Disney fans might recognize that title. I guess you could say that I have Disney on the brain after last week’s podcast episode on my other site. Moving on…
Last week I traveled out to our office in L.A. For the first time in a long time, I flew on US Airways. The flight down took place in Feburary, which meant that if I wanted a can of pop, I’d have to shell out $2 for it … which I thought was crazy. (Although, not as crazy as dishing out money to use the restroom.) The return flight took place in March, when the airline reversed their decision to charge for pop, so I enjoyed all the free drinks they’d allow. I have to be honest, I didn’t want anything to drink on either flight home (two legs of the trip back home) but out of principle, I ordered something anyway.
I think its interesting to see how quiet airlines are right now. A year ago at this time, we couldn’t avoid hearing about their woes brought about by (according to them) high fuel prices. To combat the higher fuel cost (over the last few years) they’ve increased fares, reduced flights and began to charge for things like the ability to take luggage with you (unless you’re one of the MANY people that now crams it in the overhead compartment as a way around it). However, today, none of those decisions have been reversed – even though fuel is less expensive again. I understand that these decisions are designed to improve profitability – but it seems that a few of them (namely the luggage one) should be reversed, much like the charge for pop was on US Air.
Oddly enough, outside of people talking about this at terminals, very little chatter appears to be present on websites and blogs that I frequent – suggesting that we’ve either adjusted to it or we’re OK with the price models in place now.
And its not as if airlines don’t have a way to measure this. Certainly they have their own customer service reporting tools but they have all new metering systems available to them, like twitter! When news about Ryan Air’s consideration of charging for restroom use hit the media, twitter lit up with feedback. Like or hate their idea – you have to admit that market research like that is quite powerful! Unlike US Air, they don’t have to enact the change to figure out how people are going to react … they can just read through the twitter stream to get a sense of it. — What an amazing, powerful and inexpensive way to conduct market research (although I’m stopping short of calling it “good” until I see if the phenomenon caused an increase or decrease in flights and customer perception in the marketplace).
Moving on…
A co-worker traveling with me snapped the following picture in his exit row seat. I get what they’re trying to say here, but I think its a really funny sign nonetheless.
Finally, let’s talk a second about “zones.” A lot of airlines have gone to this as a new way of loading the plane. If you haven’t seen this yet (and if you only travel Northwest Airlines – that’s probably you) the idea is that your ticket has a zone number on it. When your number is called, you get on the plane. Simple enough. Its just like “boarding rows 1 through 10″ just faster to say over the P.A. system.
One would assume that zones match up with segments of rows (like rows 1-10; 11-20; etc.) or types of seats (exit rows, window seats, etc.) – but they don’t always seem to follow that logic. Infact, I couldn’t figure out the logic to it at all in any of the 4 flights I took to get out to L.A. and back. I compared zones with people around me and on other parts of the plane and found no pattern to them … other than they appeared to want me to get on the plane last – no matter where I sat.
I guess that is a pattern, isn’t it. 
What people here are saying…