Meeting expectations

But while bigger jets can make for a better passenger experience, it’s not all sunshine. Qantas’s Perth business class lottery needs sorting pronto, with its ridiculous “no, it’s not a middle seat, it’s a work table” offering interspersed with Mark I angled lie-flat Skybed sleepers – providing neither consistency nor any fare differential.

Virgin’s offering is less mixed, with the two ex-Emirates A330s (VH-XFA and -XFB, which stand unofficially for “Awful” and “Broken” thanks to their geriatric looped entertainment and shonky dispatch reliability), mixed in with the three-nearly-four fantastic new birds, with class-winning on-demand entertainment and the deservedly vaunted Weber 7811 lie-flats up front.

Predictability and product consistency is what passengers want, helping them to plan ahead and maximise sleep on what are probably the world’s worst red-eye flights from west to east.

No passenger wants to scrutinise weeks of traffic data and compare aircraft registrations with a list of seat maps to figure out what sub-type they’re most likely to end up on.

And even relatively infrequent passengers notice when their experience doesn’t match up with glossy PR shots on their airline’s websites or the holiday snaps on Aunt Raelene’s Facebook wall.

The fact that consistency in 2013 looks to be better than before is mainly a criticism of the current and past years.

Qantas’ Sydney-Perth passengers in the last year could have ended up on a two, three or four-class 747, two flavours of international A330, two flavours of domestic A330, various elderly (and even hand-me-down) 767s, 737s or even a Jetstar A320 if they booked without looking carefully.

Both Virgin Australia and Qantas could usefully take a consistency leaf from competitors on a different set of miserable red-eye routes: British Airways and Lufthansa across the Atlantic.

BA’s compact, fully flat forwards-backwards Club World seat has been eclipsed by the competition but is still a praiseworthy product. And it’s on every British Airways longhaul flight, save the New York JFK-London City all-business seats that run with ex-Concorde flight numbers.

There’s no “you pays your money, you takes your chance” on BA: it’s a consistently okay product with consistently predictable food and consistently grumpy staff who are consistently better than any of the US competition.

Similarly, Lufthansa’s much-derided angled lie-flat sleeper was long-haul fleet-wide. Sure the seat was consistently missable, with consistently whimsical food, consistently efficient service and the consistent snores of middle managers from Stuttgart with their heads tilted back on the angle. But that’s what you got and as Europe-bound Australian business class passengers know, Lufthansa’s pricing is keen compared with the more luxurious competition.

These are the lessons Australian airlines need to learn: consistency of product makes for customers whose expectations are met, almost regardless of whether that product is good or bad.

If Qantas would just announce “Yes, all domestic business seats will be recliners, but fares will drop in price” then passengers would know what to expect, and the airline would be free to meet those expectations well.

Similarly, Virgin can’t meet passenger expectations when it advertises the Singapore Airlines-style lie-flat Webers with all the latest touchscreen gizmos, but travellers end up in the ex-Emirates recliners with middle seats and just looped video two-fifths of the time.

Economy’s fortunately more consistent: A330 seats in a 2-4-2 layout with a spacious width of over 18 inches and roughly the same amount of legroom for all.

The pity of the hard product situation is that the Perth run is precisely the mid-haul market where airlines can shine with soft product and service flair.

Examples could be an “afternoon nap” branding for westbound flights, “second bedtime” for Sydney or Melbourne departures at stupid o’clock in the morning, or BA New York-style full pre-flight dining in the lounge.

Feature entertainment on flights long enough to actually watch a full Peter Jackson movie could merge with passengers who’d like to select a “snooze zone” (with eyemask and pillow), “movie zone” (with inflight popcorn) or “work zone” (with regular crew coffee and water runs) in economy.

But before airlines get creative with their soft product, they should get consistent with their hard product. Passengers like it when they know what they’re going to get.

John Walton is an international aviation and travel journalist. A lifelong expatriate, global nomad, airline connoisseur and enthusiastic polyglot, John spends hundreds of hours in the air and hundreds of days on the road each year. John’s specialties are inflight product, airport lounges, the passenger experience, business travel and premium cabins. Find him on Twitter: he’s @thatjohn.