MSc Airline & Airport Corporate Management

This module introduces the vital appreciation of the management of airline costs as a key management skill for commercial airline managers. The airline industry in particular is highly volatile because of the complex costs of production of the service and is subject to violent external shocks on a regular basis.

A sound financial strategy is therefore vital to airline survival and the module introduces techniques and tools to assess the steps to take for long term profitability.

This module will focus on the concept of e-commerce within aviation management and the impact of the digital age will continue to have on the strategic activities of airlines and airports.

The start of the e-commerce revolution was back in 1995 with the first innovators including Alaskan Airlines and British Midland developing their first website booking engines. Since this time the global online travel sector has grown to generate more than half a trillion dollars in revenue.

The module covers safety risk management including different methods of hazard identification, safety assurance, safety culture and emergency response procedures. It also explores the importance of the under-pinning organisational structures as proposed by ICAO annex 19, regulation, documentation and polices which enable safety management systems to be explicit and proactive.

The module also looks into accident causation models that use holistic approaches which focus on the aviation system environment, activities which take place within it and the way in which constituent parts of the aviation system (both human and non-human) interact and the behaviours required.

The module draws on a wide-range of academic research and professional experience. It introduces core strategic management concepts and encourages students to develop a critical, analytical approach to solving work-based management issues.

Students will develop an awareness of different theoretical perspectives so that the complexity of managerial work is explored rigorously. The module explores a range of strategic and operational perspectives through academic research and an examination of work-based issues.

It encourages students to adopt a reflective approach on current practice and critique academic theory in relation to their future leadership and management development. This module contains a strong experiential learning approach.

This module will address the critical issue of how current thinking on sustainability will impact on businesses and organisations and how they respond, and the need to create more sustainable organisations and businesses is fundamental to current and future organisational development strategies, and it is necessary for students to understand the growing influence of the sustainability agenda on industry.

This influence takes on many forms, from government policies and international agreements to the measuring of impacts of organisational practices on the ecology and communities. It is clear that in the future, organisations, businesses, communities and individuals will be expected to understand and take responsibility for their economic, environmental and social impacts.

This module will examine the current and future challenges, it will equip students with knowledge to deal with the challenge of creating sustainable forms of business that operate within ecological and socio-economic limits.

Management and leadership go together in business organisations, with managers typically expected to lead others as part of their role.

The module will examine the roles and responsibilities of manager and leader, and the demands on these roles in international, digitally enabled businesses.

This module provides you with the opportunity to work on specific business issues that organisations are facing. Utilising your competences of handling and managing business challenges, starting from problem identification and concluding with solution-related recommendations, thus encouraging research into real world business issues impacting organisations.

Useful and applied business research, like useful reflection, leads to change. To that end, students will be encouraged to take a pragmatic approach to their research, seeking always to create actionable conclusions of value to business managers, owners and entrepreneurs.