Continuing our ‘starting an airline’ series, today we’ll focus on designing the passenger experience.
From the classes of travel you will offer onboard to the types of wine you will provide with meal
services, now is the time to consider the inflight experience, both on the ground and in the air.
Had you told an airline traveler in the 1950s that within 50 years, they might be flying on a
double-decked aircraft holding over 500 people, your comments might have raised an eyebrow.
They might have smirked had you added that this aircraft would also have a bar and shower onboard.
Passenger experience, after safety, is probably the essential aspect for your
airline to get right. Without a decent service offering, you won't have any passengers,
and without any passengers, you will quickly have no airline.
The type of airline you are proposing to operate will,
to an extent, dictate what classes of travel you might offer.
The range of travel classes you can offer will, in part, be dictated by the aircraft type or types
you intend to operate. If you are a short-haul airline with the Q400 being your largest aircraft
type, you might decide that offering a three-class product on such an aircraft is unlikely to work.
Similarly, suppose you are a larger operator with some ATR42s feeding the long-haul operations at
your hub airport. You might wish to consider how you will cater to your premium passengers
connecting from an ATR feeder route onto your long-haul first class product offering.
If you follow the low-cost or ultra-low-cost model,
your offering might be simplified compared to other models. However,
this does not make achieving high levels of passenger satisfaction any less critical.
Conversely, suppose you intend your airline to be a multi-class long-haul carrier.
In that case, your planning is likely to be far more complex,
possibly involving numerous suppliers, different aspects of crew training,
different onboard equipment, and additional marketing and pricing strategies.
What used to be the traditional model of offering first, business, and economy classes on long-haul
aircraft has long since been disposed of and is far more diverse these days.
From ultra-low-cost all economy to the likes of Qatar Airways with its Q Suites
and JetBlue with its high premium 'Mint' suites, there seems to be no fixed model.
Thus, it’s truly up to you with how you wish to segment,
structure, and develop your passenger offerings.
For every passenger whose loyalty you can earn, more money is in the marketing budget
to attract new passengers. Ultimately, and in the simplest of terms, you aim
to fill your flights with passengers paying decent fares from which you can earn revenue.
However, in some instances, you may even be forced to 'dump' seating inventory by selling at a lower
fare than your operating costs for that seat. This is a model often used by low-cost airlines,
which rely on upselling everything they can to make up the revenue earned per flight.
The upselling trend is becoming increasingly common in other market segments,
from additional baggage, seat reservations, extra leg-room, and many other 'frills' or extras that
were once included as standard. It will be up to you how your airline wishes to position itself
and how it chooses to earn incremental revenue over its seat revenue, if at all.
As with classes of travel, the world of passenger seating design and configuration
is constantly moving. Long gone are the days when all passengers faced forwards at
all times, and the only reason to leave your seat was to visit the bathroom.
Additionally, some viewers may remember when all onboard had to watch the same inflight movie
on a drop-down screen at the front of the cabin, and the cabin crew came
around with sets of rather unappealing plastic earphones that you could rent to watch it.
Seat and cabin design has evolved massively over the years. From seats that massage
you while you lie flat and sleep to those where you can dine with a fellow passenger.
Similarly, from charging your electronic devices to ordering in-flight catering
without having to press the call bell, innovation is the mainstay of cabin design,
and passenger expectations continue to be raised as a consequence.
As someone starting their own airline, decide what seating you will offer and
also closely examine what your competitors are doing in that market. Some market research is
vital to experience firsthand what passengers are currently offered by your competition.
Only by getting on your competitor's flights will you understand what is currently offered
to passengers in the market and the minimum level to which your airliner must aspire
to coax new and existing passengers in the market to try your airline as opposed to the opposition.
Trends in cabin design and passenger amenities are constantly evolving. In recent years, direct aisle
access has significantly increased in importance in premium cabins, as have privacy screens.
Offering food and beverages to passengers has always been a staple of the airline
passenger experience. Such service keeps your customers fed, watered, and ideally happy.
Onboard catering has evolved over the decades and continues to do so.
Depending on the class of travel, passengers are nowadays offered
an enormous range of inflight dining options between airlines.
The experience can vary enormously, from the 'buy-on-board' model once pioneered
by low-cost airlines but now more commonplace throughout various market segments, to the whole
fine dining service served on crisp white linen, with bone china crockery and cut glass aplenty.
Even with inflight catering, there is no such thing as standard fare these days.
Even how airline passengers order and receive their dining experience has
evolved beyond recognition in just a few years.
Innovations such as on-demand dining, in-seat ordering,
and pre-ordering inflight meals have become industry norms.
You will need to understand your passengers and their needs when using your airline's services
before you make any decisions regarding onboard catering.
Offering nothing but a beverage service on a long-haul flight
is probably not an option; neither is a complete meal service on a 45-minute domestic hop.
You will need to balance what is possible on your services
against the costs of providing such catering and the customers' expectations for you to do
so. You will also need to consider what your competitors are doing in the same market.
Not only that, but you will need to ensure a consistent product across
all of your flights and services, day after day, month after month.
As with inflight catering, the passenger's onboard experience extends to the level of entertainment
on offer. This primarily applies to longer flights,
although some short-haul airlines also consider this.
Unlike inflight catering, however, modern technology means that the provision of
inflight entertainment has lost some traction in terms of importance in recent years.
With the ever-increasing use of personal electronic devices,
passengers are becoming savvier in bringing their own entertainment with them.
To accompany this shift in behavior, in-seat power charging has also become
far more common. Nonetheless, being aware of what provision your competitors offer
will be important when deciding what inflight entertainment level to offer.
In addition to a small or wide selection of movies and tv shows,
you’ll also want to consider what music and games to offer. The ability to view a moving map within
your entertainment system might also be a nice addition for passengers to track their progress.
And of course, in this day and age, you’ll need to decide whether or not to offer inflight
internet connectivity- and how much you will charge your passengers for this privilege.
How you train your front-facing employees to engage with customers will need to be decided.
After all, it’s these employees that represent and embody your airline. Thus, ensuring they
behave and dress in a manner representative of your airline’s identity will be important.
Will your flight attendants address premium cabin travelers by name?
And will you have a high or low ratio of cabin crew to passengers?
There are many staffing-related factors that determine the passenger experience.
In the modern airline industry, no longer is it true that the passenger's experience
onboard the aircraft itself amounts to the total experience they receive.
Airport lounges are now a big deal, with airlines spending millions of dollars to
offer their passengers something different from the competitor. Indeed, with free limousine
transfers, drive-through check-in services, exclusive lounges, and valet airport services,
the passenger experience on the day of travel can start when they leave their front door at home.
Even if your airline decides against the heavy investment in lounges of its own
for premium passengers, you might consider using third-party lounges or even paying
other airlines for your passengers to use their lounges. This is standard practice
amongst the major alliance groups, although it is not limited to them.
If you find your airline flying into a part of the world where the justification
for building your lounge can simply not be found, this might offer you a workaround
so that your most valuable passengers feel as though you are still looking after them.
Similarly, arrivals lounges have become popular, too, offering your passenger a
wash and brush-up before heading away from the airport. Again, the time available to
impress your passenger has increased, although so has the time to potentially disappoint them.
Like a complicated jigsaw puzzle, every part of this service needs to be seamless,
fit nicely to the next part of the journey, and create an
overall picture of your airline to that passenger that will impress them but also entice them back.
A passenger's opinion of your airline is formed with every contact they have with it.
Should you elect to offer additional services on the ground and in the air,
consistency in quality will be important.
However, it needs to be restated that the passenger experience begins
way before that person comes anywhere near your aircraft or even the airport. Some
parts of the early passenger experience include a user-friendly website and online booking facility,
as well as a helpful customer service team- reachable by phone or email - or even in-person.
Similarly, you’ll want to think about whether or not you want to offer a loyalty program for
your airline. After all, passengers who travel regularly will be more likely to
give your airline their loyalty if they feel it is well-rewarded, whether through upgrades,
frequent flyer mileage points, or other benefits.
Although seemingly a nice-to-have bonus, frequent flyer programs are a multi-billion
dollar business. To compete effectively with others, your airline needs to be in
the game with its own program - especially if your airline is a full-service model.
Passenger experience and maximizing customer satisfaction are paramount for your airline.
Your aim as a service provider is to manage what is known as the expectation gap.
Your airline should be providing everything that your passenger expects as a minimum,
and ideally going beyond that level each and every time someone chooses to fly your airline.
After all, falling into the expectation gap, where your passenger comes to you
expecting one thing and getting something less, can be devastating.
From the first visit to your website to a butt sitting in one of your aircraft seats,
these are your airline's opportunities to excel and to win over that passenger,
while ensuring that they never consider flying on your competitors again.
Of course, if you are aiming at the budget market, you position your airline and its product to
appeal to that particular type of traveler. Managing expectations here is also vital,
as narrowing the expectation gap means that you can still achieve high levels
of customer satisfaction without having to provide expensive frills to your service.
Through intuitive marketing and promotion of your offering, passengers will know what to expect and
be grateful when they receive just that. If they experience more than they expected to,
you have done your job and your airline's long-term survival prospects improve
with every satisfied customer disembarking one of your flights.
Next time, we examine other critical services that are required to support
a fully functioning airline business. From fuel to food, and from handling to baggage services,
we will cover all of these (and more) in the 8th episode of this series.
What kind of passenger experience will your hypothetical airline offer?
And what will make it unique? Let us know in the comments.