Last month, the Cranky Flier clarified the main reason why people seem to hate airlines. Inconsistency…as he goes on to point, the easiest way to provide consistent service is to keep your rules as simple as possible. We would choose to elaborate on the word simple. Simple in this case is a clear and consistent fare platform, baggage policy, and so on. Not just having these rules in important, but adequately relaying them to your passengers.
Airlines like Southwest and Jetblue have one set of fare rules, for example, no matter what you pay. With the legacy carriers, depending on the route you take, you might pay change fees anywhere from $0-$200, most often lower on routes they compete on with the low-cost carriers. It is easy to get upset with an organization that has so many different charges for different situations it changes from trip to trip.
Communications consistency is the hallmark of the customer service experience. To use the example of one airline executive…if an airline says it provides blankets…not only had there better consistently be enough blankets to go around…but when the question of whether we have blankets is raised to an employee over the phone, at the airport, or on the plane…the answer should be the same…People can learn to live without blankets…people find it harder when they were promised them by an airline employee. Obviously, this applies to more than blankets.
The Cranky Flier went on a few days later to comment on Air Canada’s way of solving its collection of differing fare levels and rules. It grouped them. Their new fare structure consists of five different fare groupings. In the lowest tier, Tango…you pay $34(US Dollars) plus any difference in fare for changes, $120 flat fee for changes on the day of travel, $12 for advance seat selection, and earn 50% of your traveled miles in their frequent flyer program. In Tango Plus, you earn 100% of the miles, seat selection is free, and the same day change fee is $40. The remaining classes, Latitude, Latitude Plus, and Executive Class have no change fees, and offer increasing options, like the possibility of a full refund, priority baggage, and food options. You can even receive a discount for not checking bags.
We agree with the Cranky Flier…it makes sense to tailor tickets to each person’s needs. We tend to object to Ryanair’s approach to this because of the misleading nature of their ala carte pricing scheme. There are long lines of people waiting to pay their baggage charges at airports. You cannot pay them for a higher level of service.
We like the idea of starting with a standard base fare that changes based on availability, and having the restrictions of the ticket as definable price add-ons to that, all clearly available and explainable. It would make the fare buildable like a custom computer website. Click the options you want and it assembles your ticket at the end. In the ultimate end to that system, someone booking earlier when there was more availability could get a refundable ticket with all the frills for the same price as a last minute purchaser of a barebones ticket. Perhaps a startup airline with a brand-new reservations system will give it a try.