Glamour appeal

I think that’s more Economics than Mathematics, Mongu.

I agree with tenthije. But not only that, another reason the airline business has lost its glamour is because about 20 to 30 years ago, human rights were only just kicking off properly. Back then, the airlines had the prettiest stewardesses, where as now because its discrimination the airlines have to employ some ‘fat todger from the local doughnut shop’. That has made flying far less glamourous. Not only this, but the low cost has created a whole new thinking to the airline world. For example, British Airways have one staff to every two passengers. Ryanair on the other hand have one staff to every 30 passengers. thats cost saving for you, but if ryanair and other budget airlines keep ‘biting the fingers’, in other words pushing the limits of the aircraft, crew and other people then something will go wrong unfortunately. The maintenece and other things should be done far better than the low cost airlines do maintain their aircraft. Now im not pointing a finger at any airline (cough eas… cough), but I have very good first hand experience from that last sentence.

Glamour as described by the Longman dictonary:

“The exciting and charming quality of something unusual of special, with a magical power of attraction.“

With this in mind I think that aviation has already lost most of its glamour. What remains of the glamour will be retired in a few months. Yes… I am of course refering to Concorde.

Nowadays people are no longer in awe when you fly. Even if you were to fly 1st class the reaction is not to large anymore. Perhaps for a minture or 5, but then the awe gone, and the conversation switches to football.

Perhaps the private jet can come close to the glamour appeal of Concorde.

Originally posted by KabirT
Ultimate issue is profit yes….but if they neglect customer satisfaction they cannot earn a thing!

But that isn’t the case, is it! Ryanair are the best example I can think of.

Conversely, Sabena was a great airline which shot itself in the foot.

To be honest, I reject the tags of “low cost” and “full service”. They’re just inaccurate and outdated descriptors.

All airlines exist on a service continuum with low cost at one end and full service at the other. Stray too far to either end of the contiuum and you will go bankrupt. Airlines position themselves on that continuum as they see fit. Using the notion of a “continuum” it would be easier to describe an airline according to colour I think.

Ryanair = brown
Emirates = yellow
Others are somewhere in between.

The same continuum idea applies equally well to cost structure. If I ever go into management consulting, I’ll probaby write a paper calling for colour convergence between service and cost continuums! I see lots of possibilites for taking a mathematical stab at this – any comment, GD?

I don’t fly loco’s (one time I flew Southwest to Vegas and one time Virgin Blue to MEL), but when they come into a market, the biggies lower their prices. When Jetblue started their JFK-ONT non-stop service, UA lowered that fair by around $100US. Now, they didn’t pull cutthroat, predatory tactics, a la AA, by ‘suddenly’ introducing non-stop JFK-ONT service to compete, they just lowered the fair (not quite matching, it was still a little more) on the JFK-LAX-ONT and the JFK-DEN-ONT run. I was very happy, as I used to frequent that route on UA, and my cousins were very happy as they started frequenting it on Jetblue. Back to AA. When Jetblue opened up a mini-hub in LGB, all of a sudden, AA started serving LGB-JFK non-stop, to compete directly with Jetblue. A few years back, Legend airlines took a few DC-9’s, put an all business setup in them, and started flights from Dallas Love Field (not DFW, where AA is based) to LAX and IAD. Well, guess who goes and outfits a few F100’s with an all business setup and starts flying from Love Field to the same 2 destinations, yep, good ol’ AA.

Ultimate issue is profit yes….but if they neglect customer satisfaction they cannot earn a thing!

Well without getting into a whole new issue, the whole point of an airline is ultimately to make a profit.

If you’d rather not make a profit you can always go down the Cubana or Communist-era Aeroflot route.

Perhaps not from the passengers perspective but from the airline employees point of view the low cost carriers are butchering employment terms and conditions. Now the trend thay have started is spreading to the higher quality operators.

I disagree.

The “class” of First and Biz travel has never been higher. Economy has been elevated to new highs through Economy Plus cabins.

Economy is better than at any time in the last 30 years, although I suppose not as good as in the 50’s.

Low cost carriers have not caused the loss of glamour; the original cheap and cheeful airlines were the charter airlines!

Agree

I couldn’t agree with Kabir more!

1L

Re: Glamour appeal

Originally posted by Gaurav
Do you think commercial airlines are loosing there glamour appeal. Ive started this thread via another thread

if u mean the class of air travel, then yes you ccan thank the LOCO’s for that.

Depends what you mean? I would say a lot of the small things airlines used to do to make you flight enjoyable has all gone as the airline business is now cut throat business as everyone fights for survival prices come down and so does the quality of the service.