Originally Posted by www.iflyswa.com
Tom--It is dangerous to simply assume that meeting your specific needs is the key to successful airline economics. Yes, pleasing one's best customers is important, but making a profit is even more important. Yes, the hot dinner, the parfait, and the glasses for the wine are nice, but to argue that passengers will leave if they dont get it is ridiculous. I suspect the domestic first class of the future will be a nicer seat and free drinks, with a free box of food. Anything more is puffery that makes no sense in the modern cost-conscious era.
I make no such assumption.
Nor do I think that the answer is a uniform least common denominator product.
"Anything more is puffery" is just as ridiculous as expecting Le Bec Fin on board. There's plenty of room for variation in service between airlines and US' current service has significant room for improvement at minimal additional cost.
I don't think I said anything about it but customers will leave and have left over poor service. The more important thing, to my mind anyway, is to use the product in a
positive way to
differentiate the airline,
attract new customers,
retain existing customers and
increase their overall level of spending. That's awfully hard to do when your focus is on degrading the product.