A Business Development Plan to Improve the Market Performance of Dana Airline (Dana Air) in the Nigerian Local Airlines Sector

Civil aviation business is one of the fastest-growing business in the world today and the most profitable section of the civil aviation business is the commercial airline operations. In Nigeria there are presently 23 domestic airline companies in operation and over the years many of them have recorded large profits, but the competition between the airlines requires for constant improvement of business processes of each airline to become leader of the market share and increase profit in the business. The rationale for this research is to investigation the operations of Dana Airline for the purpose of understanding the areas of the operations that needs improvement and suggest solution that could change them from the fifth market share holder to the first in the domestic airline business in Nigeria. The study conducted a survey using questionnaire to investigate all operations of Dana Airline from the senior management of the company and the customers of Dana Airline. The result of the survey indicated flexible air flight ticketing and control of the checking-in service of Dana Airline, the workforce planning is faulted and lack of motivating incentives for staffs. On the side of the customers there are issues relating to aircraft locations and boarding, staff shortage to attend to air and ground operations for ease of customer attendance. This research proposed a business model that will attend to the problems discovered and also improve the areas of the operation and also increase the performance of the areas where Dana Airline is performing. A business plan created at the end of the study is to show how the business model and its elements can be embedded into real-live operations of Dana Airline over time.