Reference no: EM131454754

Assignment

Just in case you are having trouble bringing up the case, here is the only case in Chapter 11.

Case study question: Swift Airlines Swift Airlines has a daily return flight from London to Nice. The aircraft for the flight has a capacity of 120 passengers. Swift sells its tickets at a range of prices. Its business plan works on the basis of the following mix of ticket prices for each day's flight:

Business	30 @ £300	£9,000
Economy regular	40 @ £200	£8,000
Advance purchase	20 @ £120	£2,400
7-day-purchase	20 @ £65	£1,300
Stand-by	10 @ £30	£300
Revenue	120	£21,000

Swift's head office accounting department has calculated its costs as follows:

Cost per passenger (to cover additional fuel, insurance, baggage handling etc.) assuming full load £25 per passenger

Flight costs (to cover aircraft lease, flight and cabin crew costs, airport and landing charges etc.) £3,000 (120 @ £25) £7,500 per flight

Route costs (to cover the support needed for each destination) £2,000 (based on ½ of the daily cost of £4,000 (balance charged to return flight)) Business overhead £3,000 (allocation of head office overhead)

Total £15,500

This results in a budgeted profit of £5,500 per flight, assuming that all seats are sold at the budgeted price. The head office accountant for European routes has advised the route manager for Nice that while the Nice-London inbound leg is breaking even, losses are being made on the London-Nice outbound leg. If profits cannot be generated, the route may need to be closed, with the aircraft and crew being assigned to another route. The route manager for Nice has extracted recent sales figures, a typical flight having the following sales mix:

% of tickets sold Business	60	18 @ £300	£5,400
Economy regular	70	28 @ £200	£5,600
Advance purchase	80	16 @ £120	£1,920
7-day purchase	75	15 @ £65	£975
Stand-by	100	10 @ £30	£300
Revenue	87		£14,195

The route manager has calculated a loss on each outbound flight of £1,305. She believes that there is a market for 48-hour ticket purchases if a new fare of £40 was introduced, as this would be £5 less than the price charged by a competitor for the same ticket. She estimates that she could sell 15 seats per flight on this basis. This would not affect either the 7-day purchase, which is used by business travelers, or stand-by fares, which are usually oversubscribed. The additional revenue of £600 (15 @ £40) would cover almost half the loss. The route manager has prepared a report for her manager asking that the new fare be approved and allowing her three months to prove that the new tickets could be sold. Comment on the route manager's proposal. Case studies provide the reader with the opportunity to interpret and analyze financial information produced by an accountant for use by non-accounting managers in decision-making. There is a suggested answer for the case in Part IV, although the nature of case studies is that there is rarely a single correct answer, as different approaches to the problem can highlight different aspects of the case and a range of possible approaches are possible.