Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

This past year I have flown a lot, I mean a lot. Over 115,000 payed miles one United alone, 3 free flights on United, and a couple random flights on Northwest and Hawaiian. All in all about 150,000 miles spent in the air. And the year isn’t over yet!

During that year in the air there have been a lot of changes to the industry due to every single airline except Southwest loosing money because of high fuel prices. Airlines are going out of business. Airlines are charging for baggage. Most airlines have done away with free food, although that was mostly last year, this year a lot of airlines have cut out the free bag of mixed pretzel things. And, although I’m not sure on other airlines, United has cutout Champagne in first class.

On top of all these changes, routes are getting cut to reduce capacity which means crowded flights full of extremely grumpy people and long standby lists.

While these changes might be necessary to cut costs and stay in business I for one think they were poorly implemented, but that’s another story. What this article is about is why airlines aren’t doing more to produce more revenue rather than cutting costs?

Why aren’t they selling me things in the air?

First, accept credit cards, you have the persons name with more security than any other place on earth, its not a security thing, figure out how to do it. Hawaiian only accepts credit card by the way….

Next, why not sell better snack selections? I as recently on a flight that instead of $6 snack packs they sold huge pringles stacks and trail mix for $3. How about a candy bar, healthy snacks, better food choices?

Next, why not get rid of some storage that weighs 200 pounds, gotta be able to cut that out of something, and bring on board 50 personal video players all loaded with 20 movies each, charge $10 per flight to rent them.

How about you sell headphones, noise canceling. Offer for people to try some on the plane, accept credit cards, then sell them a pair.

How about other things to rent? (and that doesn’t mean pillows and blankets, what a dumb idea that was whichever airline it was)

Best idea of all to sell to this captive audience….. Don’t know yet, but be innovative, think of something, and make more revenue. Don’t cut costs to make your service worse.

I writer this while I sit on the runway waiting for our gate to open.

Why the question mark you might ask. Because if you’ve traveled on an airline lately you’ll know that most people aren’t happy. The workers or the travelers. This is something that I’ve come to know too well. Traveling for work (my 9-5) I’ve gained 1K status on United Airlines. For those of you that don’t know that’s flying 100,000 miles in one calendar year. And I made it in the first week of October.

For some this may seem cool or great, traveling for work, going to different places and I must admit, at the beginning of the year I thought is was too. But 3 months into it I was over it and now after a solid year of traveling at the rate up almost 2 weeks a month I’m getting over it. I live in Hawaii with my wonderful wife, and enjoy playing outdoors.

To top it off, all of my flights are at least 6 hours long!

That’s why I was surprised and relieved when I took part of my last trip and it seemed as though the airlines were full of joy? Every work was kind and approached me with a smile, the plane staff was extremely friendly, behind the counter, same thing! And better yet, on both of my flights I received a pilot card with a little note written on it thanking me for being an elite member. Both legs!

Now the pilot cards are nothing new, every once in a while the stewardess’ will hand them out. But two in one day, plus the happy flight staff, unreal? Maybe there was a company wide meeting at United saying we have to actually care about the people that pay our salaries. I’m not sure. But whatever it is it was great to fly with them.

I just hope it wasn’t a fluke and these people are nice all the time.

By the way, the flight was LAX to IAD and IAD to MIA.