Passenger Sales Division: Responsible for planning and carrying out the sales programs designed to attract new customers and keep regular patrons returning to the airline.
Freight Sales Division: Same as above, but for freight
Mail Division: Responsible for all contacts with post office department officials. The director works with the airline's schedule division to plan flights that will leave major cities at times that will best fit into the post office department's schedules, thus ensuring large mail loads.
Reservations and Ticket Office Division: Responsible for overseeing the operation of all reservations and ticket offices, planning and opening new offices, training new employees, and surveying the efficiency of the operation from time to time.
Interline Sales Division: Responsible for keeping in touch with sales departments of other airlines to solve mutual problems, encourage cooperation between the carriers, and route as many passengers as possible on each other's planes.
Agency Sales Division: Responsible for planning programs that will increase the interest and cooperation of travel agencies to book more business with the airline.
Convention Sales Division: Responsible for contacting and working with all organizations that will be holding national or regional conventions in cities served by the airline, with the aim of persuading the convention delegates to use the airline. The division provides special services to convention planners and sometimes at the convention itself, such as set-ting up a special reservations and ticket desk, giving free newspapers to the delegates, opening a delegates' hospitality lounge, and providing transportation to and from the airport for convention officials.
Tariff Division: Responsible for preparing and publishing in company handbooks and timetables all passenger and freight tariffs (fares) between all points served by the airline. Inasmuch as there are all types of promotional and excursion fares, this can be an extremely complicated and confusing process.
Market Research Division: Responsible for making surveys of the market for passenger and freight sales. Passenger surveys seek a wide variety of information about passengers, which includes statistics on their age, size of family, where they live, income, how frequently they fly, where they fly, time of day they like to depart, where they buy their tickets, how they would like the service improved, and other data that give a well-rounded picture of the passengers and their preferences. The results can then be used for planning schedules, improving in-flight services (including menus and beverages), improving passenger handling at airports, making changes in reservations and ticketing procedures, and planning advertising and public relations programs. Surveys of air freight shippers obtain pertinent information as it applies to selling and handling air freight.
This division may employ statisticians, stenographers, clerks, and typists in addition to market researchers who should have a bachelor's degree in marketing and preferably a master's of business administration degree. Trainees often start as junior analysts or research assistants, and as they gain experience move up to supervisory positions. Top posts are marketing research director and later vice president for marketing and sales.
Schedule Division: Responsible for preparing all schedules by which the aircraft will operate. This is undoubtedly one of the most difficult but fascinating jobs in the airline. It has been said that a good manager of schedules can make or break a company because there is an art in planning schedules to attract the greatest amount of business and at the same time make use of the aircraft as efficiently as possible.
Lack of space prevents our going into detail about schedule planning; however, we can consider some of the basic factors the schedule section must consider as it draws up the overall system flight pattern.
- Ideally every city airport manager likes to have flights leave early in the morning for every other important city and return at night so businesspeople can leave and return the same day.
- Ideally every city manager wants a five o'clock afternoon departure for every other important city.
- In scheduling transcontinental flights from the west to the east, the three-hour time difference presents problems because 3:00 P.M. is the latest time most travelers will take a plane from the West Coast to arrive on the East Coast at 11:00 P.M. Transcontinental passengers have a preference for a 9:00 A.M. departure from the west and a 5:00 P.M. departure from the east.
- Adequate provision must be made for "turn-around time"-the time it takes to clean, provision, and check an arriving airplane before it is ready to start its next flight.
- In busy cities like New York, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Atlanta, and especially the "hub cities," it is important to plan schedules that will provide as many good connections between flights as possible.
- Each airplane must be scheduled for certain line maintenance work every so many flight hours. This means that it receives servicing and checking by the maintenance department, work that can be performed only at those cities that have the required personnel and equipment. In addition every aircraft must be taken out of service periodically for a complete overhaul and check at the company's principal maintenance base. This means that each airline always has some airplanes out of service.
- The flight department must be consulted in preparing schedules because it is responsible for providing the crews (pilots, flight engineers, stewards and stewardesses), but flight personnel are not based in every city. Therefore a flight may have to originate and terminate at a city where crews are based. Furthermore, crews can work only a certain number of hours each day and each month, hence there must be close coordination between schedule planning, aircraft routing, and crew planning specialists.
- Ultimately the schedule division must be sure that it does not schedule more flights into an airport than can be accommodated at one time.
Most sales divisions employ numerous assistants or specialists. For example, the tariff division requires economists, statisticians, and statistical clerk/typists. Since the ultimate purpose of all activities carried out by this department is to sell space, anyone interested in a sales career must have a belief in the importance of the sales effort. Throughout the department there will be opportunities for clerical personnel, secretaries, computer operators, as well as college-trained men and women who have taken courses in air transportation, sales techniques, and psychology.
For most sales positions knowledge of airline operation is desirable, if not essential. This is especially true of the schedule division, where you may find some specialization: one employee is responsible for all schedules east of Chicago, another for between Chicago and the west schedules, another for utilization of DC-10 equipment, a fourth for all Boeing aircraft, and a fifth for preparing the voluminous timetables and seeing them through the various printing stages to publication and distribution.
This is an age of specialization and this is true in airlines, too. If you seek a sales position, find out first what jobs are available. If there are no openings for which you qualify, see if you can begin your career in a reservations or ticket office to get yourself into the company and start gaining experience. Once on the payroll keep your eyes and ears open and let your supervisor know of your interest in working eventually in the sales administrative offices or in the field as a sales representative. In every company there are retirements, resignations, deaths, and dismissals, which make opportunities for newcomers like you. Because of its size, an airline sales department is bound to have numerous job openings throughout the system with surprising regularity. If you have prepared yourself, and made your interest known, you should not have difficulty moving into the area that interests you.
Throughout the department there will be opportunities for clerical personnel, secretaries, computer operators, as well as college-trained men and women who have taken courses in air transportation, sales techniques, and psychology.