Climb the ladder
Even with uncertainty surrounding any career in the airline industry, demand for management training courses remains strong, with providers changing their offerings to fit the new era
For an industry in which career survival has replaced advancement as a goal, the airline business would seem to be an unlikely choice for would-be managers. Nevertheless, industry aspirants continue to seek management education and training, and people already in the business are continuing to seek courses to improve and broaden their skills as they wait out this down cycle.
"Very few students are eager to go after high-level executive slots right now because they see the turmoil in the boardroom," says Daniel Petree, dean of the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's department of business administration. That said, he adds: "Many students sense the cyclicality of the industry and see that if they begin working now to improve their skills they may be able to move up come the next up cycle".
Of these, quite a few arrive at Embry-Riddle's campuses in Florida and Arizona with a strong technical background in an area such as maintenance and "believe that they can make their background serve as a technical platform to advance into other airline areas such as operations and planning".
At Concordia University in Montreal, Triant Flouris, the new director of the International Aviation MBA within the John Molson School of Business, says: "Some students have degrees in geology and geography and the like, some in literature, but the vast majority of students coming into the programmes have some experience in aviation. Some have been customer service representatives who want to move up. About 90% of Concordia students have experience in the industry and want managerial duties."
Hiring sources
Many of the students coming into Concordia are from airlines, but a significant number are from airports and air traffic services providers. Flouris thinks that this will grow as more nations privatise their aviation sectors. As agencies like the FAA move away from their traditional hiring sources, which have been their own lower ranks and the military, they will draw more on those with a broader education. This will serve as a means of change away from the top-down military culture.
In August 2002, the Molson School graduated its first class of students from its global aviation MBA, its 18-course, 22-month programme for managers. By October 2002, Concordia had graduated 164 students from all over the world from its GAMBA programme. The GAMBA course combines class time on Concordia's downtown Montreal campus with distance learning.
Some airlines sponsor students at these courses. For instance, Korean Air sends one a year to the Concordia programme. Nancy Park, who works in corporate communications at the airline's Seoul headquarters, says that a major benefit of being in the programme is learning from other students about areas of the industry that are new to her.
She says that the approach moves from the teaching of a new skill such as financial analysis to the skill's application to the airline industry, which she says makes a natural transition. Concordia's Flouris says that meshing basic business disciplines and skills with airline-specific applications is the way the school competes with the generic MBA programmes.
However, sponsored students such as Park are in an increasingly small group, as carriers cut back on their sponsorship Roger Wootton, head of the aviation programme at London's City University, says that some airlines are investing in training and others are not. Emirates has sent 20 students on the university's MSc in airline management course.
Similarly, Doris Burger, head of the Donau (Danube) University's two-year, part-time MBA programme, says that student interest in the four-year old programme remains high, but that companies are not supporting them as much as in years past, either in terms of time or money. "In typical years," she says, "about 80% of students are self-supporting. This year that number has risen to 90%."
However, some of the slack being laid out by carriers is being taken up by the supplier community, which is showing renewed interest in education and training.
Jim Whitelaw, who directs the aviation diploma programme at IATA, says this is a growth area. "For instance, Bombardier is sending employees to us for training; they are engineers who certainly know about building aircraft but want to know more about the customer." IATA is also discussing with Embraer about setting up a course. GE Aircraft Engines has arranged an IATA course to be offered to employees of Emirates in connection with the carrier's purchase of the Airbus A380. This too focuses on operations and planning as well as the airport environment.
Indeed, suppliers are not only supporting training, some are even offering courses themselves. Take, for instance, Euresas, a subsidiary of Airbus, which holds a 90% stake, and Rolls-Royce, with a 10% stake. The Toulouse-based institute offers professional training in such areas as airline and aircraft financing; airline fleet planning and airline economics; change management leadership and intercultural skills.
Managing director Paul Clark says the training courses, which last three or four days, are offered on both an off-the-street and contract basis, with the latter seeing several airlines bringing Euresas in to train various departments because of their recognised excellence in several areas, notably including those related to fleet management.
Clark says "We're in the business of knowledge creation. Our carrier clients don't come to us looking for an Airbus sales pitch. They come for enhanced industry knowledge."
Distance learning
Another area that is picking up the slack being faced by training providers is distance learning. With the airlines evidently less amenable to paying for costly and time-consuming degrees, there is more appetite for students to stay near home and on the job while pursuing coursework over the Internet.
"We are moving aggressively into distance learning, especially now that airlines do not have the money or resources to spare the personnel who want the training," says Whitelaw of IATA. Its airline distance learning enrols about 650 students in six courses; its travel and tourism distance learning enrols an astonishing 12,000 students. In total, it has roughly 18,000 students taking distance learning courses of one or another sort.
Distance learning has created few if any problems for institutions. If anything, resistance to distance learning has come from some faculty members, says Concordia's Flouris. He says: "A few professors won't teach distance education courses, but we have found acceptance among airline managers." David Hosley, dean of the school of corporate training and professional development at Embry-Riddle, says that distance learning works because the students tend to be mature and so well motivated that they have no reasons to cheat.
On-site training
IATA also does a large number of courses on site for airlines. It has, notes Whitelaw, a built-in marketing advantage: "Every airline knows us. We are the airlines." For others, marketing can be a challenge. Long a leader in such hard disciplines as aircraft maintenance and piloting skills for general as well as commercial aviation, Embry-Riddle has been building its strength in commercial aviation management for the past few years. Hosley has added a school of corporate training and professional development as a new offering by the school. It will conduct courses, seminars, workshops and forums that "will tie to objectives that link to the organisation's business goals".
Hosley also notes that another way of adding value is to provide in-house education interventions to carriers, especially as they try to cut staff levels. For instance, Embry-Riddle is working closely with Delta Air Lines to take over some of the in-house training that Delta had done itself, he says.
Additionally, Hosley says that the university is seeing considerable interest from corporate aviation managers. As in-house flight departments and corporate interest in fractional ownership have both grown, more executives want to add aviation specific knowledge to their portfolio of knowledge. Some students, says Hosley, develop an interest in commercial airline management as well.
Other educational institutions have found an interest in this area, in which professionals are spurred by their trade group, the National Business Aviation Association. For example, the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia offers one programme with a stress on finance.
Petree, the director of the MBA programme at Embry-Riddle, says that a fair number of airport employees are interested in education, with the goal of becoming airport managers. They need to know more about airline economics and use it to be better managers as well as to win promotion. Some also wish to migrate into airline operations, he says.
Some educational institutions rely on their location to attract students. For example, George Washington University's Aviation Institute, which offers an airline management and an airline technology certificate programme, draws on the resources of the nation's capital city, including its federal agencies. The institute also offers courses for George Washington University MBA students who want an aviation concentration.
Other types of promotion are also being used in this cash-strapped era. ICAO, with which Concordia founded its programme, will offer some scholarship aid and is a major source of referrals.
Just as means of teaching are changing with distance learning and the Internet, so have areas of interest. One important area has been the impact of the low-cost carriers on traditional network airlines.
"This involves knowledge of all operational aspect including such matters as turnaround times and staffing," says Whitelaw. "It has also pushed a great deal of emphasis on route analysis and profitability analysis. At smaller carriers, managers know they need to understand this but they don't ways have the tools. By the same token, there is also a lot of interest in distribution and the Internet."
Airline managers know that these are cost-savings areas and want to know enough about them to avoid spending money in order to save money. Whitelaw says that another major emphasis in recent years has been on safety and security and the operational aspects of these areas. "People are looking for context, for the bigger picture of what surrounds them," he says.
Security has often been its own domain, and airline managers want to know enough about it to retain some control. Security concerns have driven course curricula, but they have also had a major effect on students' choices. Professor Fariba Alamdari, course co-ordinator for the Cranfield University MSc in aviation management, says that some students who might have gone to courses in the USA are now going to Europe. This is especially true of students from the Middle East, although she notes that Chinese students are also "apparently favouring Europe to the USA at present".
Geographic spread
At City University, the 2003 student intake shows a similar geographic diversity. It draws close to a third of its students from the Middle East; the largest single block - some 40% - come from Europe, but City has a significant African contingent of 15%, Wootton says.
The growth of interest from the Middle East has helped push student and application numbers higher, a welcome development in this general downturn. Cranfield , for instance, has experienced a 10% increase in applications to 110, and Alamadri says that "we're trying to keep numbers the same, even as applications rise. The numbers hover around 30 incoming students per year, but like the airline industry, we have no-shows, so we too do some overbooking."
At City University, Wootton similarly notes an increase in interest with 2003 intake levels - at 142 new students - more than double the 70 of 2002. The decision by Emirates to send 20 students on the course surely did not hurt this development.
Some would be surprised that these numbers are so high given the state of the industry in which graduates will hope to work. Darryl Jenkins, who directed the aviation institute at George Washington University, but is leaving to create a new unit at Embry-Riddle as a centre to wed education and operations is not one of them.
Addressing the continuing appeal of this specialised training, Jenkins says: "The extraordinary thing is that the passion for aviation is still inextinguishable, that people still want to be airline executives."
The great prize draw
The IATA Aviation Training and Development Institute joined forces with Arline Business in 2003 to run a prize draw for $43,000 worth of management training courses. Turn to page 68 to find out who won.
REPORT BY DAVID FIELD IN WASHINGTON AND RICHARD PINKHAM IN LONDON
Source: Airline Business
