Tuesday, August 26, 2008

More United Airlines Stupidity

I've written before about a stupid decision made by United Airlines to try and save money. It appears they are at it again with announcements that United Airlines will no longer offer complimentary snacks to economy class fliers across North America. After this, they will no longer offer free meals in domestic business class flights, and eventually end all complimentary meal service in economy class on select European flights. On top of this they will be raising prices of food you can buy on board.

On my recent trip to New Orleans I flew on two different airlines, and was very disappointed to find out that on US Airways they no longer offer complimentary drinks, not even water! American Airlines still offer complimentary water/juice/soda/coffee, but no longer complimentary snacks. This causes me to compare these recent flights to airlines such as Horizon, which not only offer complimentary beverages and snacks, but even have an offering of complimentary beer and wine. It is these little things that often attract me to these airlines.

With a lot of these airlines taking away complimentary snacks and even complimentary beverages, I think it would have been much smarter for United Airlines to keep their offerings intact. At least for me, it is very easy to spend 5-7 dollars extra on an airplane ticket and get a complimentary snack/beverage when I am already paying 300-400 dollars on the ticket itself. When I get onto an airplane I would much rather not be bothered with things like worrying about bringing enough singles to give the flight attendant exact change for the "jumbo" cookie that looks semi-appetizing. Let me pay for things in as few transactions possible, it just feels like I'm paying more if I have to pay a few different times.

Via FastCompany

1 comment:

Lloyd said...

You will also want to check out this Harvard Business Review podcast episode: LINK