Alternate title: The power law. The populations of cities follow a power-law, this airlines routes are downstream of that power law. A power law distribution results in a scattering of smaller values. These values add up to a lot, but must be managed differently.
Look at the book The Long Tail
Canada is Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Well most of it.
Toronto is 15% of Canada’s population. New York is only 7% of USAs (biggest city comparison.) Then look at Ontario vs New York State.
In any distribution of random data you’re bound to see a bunching of reoccurring values and a scattering of singular values. This scattering resembles the rail of an animal, thus the term long tail. Attention 1s often given to the short head as that’s where the action is. However, if you can find a way to make sense of the tail, you often understand more about the distribution holistically.
At Air Canada, we carry most of our passengers on our high traffic routes between major cities. However, we also carry a few passengers on each of a multitude of less trafficed routes. Even taking all of this long tail together, it pales in comparison to the head. However, the long tail matters in other ways.
Canada’s political power is distributed somewhat based on population? but also somewhat on regional representation. Thus, the long tail represents a disproportionate amount of Canada’s politicians. We can serve the short head twice as much but if we also exit the long tail, we’ll end up in an untenable situation politi-cally.
Someone needs to manage the long tail for Air Canada. Managing the long requires bread over depth. It also requires looking beyond one vertical to see the invisible strings connecting all of them. It also requires humility. Many will question why you bother when all the action is to the cluster on the left of the revenue chart. 1f you do it right? you’ll own the long tail which is mandatory, yet unsexy, yet something you are best suited for. I call this the holy trinity of job security.
A ferocious beast can be quickly tamed by a sharp tug on its exposed tail.