paper discusses a wide variety of forms which modern-day airline competition is taking — The six C's, including competition, coopetition, codesharing, coordination, cooperation, and anti-trust immunised relationships (collusion) — and makes some observations about what this requires of us and some of the requirements it will impose upon our revenue management systems. In particular, they create the need for better ways to share data, to optimise across multi-carrier networks, and to understand the economic implications of these relationships.