This past Saturday, I took my parents to the airport and saw them off to Hawaii to celebrate their 30th anniversary. I know they’ve been looking forward to this trip for quite some time, so it was frustrating to watch them deal with so many problems as the booked it and prepared to leave.
They went through a lesser known online travel agent and saved a bundle. Of course, when the travel agent “accidentally” contacted them with a better offer three days after they paid, they weren’t too happy. Had they waited three days, they would have saved several hundred dollars and had a much more convenient flight back (no long layovers in California). The agent apologized profusely; first for confusing them with the second offer … then for the fact that their original trip was nonrefundable and they couldn’t get a price adjustment for the better trip.
Not a good start.
But the clincher was the airline. Northwest Airlines has been one of my favorites. Then again, I was stuck on one of their planes for a 14-hour trip to Japan. It was incredible, I was happy, and I was absolutely in love with their service. Flash forward to now and my parents’ trip. First, they weren’t given seats together. The NWA website listed available seats that they could choose from. Since they are, of course, travelling together, they wanted seats together. Well, NWA gave them seats nearby … one seat right in front of the other in the middle of two subsequent rows.
Not the best “couples” flight plan. Oddly enough, though, both rows were (according to the website) entirely empty. My dad could easily book the seat next to my mom … for an additional fee. No, I’m not joking. There’s a fee if you want your two seats together on a nearly empty airplane.
The next fee they faced was at the airport. We all expect to pay extra fees when we check additional bags, right? Well, NWA now requires a fee to also check your first bag. That’s right, $15 each for your first checked bag. Carry-on luggage is still allowed … but it’s limited in size and weight. When you’re travelling for a week, the tiny carry-on restrictions are prohibitive. An overnight bag works just fine, but after 3 or 4 days I guarantee people will get tired of that outfit. Trust me, I’m speaking from experience here.
Any industry faces the following stages in its life-cycle:
- Birth – the industry is new, customers are relatively unsophisticated about products, and the market is small
- Competition – the industry has grown to several firms, customers understand products and features, the market is large and profitable
- Maturity – industry competitors have stabilized to a core group, customers’ tastes have shifted from a feature-focus to a cost-focus, the market is beginning to wane
- Commoditization – industry competitors are stable and indistinguishable, products compete almost entirely on a cost basis, margins are thin and the market is taken for granted
- Reformulation – either the industry collapses, or is reborn into something new.
Until a few years ago, the airline industry was relatively commoditized. It didn’t matter which line you flew, because the service offering, price, and overall experience was nearly identical for each airline. Customer loyalty was determined by frequent flier miles, not any particular brand story.
Now, though, the airline industry has obviously entered a period of reformulation. Companies are merging and addressing their positioning in the market anew. Fee structures, once a stable foundation among the entire industry, differ drastically from one ticket counter to the next. Even the traveler experience has changed – when I flew across the country a few months ago it was two short, 2-hour flights … with meals on each. My parents’ 5-hour flight to Hawaii did NOT include a meal at all. Sometimes its the smallest luxury that makes the difference between a positive experience and a negative one.
The point of today’s post was to observe a single experience with an airline: the incomprehensible fee structure of Northwest Airline. This post also paints a (very) rough portrait of the current condition of the flight industry – a picture of an industry in chaotic times of reformulation and reformation. Where will the industry move from here? Will they start the industrial life-cycle again at the beginning, or come into it somewhere in the middle? Either way, I’ll be looking for a more efficient way to pack my carry-on bag from now on.
