Cleared for Take-Off is a comprehensive and topical study of the international low fare airline (LFA) business, its market and industry context and the structures and strategies of its main protagonists.

Thomas Lawton is Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management at Imperial College Management School, University of London, UK. He holds degrees from University College Cork and the London School of Economics and Political Science and has a doctorate from the European University Institute. He is the author of Technology and the New Diplomacy (Avebury, 1997), European Industrial Policy and Competitiveness (Macmillan Business, 1999) and Strange Power (Ashgate, 2000). He is Managing Director of Nimbus Consulting Ltd, a firm specialising in management development and strategic business improvement.

Contents: Prologue: setting the scene; Liberalizing Europe's air ways; The emergence of low fare competitors in Europe; Structure and competition in the European Airline industry; Getting the balance right: price-based competition and the cost-service trade-off; Leader of the pack: the Ryanair model; The contenders: competing low fare carriers in Europe; Trans-Atlantic lessons; The global emergence of price-based competitors; Epilogue: the way ahead for low fare airlines; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.