Book excerpt: Fasten Your Seatbelt: The Passenger is Flying the Plane is the fourth in a series written at the encouragement of practitioners in the global airline industry. Core customers are beginning to seize control of the direction of the industry from airline management. Customers are doing so due to deep dissatisfaction with what is being offered by traditional carriers across all areas, including network, product, price, customer service and the distribution system. New airlines have clearly focused business designs with the discipline to reject non-valued products or services. In the US, new airlines score higher in customer satisfaction, offering lower fares and making larger operating profits. This book is about customer behaviour and how to address it. It provides detailed but easy-to-read practical discussion of the changes required on the part of airline management not only to think boldly, but also to execute courageously and relentlessly, ground-breaking strategies to fly ahead of their customers. As with previous books written by Nawal Taneja, the primary audience continues to be senior level practitioners within the global airline industry - in both traditional carrier and low complexity carrier segments. The approach is impartial, candid and pragmatic, based on what is happening in the actual market place rather than theoretical business models.