I hope all of you have started your assignment by now!  I thought I would share some materials and hints that might help you along with your paper. First some information that might help you form your thoughts:

• The New York Times has an interesting article a couple months ago about standing room only airline seats in China
• Billshrink.com put together a nice graphic outlining all the fees airlines have been implementing

• Plagiarism. I'm sure none of you are considering this, but sometimes we all get desperate late in the morning before a paper is due. You should know that in the online version of this course, plagiarizing the Class Airlines paper is the #1 reason for failing MKT571. There are a lot of papers for purchase out there. Most all are garbage, and the faculty plagiarism checker will catch them 95% of the time.
  
• As you can tell from the links above, I love informative graphics, tables and graphs. You don't have to be Picasso, but if you develop a meaningful graphic that gets your point across it definitely won't hurt your grade.
  
• There are a lot of 'problem solving models' and ways to write business plans. These two articles, while not precisely on-point for your assignment, represent what I find most useful / compelling when reading a business plan. 
  1. Business planning, Aug 10th 2009 – From Economist.com (their basic model/outline, the people – the opportunity – the context – the risk – the reward is great)
     
  2. Why Business Plans Don’t Deliver, June 22, 2009 – From MIT Sloan Management Review