Mango Airlines

Over the past years South Africans have been faced with disappoints regarding low cost air travelling, air travel was at one stage only for large income earners. South African Airways (SAA) was the recognized and deemed as the loyal carrier for air travelling passengers. Prior to 2006 there were three low cost airlines operating within the country, on 15 November 2006 funded by SAA the emerging of Mango airlines took place. Tickets sales for the airline were sold out for almost a month, the prices of air tickets were either the same or cheaper than any other mode of transport within the country. This boosted consumer confidence and the other airlines weren’t able to compete with Mango’s reduced prices. Mango’s marketing strategies were of international standard and were well thought before they officially opened their doors to the public. They looked at most avenues of attracting consumers and reaping large profits and successfully achieved this. Porter’s five force framework was used in one of my analysis and I looked at all underlying advantages and the gaps. Some of the gaps identified was that Mango airlines offer limited destination routes compared to their competitors who offer a variety of holiday packages and destinations.

Source: I Staisch, 2007

A SWOT analysis was also done on Mango airlines and the gaps identified are passengers are willing to pay the lowest price they can get for air tickets therefore Mango would need to up their price checking skills and ensure that they offer the lowest air line fares. Another gap identified is that Mango has an internet booking system, this system sometimes cannot deal with the influx of passenger’s access their system and hence system crashes. From performing the SWOT analysis the following summarises the plans and actions that should be prioritised by Mango: Increase the size of the market, expand the number of new routes, strive for uniform fleet or aircraft to allow routine and standard maintenance