Originally Posted by
bernardd
That's hopelessly simplistic. Passengers do NOT choose only by fare, though it may be the most significant factor for some. There are plenty of other factors though; scheduling if very important to businesses, for some the overall cost including baggage and extraneous fees is important, and yes, for some, comfort considerable weight.
Price and schedule are by far and away the most important factors for influencing purchase decisions.
Originally Posted by
bernardd
It's frankly the job of airline managers, including AA's, to make us think more about those other factors and get this business out of the commodity mentality, but they have, for the most part, collectively failed. Ironically it seems to me that Southwest have done a far better job of branding themselves as a "competent, value for money provider with decent service" and by accident or design, actually making their product relatively hard to price-shop.
In the end the airline business should be no different to, say, Hotel branding where the chains operate a range of different brands to target different customer groups and I've long wondered if this is the future for the legacies - instead of a choice of "veal crate" or ultra luxurious service, perhaps they ought to radically increase the number of offerings (ie 4+ class planes instead of 2+ that AA seems to offering) in order to up sell passengers to whatever they're willing to pay to maximize the revenue?
It is hard to get out of the commodity mentality when consumers treat your product like a commodity.
Originally Posted by
halls120
what US carrier has ever offered a "superior" coach product?
In March I flew 4 AF flights on aircraft that had their "Premier Voyaguer" product. It was completely full on two of the flights, and 75% on the other two.
Maybe if a US flag carrier actually offered something similar, people would indeed buy it.
I was referring to MRTC, as well as TW and ME's efforts to use a better-than-everyone-else's coach product to obtain a revenue premium.
All of the efforts were dismal failures.