Laurence Vigeant-Langlois

Evolution of global airline strategic alliance and consolidation in the twenty-first century

Global airline strategic alliances have emerged since the late 1980s, and their number has slowly risen through the years. Will the number of such alliances continue to proliferate? Or will airlines consolidate with one another to form mega-carriers? In this paper, the likelihood of various airline consolidation and alliance development possibilities was examined based on a number of high-level trends and forces. The most probable near-term industry alliance and consolidation structure is described, accompanied with a probable path of evolution. These predictions have important implications for managers of strategic alliances, carriers who are currently in an alliance as well as carriers who are planning to join one.

Influence of Icing Information on Pilot Strategies for Operating in Icing Conditions

Theine uenceofpotential remoteice-detectionsystem featuresonpilotdecision makingwasinvestigated through a Web-based experiment. Display features including a graphical plan view depiction of icing severity, vertical view depiction, single and multiple icing severity levels as well as sensor range were varied in a part-task simulation experiment. Using information from each display, pilots were presented with a set of four e ight scenarios and probed on theirrouting decisions and comfort level with thosedecisions. Theexperimentalso included a subjective display preference evaluation. Results show that all of the displays improved pilot decision making over existing text-based icing information. The three-dimensional displays that included vertical depiction of icing conditions were found to support improved decision making. Range was not found to be a strong factor in the experiment; however, the minimum range tested was 25 n miles, which may be in excess of current technical capabilities. The depictionoftheseverity oficingconditionswasnotfoundto beasimportantasaccurateinformation on thelocation of icing conditions.

Implications of Contingency Planning Support for Weather and Icing Information

A human-centered systems analysis was applied to the adverse a ircraft weather encounter problem in o rder to identify desirable functions of weather and icing information. The importance of contingency planning was identified a s emerging from a system safety design methodology as well as from results of other aviation decision-making studies. The relationship between contingency planning support and information on regions clear of adverse weather was investigated in a scenariobased ana lysis. A rapid p rototype e xample of t he key elements in the depiction of icing conditions was developed in a case study, and the implications for the components of the icing information system were articulated.