<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by AS Flyer:
Here's another thing to consider. The airline companies themselves are responsible for the customer expectations in this industry. It is the airline companies that turned airplanes into flying restaurants and catered to every persons dietary whims, then started giving away free upgrades, club memberships and flights in exchange for a passengers loyalty. It wasn't enough to provide a good, consistent customer experience in exchange for their loyalty. That seemed to work well for many companies but apparently the airline companies couldn't make it work for them. The airlines are the ones that taught customers what to expect and they can't very well just yank the rug out from underneath them now after all these years of training them otherwise.
[This message has been edited by AS Flyer (edited Dec 03, 2003).]</font>
Exceptionally well-said. While those of us who fly even moderately frequently know that air travel does, in fact, suck, certain carriers sold, and continue to sell, their products as being somehow differentiated vs. the competition. Consider "for the same money, you just get more", or comparisons to SkyHigh.
I'm not a morning person, and my flying day starts at 04:15 when I leave my island paradise with a 90 minute drive to CLM or a ferry trip to SEA. By the time I'm on a mainline AS aircraft, a complimentary upgrade to a big cushy seat to reward my brand loyalty, a friendly FA and a hot breakfast make AS look a lot less like UA. Eliminating these service differentiators makes AS look much more like WN.
My plan, is, of course, superior: Honesty Airlines. At Honesty (757 service inside CONUS), Honesty Express (CRJ service to feed Honesty, as well as point-to-point routes under 1500 NM), and Honesty Global (widebody intl. services), we won't lie to you and make you think you're about to have a pleasant trip with minimal incursions into your dignity or intelligence; we're going to get you there, at a price that lets us return a consistent 10% ROI to our valued investors, and we're going to do it in a way that is most convenient for us and if it happens to be convenient for passengers, all the better. We won't hype chips and salsa as a service "improvement" requested by our passengers, we won't suggest that blue-and-white-checkered paper is a reasonable substitute for real cotton napery and we won't devalue our front cabin experience such that the only service differentiator from coach is a free glass of cheap Chardonnay that is usually of markedly lower quality than the stuff QX is pouring between PDX and OTH.
Warmest Regards,
Cynical MVP