Study Shows Lccs Outshine Legacy Carriers

[goingboeing]

Don't blame him, he is just going with the flow. My best guess is that 9 out of 10 current employees . . . Don't!

I agree and there are a lot more of us than the drinkers of AA management kool-aid. AA managment created the work enviornment necessary to receive these ratings. During the leadership of Robert Crandall we consistently received the # 1 or 2 position most years. I guess the positive spin is we are #1 with another 1 immediately behind it.

 

[JS]

Very simple . . . . Revenue! Oversales generate revenue that the airline gets to hold on to. They fork over a voucher and hope the holders don't use them. The passengers may be stuck at the airport, but the airline gets the revenue!

Not just oversales, but overbooking generates additional revenue. Many, many more flights are overbooked but still go out without being oversold due to no-shows.

JetBlue is stupid for not overbooking. Eventually they will wake up and do it.

 

[FA Mikey]

Funny, but it was the award to Jetblue that got all the publicity. Every major paper, and hundreds of local TV stations mentioned it. And yes it is based on the DOT data--which is available to all. But that means all the other airlines can see it and choose (or not) to try and be at the top of those rankings. The new boys on the block, and Southwest, are trying the hardest apparently. Hat's off to USAir, the top ranked of he majors (they came in fifth). Meanwhile, since Jetblue doesn't overbook, they're always going to win the denied boarding category. But as they point out, it also makes for less stressed-out gate people, who therefore are likely to be nicer to passengers. Simpe, yes? So why don't the big guys smarten up?

As I am sure many point out its the no show factor. Perhaps there is a different reason for them not over booking. If they are not seeing a loss in revenue and therefore dont see the need. Come December AA will over book flights to CCS by over 500%, and we will still go out with open seats. If they didn't over book, we would be flying 10 people on a plane that we thought was sold out.

 

[Whadayano]

"JetBlue is stupid for not overbooking. Eventually they will wake up and do it."

I don't think so. Remember the Jetblue ticket is non-refundable. You can pay a $25 change fee, and bank the rest of the ticket price as a credit for a year. But they keep the money. And if you do no-show, they keep the money and give you no credit. Then they turn around and offer a no-extra-charge "early flight home" to the guy who got to the airport early. That's some extra good will. Once again they come out looking good to the customer. That's what its all about. Meanwhile, in the transcon battles, Continental said their transcon revenue was running 35% lower a seat mile thanks to the transcon wars--and they don't even fly to JFK! How much do you think AA's transcon RPM is down? 40-50%?

 

[JS]

"JetBlue is stupid for not overbooking. Eventually they will wake up and do it."

I don't think so. Remember the Jetblue ticket is non-refundable. You can pay a $25 change fee, and bank the rest of the ticket price as a credit for a year. But they keep the money. And if you do no-show, they keep the money and give you no credit. Then they turn around and offer a no-extra-charge "early flight home" to the guy who got to the airport early. That's some extra good will. Once again they come out looking good to the customer. That's what its all about. Meanwhile, in the transcon battles, Continental said their transcon revenue was running 35% lower a seat mile thanks to the transcon wars--and they don't even fly to JFK! How much do you think AA's transcon RPM is down? 40-50%?

Even better is to keep the money from the no-show's ticket AND sell an overbooked ticket to someone else to occupy that same seat.

The other airlines manage to simultaneously overbook and offer same-day standby (or same-day confirmed on Delta). Amazing!

 

[AAquila]

Is there a lesson here?

 

[Wretched Wrench]

I guess we should feel thankful to be only seventh in pay, instead of eleventh like our rating.

 

[orwell]

Very simple . . . . Revenue! Oversales generate revenue that the airline gets to hold on to. They fork over a voucher and hope the holders don't use them. The passengers may be stuck at the airport, but the airline gets the revenue!

Are you complaining?

Revenue is something that will help lower the risk of "returning to the concession trough" that you ominously warned of in an earlier post.


The bottom line in these surveys is, as always, that price is king. If a passenger pays a fare lower than their IQ to go coast to coast and their flight is 30 minutes late and they eat nothing but a bag of blue chips, they will nonetheless rate the experience higher than an on-time flight replete with rack of lamb and other amenities for which they had to pay a few hundred bucks.

Perception=reality and the perception is that cheap fares=better service. I'll bet cheap fares could even trump safety considerations in some people's books.

 

[mweiss]

...the perception is that cheap fares=better service.

Nope. The perception is that cheap fares=less service. Thus there are fewer things that can go wrong, due to less complexity. This tends to result in met expectations more often, which leads to happier customers.

 

[Ch. 12]

The fact that JB doesn't overbook and still has extremely high LFs comparatively tells me that they are doing something right to ensure that not too many seats are spoiling. They had an 83.4% system LF on no overbooking yet AA had a 75.2% domestic LF with overbooking. It is proven that overbooking increases LF as that is the basic principle of it. BUT...apparently people are more likely to follow through with their plans on JB.

Service differences, perhaps??? Why aren't people as committed to AA as they are to JB?

 

[WingNaPrayer]

Service differences, perhaps??? Why aren't people as committed to AA as they are to JB?

Because they KNOW that AA overbooks, and that their chances are much greater for getting bumped on AA than they are on JetBlu.

Many passengers make it their business to know what the invol ratio is on flights they anticipate taking, and after a bit of experience with a carrier on a specific route, it's not too hard to remember which flights are constantly overbooked vs. which ones aren't.

 

[Ch. 12]

Because they KNOW that AA overbooks, and that their chances are much greater for getting bumped on AA than they are on JetBlu.

Many passengers make it their business to know what the invol ratio is on flights they anticipate taking, and after a bit of experience with a carrier on a specific route, it's not too hard to remember which flights are constantly overbooked vs. which ones aren't.

I don't buy that people are calculating invol ratios on AA's flights and that is the determining factor. The very frequent business traveller that is the group that takes the same flight every week and would actually perform such analysis are the same travellers that AA brags that they hold onto b/c of superior FF programs and onboard services. The population is also small enough that it would not cause such a disparity in LFs unless MOST business travellers were leaving AA for JB. There is definitely much more to the issue than calculating invol ratios.

 

[TWAnr]

The fact that JB doesn't overbook and still has extremely high LFs comparatively tells me that they are doing something right to ensure that not too many seats are spoiling.

Cherry picking dense routes comes to mind as something that JetBlue does right. My uneducated guess is AA's load factors are not that different from JB's on routes where the two compete head to head.

Where would we be without full service airlines that fly more than just the most popular routes?

 

[mweiss]

TWAnr, the implication of your suggestion is that the popular routes are used to subsidize the less popular routes. If so, then overall as a nation we'd be better off without these subsidies, even though the people who lose service would be worse off.

 

[TWAnr]

Mr. Weiss,

I was not addressing the issue of revenue, only that of load factors.

Routes where the traffic is low, the load factors are at or below average and the competition is thin generally generate higher average fares than do the densely traveled ones. Just ask anyone who regularly flies in and out of medium and small sized cities and rural areas.