According to USA Today, QANTAS is eliminating their First Class sections on all but the Airbus A380 aircraft in their fleet.  Going foward, QANTAS will be selling Economy, Economy Plus and Business Class seating.  Certainly this strikes me as pretty smart.  It’s expensive and difficult to chase after first class passengers and those first class passengers are few and far between these days. 

Notably, the airlines that have made their business class sections their top offerings are also the airlines that have captured a great deal of lucrative business traffic.  Business class *is* first class if we’re in 1995.  It’s way better than what we called first class in the late 1970’s / early 1980’s. 

I’ll also point out that one of QANTAS’ best competitors, Air New Zealand has pursued this strategy for years quite successfully.  Continental Airlines has a very loyal group of passengers and has done quite well with it too. 

The number of people who might be upset at there being no First Class offerings on an aircraft can be counted on one hand and certainly don’t offer a very good return on investment when one considers the cost to create the offering on the aircraft and then pursue the customer. 

Why are they keeping First Class on the A380’s?  I suspect its for a couple of reasons.  One, they can probably capture some first class traffic on those “capital” routes.  Two, the product is brand new on the A380s and they likely don’t want to have to go through the expense of refitting those aircraft.  Three, the A380 isn’t exactly demanding more space for business class customers right now anyway.   Will it go away?  Probably but only when a refurbishment of the aircraft is called for.

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