Do You Want Hay or Straw?

Airline travel today. Article from the travel section of the New York Times, by Michelle Higgins, November 25th, 2007.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/travel/25conflict.html

Thus airlines are increasingly cutting back services in coach or charging passengers for things that used to be free, like meals ($5 for a snack box on United) or drinks ($2 for a 16-fluid-ounce bottle of water on Spirit) or, in the case of Delta, US Airways, Northwest and Continental, starting to use narrow-body planes more frequently on trans-Atlantic flights, making those long-haul flights more cost-effective, albeit at the expense of passenger comfort.

It’s all simple economics. In January, United removed half-ounce pretzel snack mixes from the economy section of flights that are less than two hours long, about 29 percent of its flights, to save what it says is about $650,000 a year. (Cutting out pretzels has reportedly saved Northwest $2 million a year.) Meanwhile, American has estimated that it would save $30 million a year by eliminating free meal service in coach. Last September, in a move that extinguished any hope of hot meals returning to coach, the airline removed the rear galleys — including the oven — from its MD-80 aircraft and replaced them with four seats. That change, the airline told The Washington Post, will be worth an additional $34 million a year. Overall, the amount of money the nine largest passenger carriers in the United States spend on food per passenger has been slashed to about $3.40 from $5.92 in 1992, according to the Department of Transportation.

And wonder why it’s almost impossible to get a pillow anymore? Again, it comes down to money. American has said it saved $300,000 when it removed pillows from its MD-80s in November 2004. In February 2005 it began removing pillows from 737s, 757s and Airbus 300s on nearly all flights within the continental United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Mexico, with the airline explaining that the change saved it $600,000.

United says just 8 percent of its customers — the ones paying a premium for first and business class — generate 36 percent of passenger revenue. That’s why it is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade its first- and business-class cabins with lie-flat seating and other amenities across its entire international fleet of wide-body aircraft.

Industry analysts say that most airlines have rightly decided that it makes little economic sense to provide expensive perks to customers paying the lowest fares.