Dave & Meredith's Travel Blog

There are 3 airlines operating in Mongolia today – MIAT, the state-owned airline, and relative newcomers Aero Mongolia and EZnis Airways.  We flew on all three during our time in Mongolia.

While on the flights, I took a look at the in-flight magazines.  Here are some things I bet you did not know (listed in the order in which I read them):

1.  Aero Mongolia owns 60% market share of the domestic flights in Mongolia.

That made me feel good about the plane I was on.  At the time, I only knew of Aero Mongolia and MIAT, so I figured MIAT must own the rest of the market.  However, when we flew to the Gobi, we took EZnis Airways, and their magazine said:

2.  EZnis Airways owns 70% market share of the domestic flights in Mongolia.

Hmmm.  That made me wonder.  Those two numbers add up to 130% market share.  I guessed that the statistics were from two different years, but that still left a question about what kind of market share MIAT owned.  I doubted that MIAT would report that they owned negative 30% of the domestic market.  For those of you who are more visual thinkers, here is a bar chart:

Then I thought, “Maybe MIAT only does international flights to and from Mongolia.”  That would help explain things.  So, when I read MIAT’s airline magazine, I expected to see information only on international flights (we flew them out of Mongolia to Seoul), but to my surprise, the MIAT magazine said:

3.  “In 2007, MIAT had 398 domestic flights providing service to 26,251 passengers.”

They didn’t include a percentage, but if this statistic is true, their market share could not be a negative number!  It would in fact be positive. I tried to revise the chart with these numbers but I couldn’t make the math work.

The only thing I can assume is that someone accidentally printed an error in their in-flight magazine, because why would any marketing person use statistics that are misleading?*

– Meredith

* This is a joke, but is not meant to offend marketing people.  I am, when I’m working, technically a marketer, and I have many friends that are marketing people.  So it’s okay that I make fun of them.  😉