Commercial Aviation Overview

A cyclic and unusually competitive industry, commercial air transportation – faces remarkably difficult challenges to becoming and remaining profitable in today's dynamic environment: Even during the best of times, producing superior industry returns has been a struggle. Aircraft ownership carries steep, fixed costs. Primary variable expenses, fuel and labor, constitute a disproportionate share of costs and are extremely difficult to control. Short-run market pricing intended to cover marginal cost has become the norm in an industry characterized by long-run cost commitments. Only those operators with the lowest overall cost structure can gain pricing power and market position – and this advantage can be quickly shattered when variable demand falls short of fixed-cost supply.

Yet, even during turbulent and uncertain times, opportunities exist for pushing the boundaries to find new ways to profitability. Seabury Group has been at the forefront of this work. With Seabury at their side, our clients are expanding their market share, sourcing new revenue streams, reducing costs, transforming labor practices, improving capital structure and unlocking unrealized value through mergers, acquisitions and the sale of non-strategic assets.

Seabury has been involved in virtually every major airline turnaround of the last ten years. In recent projects we have helped clients examine long-standing business models, weighing the wisdom of entering new market segments or exiting old ones. We have assisted our client’s labor relations personnel reframe workforce costs and practices. Seabury has also guided our clients in gaining greater strength with key industry suppliers and OEMs. And our extensive experience with sector investors gives us a strong advantage to clients considering the purchase or sale of assets or finding new sources of capital and liquidity.

Seabury is well-suited to helping its clients identify and implement creative solutions for profitability in a dynamic environment.