What is an airline selling these days?  Food?  Baggage transportation? In flight entertainment?  Mood lighting?  Opportunities to upgrade to business class?

It’s kind of hard to tell these days what an airline is selling with the dilution that has occured as a result of de-bundling services.  The truth is, airlines are more frequently in the news for some subsidiary service they’ve de-bundled than they are for their primary service product.

The primary service product is transporting passengers reliably between point A and point B and if you don’t do that, no manner of any fees is going to make you profitable.  It won’t matter how many channels of TV you have if the customer can’t get where he/she is going on time frequently enough to build trust, you aren’t going to make a profit.

Think I’m wrong?  Ask yourself why Southwest succeeds with a very basic service product even compared to many other LCC airlines. 

It’s about the customer getting where they want to go when they wanted to get there, stupid.

Filed under: Airline Fees, Airline Service by ajax