The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm

Chapter 20. Case Study: Planes Stuck on the Ground—A Business Traveler’s Tale

Some companies just don’t get it. When they finally do get it, it’s too late because not getting it has already put them into Chapter 11. Most of us don’t have the luxury of allowing experience to be the teacher. When we make mistakes and lose customers, they’re gone.

Consider the airline industry. If you ask any airline executive why his carrier has problems, he’ll tell you 9/11 did it in. In one way it did do the carriers in. But their issues started long before 9/11. The real problems of the airline industry go back to the early ’90s when Generation X began traveling for business. The 9/11 attacks simply finished a job that began with very poor marketing, woeful ...