An airline provides air transport services for passengers or freight. Airlines lease or own their aircraft with which to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for reasons of mutual benefit. Airlines vary from those with a single airplane carrying mail or cargo, through full-service international airlines operating many hundreds of airplanes. Airline services can be categorized as being intercontinental, intra-continental, regional or domestic and may be operated as scheduled services or charters. Airlines assign prices to their services in an attempt to maximize profitability. To do this well requires yield management technology and pricing flexibility.
They use differentiated pricing, a form of price discrimination, in order to sell air services at varying prices simultaneously to different segments. Factors influencing the price include the days remaining until departure, the current booked load factor, the forecast of total demand by price point, competitive pricing in force, and variations by day of week of departure and by time of day.
