American Airlines spokesman Virasb Vahidi (official title: Chief commercial officer). It’s his job to try and make palatable Ameican Airlines finding yet another way to charge people for something they were getting for free before.
American has decided to charge customers anywhere from $19 to $39 for seats in the first few rows of coach. They’re no wider, they don’t have any more leg room. Yet they’ve decided to dub them “Express seats,” because apparently if the airline is running late (and American has one of THE worst on-time records in the industry) they decided that travelers with tight connections should have to pay extra if they want to be able to sit far enough forward to compensate for American’s timely ineptitude.
So how does Mr. Vahidi put a positive spin on this? “Express Seats highlights American’s focus on offering customers what they value most. This is another great product under the Your Choice program that puts more travel choices in the customer’s hands.”
No, it doesn’t. It takes OUT of the customer’s hands the option of being able to sit forward in the plane without having to pay through the nose for it. It’s not as if they’re giving you a huge discount if you opt to sit in the back. They’re just trying to put a shining veneer on a steaming pile of crap.
PAD
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There’s already one of the smaller short-haul airlines in the UK charging for use of their toilets during the flight.
One suspects it’ll only be a matter of time before sitting on the inside of the aircraft carries an extra comfort tax. ‘For those who decide they don’t want a place in our outside cabin, we have the luxury interior version…’
Oh, thanks. Can’t wait for them to think this up themselves, huh?
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I’d be seriously tempted to piss on the locked door and let them deal with that. Make NOT providing bathrooms a more expensive proposition than leaving them free.
There was an actual commercial some 20 years ago about an airline wondering “what’s next” and showed the bathroom door that needed 2 quarters to get in. And the guy was so desperate to find change he was begging people to give him first 4 quarters for a dollar then 2 quarters for four dollars.
I think the airline John Mosby is talking about is RyanAir. Its president also proposed building planes without windows where people would travel standing up… luckily state agencies forbide it. For now.
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Its been a few years since I started to see some companies charge more for “preference tickets”. The only difference with regular ones is that you get into the plane first, via a different line, so you get to choose where you sit (and who you sit with, if you travel with someone else. The “regular” line becomes a rat race where shoving and name calling are not unheard of. Like with PAD’s case, they are charging extra for something (choosing your seat) that travelers usually could do for free and in advance.
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Funny thing is, its the exact same system they had in the Soviet Union. My aunt visited the URSS years before its disintegration and trains had that exact system. Who’d knew they were such brilliant capitalist innovators.
Yes, I know about some companies with preference tickets (such as Southwest, for instance.) It’s just that what really gets me about American is that a big reason one would feel the need to sit forward is if you have a connecting flight, and American’s on-time performance is abysmal. Of the twenty major carriers, they typically rank around number seventeen, with at least one flight in four running late, and sometimes as much as one in three. And their answer to this problem is to profiteer off passengers who are trying to compensate for it? To my mind, they’re just providing additional incentive not to take American.
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PAD
There’s nothing quite like having to continually pay more for less.
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In this case, it’s a case of paying more for absolutely nothing. This is not going to help anybody get to their destination faster, or help them become on time more often.
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They might as well call these what they are: “Yet Another BS Fee Seats”.
“They’re just trying to put a shining veneer on a steaming pile of crap.”
Always amusing to watch jokers like Virasb Vahidi trying to polish a turd.
Oh, for the days of the Civil Aeronautics Board and for regulating the airline industry. Sadly, those days are gone forever.
I remember thinking after 9/11 that with the airlines in disarray and near collapse, this was a chance to change how we fly, to make flying not just safer but better. It astonishes me that since then, it’s only gotten worse and worse for passengers, that the airlines really don’t care how much most of us hate flying now.
I just had to write a paper on the airline industry for my masters (went back to school in my late 30s).
I used to hate all the airlines and the hastle at the airport. If times wasn’t a factor I would take a train and relax.
I discovered that when you factor in inflation and doing some research about what other countries charge in flights and service, America isnt that bad off.
There is a little joke in the airline industry that a millionaire is a former billionaire who invested money in an airline. Okay its a small joke and maybe I didnt tell it right, but the point is that airlines are super expensive to run and produce very little profit.
I think we Americans are just used to paying less and getting a ton more for our money. We used to pay a flat fee and get hot towels and Meals and movies and animal crackers and sodas and access to the mile high club and drinks and….. now we just get a quick flight from point A to point B (you can insert your joke about how “quick” the flights are with delays and such, but still quicker than driving).
Americans also bìŧçhëd when the gas went up so high, but we have always paid unrealistic gas prices. Our European brother and sisters pay through the nose in gas prices.
I think the golden age of flying is over for Americans its the same wake up call we got when we realized cigs can give you cancer, an all meat diet is bad for you and sex can kill.
I am more than happy to pay a little extra when I look at the same level of service and cost over seas and see that America is still pretty cheap.
But I do have one awesome idea. The worst part of the flyings is the little seats (like 60% of Americans I am overweight and uncomfortable in the airlines seats) Lets pump knockout gas into the cabin and just knock us all out for the bulk of the flight. We wake up feeling refreshed and happy that we are almost landing and didnt have to fight with the fat guy next to us for room. Sure there will be some deaths related to alergic reactions, but I think that will be a low and acceptable number.
The recurring comparison of gasoline prices between Europe and North America is a fine example of figures not telling the whole story. Yes, their energy prices are a lot higher. Note, though, that their economies have, on the whole, not been doing as well as North America’s. I wonder if those high energy prices have something to do – albeit only in part – with that? Too, many of those countries IMPORT oil. Canada exports the stuff. This means we have more than we need. Shouldn’t we therefore pay less? Supply and demand and all that? Finally, many (most?) European countries can be driven across in a day. Some, in an afternoon. A tankful of gas can get you from one end to the other. How many tank fulls does it take to get across the U.S. or Canada? The higher gas prices are partly compensated for by the shorter distances a lot of people have to travel.
“In America, they think 100 years is a long time. In Europe, they think 100 miles is a long way.”
Its not just american airlines.
I was amazed a few months ago when i flew Southwest. They offered a service (forgot what it was called), where i could pay 10 bucks extra per seat, and we would get priority seating. When i was told about this from the SW ticket seller, she informed me that its basically a standard fee now, so if i DIDNT order the priority seating, i’d almost be guaranteed to get the LAST seats on the plane since everyone else pays for the priority.
thats just a sneaky way of charging 10 bucks more a seat, in my opinion.
Odd, I flew four separate flights on Southwest last month, and all of them were full or close to it. I didn’t order priority boarding on any of them, and yet still got either a mid-to-high A or very low B boarding number on check-in (and none of them were right after online check-in opened up 24 hours before flight time) and got a nice midway back window seat in every case.
Maybe your flight was an exception.
To quote Kevin Drum:
“To summarize, then: (1) Airlines spent years hassling customers about their carry-on bags and persuading them to check their luggage instead. (2) After that finally started to work, they suddenly began charging for checked luggage. (3) As customers scurried to adapt once again, overhead space disappeared. (4) So now they begin charging for early boarding to avoid the crush of bags in the overhead bin.
“Has there ever before been an industry that’s so actively tried to pìšš øff their entire customer base? You almost have to admire it in a Bizarro-capitalism kind of way.”
But they know it works because North Americans are great at complaining, but not so great at actually doing something about it. For example, do you really think we’d be getting hosed with extra fees at the bank if the first time a bank had set some, their entire customer base had fled to another and told them why on the way out? But, no, the sheep put up with it and now we’re all getting screwed.
I don’t hold the airlines entirely to blame for this. We have shown as a traveling public that we will endure almost anything to save $5 bucks of an air ticket, leading the airlines into a race to the bottom.
On average, it costs $.15 to fly someone a mile (varies according to fuel prices and other things, but we can use it as a baseline). Using that amount, a trip across the US costs the airline $375 one way/$750 RT (2500 miles). Yet, I can buy that roundtrip ticket for $280. How is this a viable model? But, if the airline were to try to charge an actual fair price to make a profit, no one would fly it, complaining the airline was gouging them on the fare. So, the airlines are left to pull crap like this is order to get revenue per passenger up.
I’m not a big fan of government regulation per se, but at this point they really need to step in and set minimum airfares pegged to actual costs/mile. The problem is that would be so politically poisonous it won’t happen.
I don’t see any benefit to the consumer in having the government step in and make it more expensive. It’s easy enough for me to avoid these charges; I take my business elsewhere.
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If the day comes when money is no object I’ll just fly first class, though, since I generally just sleep all the way when flying it’s unlikely the day will ever come that i pay more for sleep.
Unfortunately, at this point some level of regulation is the only thing that may save the people and the airlines from themselves.
If the current path follows unchecked, the most likely scenario is bankruptcies and consolidation reducing the country to one to two major airline conglomerates (we’re close now) that will not face significant competition and prices will end up significantly higher than with regulation.
It’s important to note that unlike other industries, the airlines are an important economic engine besides just revenues and taxes. Airlines provide a solid base for both tourism and business growth in areas. Let’s face it, as an East Coaster, if I want to vacation in California, I am flying there and back unless I am retired..
I’m convinced airlines use imaginary numbers when setting their fares. Otherwise, how is it that the last time I flew from Ottawa to Brazil it cost me approx $1800 return, but when I inquired about a one way ticket to Montreal from Ottawa (a two hour drive) a couple of months later I was told it would be a little under half that at $850 ?!
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Yes, there’s reasons why I considered flying such a short distance. Won’t bore you with them and I’m not sure you’d believe them anyway. 😎
I’m a bit curious about that average and what it includes. Do you happen to have a link? Because it seems to be me that a plane that seats 300 that’s full versus a quarter full is going to have a wildly different cost per passenger. So, for example, if a rich guy charters a plane to fly himself from NYC to LA, is seems like the cost per passenger is going to be well over a dollar a mile after paying for the pilot and crew, maintenence, and fuel. Does that get factored into the average?
I stopped flying American after a luggage incident.
I didn’t mind so much that the luggage arrived damaged. Accidents happen, my clothes and other goods were intact, etc.
But I asked casually at the desk how my hard suitcase got its corner smashed in. They had absolutely no idea. Wherever it happened, however it happened, it was taped up and sent on its way.
Then I asked how replacing it was handled. I actually had to take the case to a repair shop specified by the airline, have them certify it irreparable, then tell the airline the specs of my suitcase so they could send me a new one. Not the same brand, just one with the same dimensions and etc.
Pardon my French, mes amis, but bûggër that noise.
Jeff makes a good point. There are three ways to make money in business. 1) sell more 2) cut costs 3) borrow other peoples money (bank loans, bail outs), but three always has to be paid back.
Airlines are selling more services instead of giving them away.
Cut costs – but unions make it hard to cut saleries and benefits. Otherwise they cannot cut in many other places.
There is a fourth way that you did not mention. One that is a cornerstone of capitalism.
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4) increase your customer base.
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This can be done in multiple ways. One is to offer better service than your competitors. Unlikely as it seems that this would work for American, they could do an overhaul of their practices and advertize, “On Time, Every Time.” Or, put on their website a “Day’s Since” tracking counter that keeps track of how long it has been since they lost someone’s luggage.
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Another would be to innovate and provide an additional service that no one else offers. Once upon a time, it was unheard of for a car to come with a drink holder. Now, it is uncommon for one not to. If American could come up with a low cost something that no one else offers, they could draw customers with that feature. Maybe headphones built into the armrest that tunes to satalite radio? Or, a DVD player built into the back of the seats?
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A third way would be to find a way to insulate the cabin so that active electronic devices don’t affect the instruments. What would happen to the first airline company who is able to honestly produce a commercial where a passenger is told by an attendant that he does not have to turn off his iPod / PSP / etc.?
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A fourth way to increase the customer base is to redefine who your customers are. American Airlines ships people from location to location. Why stop there? Why not offer air freight from airport to airport? Price it as cheaper than FedEx, and advertize that the lower price is because it isn’t shipped to the door. How many FedEx or UPS customers might be willing to save a few bucks by asking their friend or relative to drive to the airport to pick up their package? How many of us already have to drive to the FedEx or UPS warehouse in order to sign for packages delivered while we are at work? I know that I’d love to be able to go to the airport at any hour of any day, rather than have to be home, or arrange to get to the warehouse during business hours.
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Going back to the lost luggage idea, above, how about assigning everyone a tracking device keyed to their luggage? Something like people put in pets, or in children’s cell phones. That way the passanger can look and know that their luggage is on the flight. And, if it isn’t, they can tell someone before take off so that the problem can be corrected. Sure, it would cost a lot at the outset, but this is the kind of thing that people would pay extra for, and therefore it would eventually pay for itself, and generate revenue going forward.
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There are a lot of things that airlines can do to increase their profits. The problem is that it is easier to simply raise prices and/or create additional fees to effectively raise prices while being able to advertize otherwise.
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Theno
“Maybe headphones built into the armrest that tunes to satalite [sic] radio? Or, a DVD player built into the back of the seats?”
Huh. the last few times I’ve flown with Air Canada, they’ve basically had just that. You could use your own headphones, or buy a set from them for 3 bucks. There was a touchscreen on the back of every chair that offered music, movies, some simple games, and television episodes.
Just an FYI on the iPods etc issue. The primary reason for the restrictions on electronics is not due to interference (cell phones, yes). For other devices, its a matter of safety.
The majority of survivable airplane incidents occur at takeoff and landing altitudes, however in these situations there is often little time to react. In the event of turbulence or other problems, first, items become very solid, and in some cases very heavy projectiles (think laptop to the head). Two, if you have headphones in rocking out to the latest Katy Perry pop ditty, you are not hearing any safety or emergency announcements.
In the event of turbulence or other problems, first, items become very solid, and in some cases very heavy projectiles (think laptop to the head).
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Perhaps they should hand out helmet to all passengers just in case. Hey! They can charge for them!
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PAD
Liam – Are those functions actually available? Last time I made the mistake of flying Air Crud a year ago a lot of them came up “This function is not yet available” and even some that were left something to be desired. Trying to have a look at the Map caused the system to hang, for example.
Yeah, the stuff that’s supposed to operate in real-time still seems not to work, at least as of two weeks ago. The map function did kind of hang the system pretty badly, didn’t it?
They still had a relatively diverse selection of TV episodes and films that appeared to function fairly well. My fiancee availed herself a bit; I either slept or played games/read books on the iPad.
In a discussion among colleagues yesterday, there was a general agreement that despite her myriad flaws, we’d much rather take Air Canada over most US airlines, especially US Air, United or American.
That being said, the last non-AC flight I took was with Continental two years ago, and I don’t recall anything unpleasant. I’ve also never flown WestJet, etc, and I’ve heard better things than I have about AC. Most of my flights are done with an AC-affiliated rewards program.
I hate that kind of marketingspeak. They always use the same key words like “choice” and “value.” Ugh. I find it very creepy.
They apparently are trying to follow the lead of sports stadiums, which in the past decade or so have set up seating prices designed to squeeze as much extra revenue as possible out of the seats. Remember when there used to only be three or four price tiers at, say, a baseball stadium (Box seats, grandstand and bleachers)? These days, a typical ballpark will have 20 or 30 price tiers.
When I was checking it online for my flight to San Diego last month, I re-checked the seat map to see if there was any chance of changing my seat in order to get out of the dreaded middle seat (this was on Continental, BTW). There were exactly three other seats left on the flight, all of which were middle seats. And one of them was flagged as a premium seat that I could have for additional $69. Now I can understand (but don’t agree with) why airlines will charge you for a better seat that you could have previously got either by booking MANY months in advance, by simple luck or a lot of cajoling. But for the life of me, I can’t possibly understand why a middle seat, in the middle of a packed section could possibly justify an extra 70 bucks.
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I think the next logical step is that the airlines will start charging for ANY seats on the plane. If you want to sit, you pay extra. Otherwise you have to stand and hold one of those stirrup things for the entire flight like you do on the subway.
Otherwise you have to stand and hold one of those stirrup things for the entire flight like you do on the subway.
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I think some airline from Japan was trying to give that serious consideration. But it was more about ‘standing seats’, where they strap you to a board, rather than a chair or something.
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I’m sure the airlines would make everybody stand if they could, but that won’t happen. Hëll, they can’t keep people who are sitting in their seats to stay buckled to prevent injuries during turbulence.
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But it’s certainly all about how many sardines you can cram into the can now.
My stock response about air travel in 2010 is this:
I have family who live in Maine. I haven’t been up to visit since 2004. I’d like to make the trip in 2010. I’ve previously flown from BWI to Portland and from BWI to Manchester, NH. Nobody runs a nonstop from BWI to Portland and there’s almost always an issue with the connecting flight on the return trip (one year, it was cancelled and the passengers were put on a bus from Philadelphia to BWI. Another time, it was cancelled and the next available flight was five hours later). BWI-Manchester is a nonstop, but then there’s either an expensive bus ride to Portland or you rent a car for an hour.
The distance from my house to my sister’s is about 500 miles. That means the round trip would be about two and a half tanks of gas in the newest car I own. Two and a half tanks of gas is a lot cheaper than round-trip airfare and two car rentals. Plus, I can pack whatever I want and not have to worry about it getting lost, and it doesn’t cost extra. Sure, it’s a twelve-hour drive, but I think at this point it’s preferable to flying.
Clearly, this is a policy designed to level the playing field on “The Amazing Race”. And on that level, I like it. I’m getting sick of scene after scene of contestants telling counter-people, “And we want a seat as close to the front as you can get!”
Amazing how the airlines think a business model based on driving away business is a viable option.
Sure, for a lot of people driving or train is too slow for their vacation/business plans to be an option, but they are going to slowly kill their non-vbusiness/non-emergency customer base, then they’ll complain about how they’re going bankriupt and need a government “bailout”
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