The Perfect Airline
 

I've been asked to participate in an airline focus group next week. I have no clue as to why my name was included on the list. I will be paid $200 for a 90 minute discussion. I will be paid another $100 if I bring a collage on a typical 8X10+ sheet of paper with pictures (cut from magazines or whatever) of what the perfect airline would be.

I know I will include pictures which incorporate Cathay Pacific F and Virgin's Upper Class. I am just wondering if they want it to include ground service as well? Has anyone ever attended such a focus group?

What kind of pictures would you put on a collage?

Thanks for any input!

A printout of Ryanair's £0.99 offers. ;)

How about pictures of friendly, smiling agents, no lines at check-in, no plethora of kiosks in the check-in area (where individualized personal service is key), a delicious meal, etc.

You know... all the things that would have lawyers of these airlines writing up chapter 11 statements :)

$300 for 90 minutes on a focus group... not bad.

aloha

A collage?

Who's running the focus group, elementary art teachers? :D

Sounds like ZMET. Jerry Zaltman was my marketing professor.

Focus Group
 

You were selected by an airline where you obviously have lots of status - they feel you know enough about flying them to have a deep insight into their business. So the good news is that this is an airline that is trying to understand its customers. The bad news is they won't listen anyway.

The airline business is a study in constrasts. Run mainly by males with finance training, airlines have an inherent difficulty comprehending how to be a service business. See the impact low cost carriers have had to see what I mean. Travelers, seeing mainline airlines offer nothing better than miles, have decided to switch to low cost airlines in droves because these airlines offer essentially the same thing for a lot less. Consumers are highly rational and NOT stupid.

Oh to be a fly on the wall at your focus group. Asking a passenger to describe their perfect airline in 90 minutes is flat out silly, IMHO. Frequent fliers spend hundreds of hours on board and exposed to the airline. Airlines would be far better served by having their best customers provide feedback continuoulsy. How do you fit in all your thoughts into 90 minutes - shared by the way with a bunch of other people?

It will be a great exposure to the cost benefit of qualititative data input over quantitative data input - take the money, you will be thinking about the experience for a while. Please update us on what happened and what you thought of it.

A picture of two baggage handlers carefully placing your luggage on the belt or in the cart, instead of one baggage handler throwing it.
:rolleyes:

I'm not having very good luck finding pictures. I did find some pictures of interiors on netjets but I don't think that is what the airline is looking for however it would be my perfect airline. So far I have been going through some old airline magazines and timetables and I have been cutting out text such as earn bonus miles or your loyalty counts.

One interesting observation I noticed is that not one airline magazine had photos of their employees, just the CEO. Only Air France and SAS timetables had photos of employees. I'm not done looking yet!

Try the Spirit of Aloha (Airlines). IME, they have always found a way to feature their employees.

aloha

Why not go over the top with good comfy (seats) furniture like the Lazy Boy Home Theater recliners You gotta love the cupholders in the armrest! You can get good pictures of food from several online sites like Food TV. Smiling people and faces are usually found on tourism websites. You can find flight attendant and smiling faces photos on community photo places like Webshots by using their search function for those phrases.

No check-in. No security lines. No one on the airplane other than the people you are flying with.

I picture a G5 or Global Express departing an airport not served by commercial airlines and only a few miles from home.

:)

airliners.net has the world's largest airline photo collection. just select "cabin views" from the list of options.

And also include some pictures of great food from Http://www.airlinemeals.net

(1) A photo of a check-in counter without a line.
(2), (3), (4), (5), and (6) A photo of a check-in counter without a line, from different angles, with different shutter speeds, maybe some B&W film, etc.

Sadly, I still don't think they'd get the freaking point.

Can anyone figure out how to photograph a telephone queue with no hold time? :confused:

Also coming to a city near you!
 

Tonight was the big night. I was called around 10am by the group saying that the airline decided to make the meeting 120 minutes instead of 90 minutes, and wanted to know if that was okay. I would have stayed all night if I could have!

Anyway, the first thing we did was show each of our collages and explain them. They then hung them up on the wall and we briefly discussed them. Then they showed us a series of poster boards with a narrative of an airline and we were asked to judge the pros and cons and rate it on a scale of 1-10.
They did this three times, the first being a mundane carrier in my opinion (I rated it 5--the lowest of the 8 participants), the next sounded like a JetBlue with a $10 access fee to an airline lounge, with aircrew sounding like SouthWest. I gave this a 6. The last was really what I get from Continental, however, the rest of the group obviously never experienced this. I gave this airline a 10, as did most of the others.

It was an interesting mix of 8. There were two guys in the hotel industry, one from the Ritz Carlton in Orange County. One female worked for Taittenger, and is now my new best friend!

Anyway, on our way out I had a brief moment to ask others, and it is the feeling between all, that Delta Airlines is the one who sponsored this meeting
They did mention that there would be more focus groups in other cities in the US.

By the way, I have practically no status on Delta. I was gold last year and was demoted to silver for this year. I doubt if I will fly on Delta this year.