Airline brands are forgetting one big thing . . . their customers

ON May 22, Cathay Pacific announced the layoff of over 600 employees on the backend of one of the worst financial years in the company's history. Once the crown jewel of Asian airline travel, Cathay Pacific is struggling to compete.

Yet in the face of it all, Cathay Pacific continues to focus only on operational restructuring: investments in technology, fuel savings, and redeployment of staff.This is a mistake. If the airline continues to focus on scaling back their operations to run the same business in a leaner way, things will only continue to decline. To drive growth in an increasingly competitive and volatile environment, Cathay Pacific needs to stop thinking of itself as purely operations-driven and start thinking about its relationship with the customer.

There are three customer-centric approaches airline brands like Cathay Pacific should be using to drive growth: define a clear target audience; create a compelling offer; test and refine that offering until it's right.