Warren Buffett famously commented that the U.S. airline industry had made zero profit in its first nine decades. Subsequently, between the millennium and the Great Financial Crisis the airlines in total lost almost $60 billion. Yet no major airline was liquidated or taken over in those nine years. Financial support was repeatedly provided by GE, the conglomerate supplier of leasing finance, engines, and servicing. The article offers a historical perspective on the factors behind this relationship between GE and airlines. It outlines the benefits or costs to GE, airline shareholders, and passengers; the relevance of the model for other industries; and implications for different notions of efficiency.

A version of this paper was first presented at the Royal Institute of Navigation NAV 08 Conference held at Church House, Westminster, London in October 2008.

SESAR is Europe's ‘Single European Sky Air traffic Research system’, targeted at post-2020. The vision is to integrate and implement new technologies to improve air traffic management (ATM) performance. The focus for planning and executing system operations will increasingly be aircraft navigating high-quality 4D trajectories: a 4D trajectory is the aircraft path, three space dimensions plus time, from gate-to-gate, i.e. including the path along the ground at the airport. A 20+year ATM plan has to use limited information on the success of innovations and the development of large-scale, often safety critical, software, which by its nature can take markedly longer and cost markedly more than early estimates. SESAR must be sufficiently flexible in deployment to maximise financial benefits to individual stakeholders using their specific financial criteria. Airline needs are the main ATM system/business drivers. Airlines do not want to commit to developing an ‘ultra-modern system’ per se, but rather to one that makes business-sensible investments in new technologies that are indispensable for achieving improved safety and meeting projected capacity requirements. The approach has been to use simple corporate finance ideas to examine the different viewpoints and business environments of air traffic service suppliers (ANSPs) and individual airlines. The key decision-making point is that ANSPs act as an agent for airlines as a whole. The key financial point is that a typical airline has to work hard to survive and needs quick paybacks on investment. The design of the SESAR R&D and project portfolios can learn lessons from information technology systems design and deployment. ‘Real option analysis’ of systems can increase business value by improving the sequencing and partitioning of projects, helping to ensure that the system is adaptable to technological innovation and changes in business needs.

This paper draws on empirical research into the recruitment, training, and management of female flight attendants, working primarily in the transatlantic business travel sector of the contemporary airline industry. We argue that whilst the ‘ skills’ which flight attendants are required to deploy are denied, being treated as somehow inherent abilities and thus neither trained nor remunerated, they are nevertheless managed in a directive way. This management involves, in particular, a focus on a flight attendant’s figure, and ‘dieting’ – what Naomi Wolf has referred to as ‘the essence of contemporary femininity’ (Wolf 1990:200) – as a recruitment, training and managerial strategy. The work of a female flight attendant involves adhering to culturally prescribed norms on femininity as well as organisational regulations governing her figure – its presentation and performance – whilst undertaking work which involves, at least in part, serving food to others. We conclude that this aspect of the work of flight attendants is thus ‘a symbolic representation of the subordination of women . . . a concrete expression of their position as servers and carers of men’ (Charles and Kerr 19 88:84).