The issue of APIs in particular is quite a vexing issue with most of the airlines hesitant or unwilling to release the same; and this is more so with budget carriers. This needs to be sorted out and really quick as airline inventory literally goes abegging in most cases…

But the point about airlines stopping all marketing activities is a bit too much…just take a look at Gulf carriers – Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways and the like. Marketing and Brand positioning have made them what they are today, and this has paved the way for other global airlines to follow suit. Surely cutting down overhead is no excuse for curbing down marketing campaigns.

But I must agree the other points are extremely workable and present a really good case for airlines…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by kevinlukemay: Radical or not? – Is it possible to crowdsource the airline industry? | Tnooz http://bit.ly/kyLoe...

There is a major difference twixt a limited route, short haul operation which may cherry pick and a global air travel operation. It is rather silly to suggest otherwise. Further,it seems to fail to occur to many that air travel does not consist of flying from point A to point B. In case no-one had noticed, many of the (legacy) airlines fly globally (not just 2 hours down the road) and many of the travellers using those services need to be able to travel, not on a simple point to point ticket, but on a ticket that may span airlines, indeed, continents. This type of travel is, incidently, highly profitable.

Consequently, all the airline relaunches (as is SAS) have to accommodate a global travel solution rather than the rather simplistic outlook promulgated here. The method of selling and distributing air travel did not come about overnight – it evolved over a very long time period and, indeed, worked rather well – mainly because the fares charged were on balance, realistic. It was only when certain routes were cherry picked and someone decided that the Great Public had some inherent right to cheap air travel, that things went awry. True, this has left the legacy airlines with some big issues to tackle but to follow the suggestions mentioned here, which demonstrate a rather tenuous grasp on the reality of global air travel, would make such global air travel effectively unworkable.

To achieve effective global travel you need to have interlining, you need to have minimum connecting times, you need to have the Global Distribution Networks – the GDS. Without these, which are managed through or consult through IATA (I don’t believe IATA is best but it’s all we have got) much global travel would simply not be possible – or become so haphazard that journey times would become impossibly extended.

Further, most of these wildly fanciful suggestions are usually made by people who enjoy the (sometimes unsustainably cheap) networks of the developed world. They are not made by (and show no acknowledgement of) the issues affecting the developing world. They do not acknowledge that many legacy airlines provide desperately needed links to outposts of that nation’s old empire (Air France and Cameroon, SN Brussels and the Gambia, TAP Air Portugal and Angola to mention a few) without these links many would suffer privations – the routes are not very profitable (if at all) yet to cut them could spell disaster for the developing nation concerned. Many of these routes were cross-subsidised from more profitable routes – so next time you take your nice cheap London to Paris on Cheapo-air just spare a thought for some developing corner that as a result, may lose it’s one connection to the developed world.

So, yes, legacy airlines do have an issue – and it is not one that can be solved in such a simplistic manner without making global travel unworkable and great privations for many. The answer, it would appear and could be argued, would be for cheap short haul air travel to be taxed heavily to allow legacy airlines to charge realistic and sustainable fares. Unacceptable? Really?

My reservations in this case concern the level to which branding and product differentiation are important, particularly in the frequent flier / long haul markets. It may be that the most profitable segments of these markets are sensitive to branding and service differentiation, which would undermine the attractiveness of crowd sourcing from the supplier perspective?

My view is that the most likely outcome will be continued growth and dominance of the low-cost model, with a smaller but profitable ‘brand’ market since it seems that there are still plenty of people who value a recognised airline brand and are willing to pay.