Scan Air

McKinsey Case Study Prompt

Your Client is Scan Air, a mid size Scandinavian airline. The airline has 100 aircraft, 22,000 employees worldwide, a strong cash flow and nearly zero debt. The airline focuses on business passengers. The current CEO is leaving. Most flights fly into or out of a single hub in Scandinavia. Most flights have flights connecting in central Europe and N. America with Asia.

Scan Air has previously ignored the trend toward global alliances.

Profits are eroding. Scan Air wants to “get in shape quickly.” They want to maintain their previous situation, fend off competition, and decrease their cost base.

What things do you want to look at?

Case Overview

Ready to jump into the McKinsey case study? First, read through the prompt. You’ll discover that the client is an airline with declining profits. The company wants to stop the decline and get back in shape. Your job is to dig into the profitability, find the root causes, and recommend a solution.

When building your structure, we recommend using the Profitability Framework. However, don’t rely on the basic case frameworks to solve the case. The best case candidates blend frameworks and their own business understanding to come up with a unique structure for the case problem.

This McKinsey case study is a good first-round practice case. The qualitative aspect of the case is scored at 2/4. There are 0 math diagrams in the case interview.

McKinsey Interview Tips

Want to crush a McKinsey interview? Make sure that you are highly structured in every part of the case – start-to-finish. You will not be able to get away with weak structures if you want to work for McKinsey & Co.

Want to take your case practice a step further? Focus on coming away with 1 key takeaway or area you can improve.

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