Are We Being Served?

It’s the natural extension of the much-discussed ancillary revenue trend: extra legroom, bags, upgrades, lounge access, Wi-Fi, meals, even non-middle seats – let alone partner offers like hotels and rental cars – are up for grabs in this brave new world.

Yet even as airlines worldwide race to unbundle and monetise the passenger experience, Qantas and Virgin Australia are emphasising the bundling of their basic economy fares on key routes, with complimentary entertainment, food, beverages and more. Is Australia an inherently unique market that values extras? The rise of Jetstar and Tiger would suggest not. So is rebundling a temporary adjustment to Australian aviation, following the end of the decade-long virtual monopoly on premium traffic enjoyed by Qantas, set to disappear when the more lucrative end of the market is no longer lured by free meals? The duopoly created by Virgin Australia’s Tiger takeover and Qantas’s release of some leisure-heavy routes to Jetstar would suggest that the group-brand segmentation strategy might havelonger legs here than in the US, UK and elsewhere, with the notable exception of Japan.

No matter where passengers are, though, selecting an airline can be tricky. Conventional wisdom suggests that price is the main factor, with schedule following close behind. A $50 fare from Sydney to Melbourne looks a lot less attractive if you need to be at Kingsford Smith at zero dark thirty, with a knee-crunchingly torturous hour’s flight to follow.

But most passengers only know airlines by reputation, and can’t cross-compare what they’re looking to purchase. And if an airline is offering the moon on a stick but delivering a lollipop, passengers are inherently disappointed by their experience. “Oh,” they think. “That flight wasn’t great, and I forked out an extra $70 for it. ” Regular travellers understand that Qantas and Virgin both offer a bit more comfort: a standard 31in seat pitch, with Jetstar at 29in (28in on A321s) and Tiger at 28in. But seat pitch itself isn’t widely understood, which adds a layer of impenetrability for practically anyone who doesn’t read Australian Aviation. It’s even more confusing with new slimline seating, where seat thickness can mean the difference between a Qantas experience and a Jetstar experience at knee level.

At the end of the day, it’s hard for travellers to know which passenger experience they’re buying. That works in the favour of airlines with strong brands – especially towards the low-cost end of the market. Compare Ryanair’s incessant free PR gimmicks like charging for the loo, not buying pens for its workers, or stopping staff charging mobile phones at work. Stunts like that are not about cost savings or ancillary revenue. They’re about positioning the airline as cheap – and leadingpassengers to imagine that its fares (which do not appear in any aggregator) are cheap too, even though they may be more expensive on a whole-journey basis.

With the four Qantas and Virgin Australia group airlines participating in aggregators, at least the fares are comparable. Yet apart from branding, the airlines are skating close to the wind of truthfulness in their advertising.

Under a quarter of Qantas’s domestic Boeing 737-800 fleet has on-demand seatback entertainment. Yet all its PR snaps do, and the majority of the fleet is reduced to a footnote in tiny print. The two Virgin Australia A330-200 aircraft acquired ‘pre-loved’ from Emirates have loop video down back and a cradle sleeper in a 2-3-2 layout up front, but the older A330 pics have been swapped out for glossies of the newer, Singapore Airlines-style A330 business class and touchscreens in economy.

But help is at hand – or, more often, at thumb – for the less knowledgeable passenger. The explosive growth of mobile phones with cameras decent enough to provide real-world images of what’s on actual flights is already changing consumer behaviour. Aunt Raelene’s Facebook wall or cousin Jamie’s Instagram account is where flight decisions will be made before a passenger has even started thinking about his/her trip.

Are 5’11” Dave’s knees pressed up against the row in front? Does Julie’s $6 meal look like something the cat dragged in? Did Uncle Lee get left to fend for himself by that airline after yet another Sydney curfew disaster on his last business trip? By contrast: doesn’t our little angel look cute in her big girl headphones watching Planes on a plane? And look at all this food on the Emirates flight to New Zealand – in economy!Here, take a snap of me with this instant camera enjoying the stand-up bar. I’ll Instagram it later.

Increasingly, travellers’ perceptions of an airline’s passenger experience will be created outside channels controlled by the airline. That’s both a problem and an opportunity for carriers.

It’s not just about the selfies

Australia’s airlines haven’t a patch on several of their US counterparts when it comes to bigging themselves up where customers and potential customers are looking for them: on mobile devices, on computers and on social media.

Compare the extent to which American Airlines’ Twitter account, which is widely viewed as one of the best in the industry, uses jovial humour and real human responses to win and retain customers with the Qantas account, which tends to avoid dealing with customers in the way the customer chose to contact them. Imagine emailing an airline and being told you had to send a physical letter – yet that’s the equivalent of being told to “please call us” when contacting an airline via Twitter.

And even the premium airlines aren’t selling their products where customers might see them. On Qantas’s Facebook, it’s necessary to scroll back over six months to find a single picture of an aircraft interior. Virgin Australia’s first picture of its onboard product came up after a month and a half, and the second a total of six months back – both of business class. Expansive images of beaches and out-the-window shots are all well and good, but Jetstar or Tiger will get you there, and they have windows too. Premium airlines need to sell their premium passenger experience.

Selecting an airline needs to be about the carrier setting clear expectations and then meetingthem. If airlines position themselves as premium brands, they need to demonstrate and then deliver a premium brand experience rather than a standard experience, let alone a low-cost experience.

Taking the wider pool of airline brands departing Australia, it’s easy to think of airlines that position themselves as all about glitz and glamour (Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines), bringing the bling (Emirates), saving money (Scoot, AirAsia X) or unfazed, workmanlike efficiency (British Airways, Delta).

The trick? Matching those brand expectations with price, and then matching them with the actual on-the-plane passenger experience from departure to arrival, whether in economy, first class or somewhere in the middle.

In the pointy end

Up front, it’s clear that money is being spent on business and first class passengers. The aphorism that long-haul business class is today what first class was ten years ago feels old enough to be self-perpetuating. As airlines like Lufthansa drop first class from many routes, and network carriers like Singapore Airlines and Etihad advertise first class but often fly two-class aircraft with business seats that are nearly as spacious as their first class offerings, it’s relatively easy to spot the slow decline of international first.

So, international first is on its last legs, with international business class the new standard-bearer. And the new standard is the full flat bed – 180°, parallel to the floor. Business class passengers now feel disappointed by angle flat seats. Nearly 35 years ago, the first business class seats were barely recliners. British Airways’ first Club class offering was what we’d now think of as full-fare economy, not even premium economy. How times have changed.

The trick? Matching those brand expectations with price.

No wonder Qantas is replacing its own angle flats on the Airbus A330 fleet with best-in-class full flat seats, which also have the new gold standard: direct aisle access. They’re still at mock-up stage, but even now it’s certain that they’re more spacious than any generation of the Skybed, coming with enough space to work, relax and dine at the same time. And the direct aisle access means that, stealing a march on first class, you don’t have to stumble over a neighbour in the night, nor launch yourself like an Olympic pole vaulter (or weightlifter, depending) over the aisle passenger to stretch your legs.

That means, of course, that Qantas’s A330 will have better seats than its flagship Airbus A380 or steadfast Boeing 747 fleets. It’ll be interesting to see how long that state of affairs is sustainable, particularly given Virgin Australia’sneed to replace its own business class offering and since a significant number of business class flights from Australia now have full flat beds with direct aisle access.

Long-haul business class is all about the bed. If it’s comfortable, if it’s well-made, if it feels like a premium product, then meeting passenger experience expectations is absolutely doable. All an airline needs to do then is get the soft product right and they’re the airline of choice.

Which makes it surprising that premium cabin food and beverage offerings are a key stumbling block for many airlines. The trick for many carriers is to get the cabin crew to get the food right. These days, that means blanching vegetables, cooking food and plating it separately, and making the plate look restaurant-quality. It doesn’t have to be caviar and Krug in business class (though EVA Air does serve Dom Pérignon in business on its Boeing 777‑300ER Royal Laurel services) but it has to be interesting food, cooked well and served attractively. The days of the ‘doggy dish dinner’ in the expensive seats are rapidly drawing to a close.

Top airlines offer the option of eating a decent meal on the passenger’s timetable – and that’s especially important for network airlines where connecting passengers are on wildly different body clocks. And a decent meal doesn’t mean a lifeless wrap or limp sandwich, but rather something warm, filling and probably comfort food-like. Asian carriers’ noodle soups are beloved of business travellers because they have that X factor: hot, wet and umami-laden. Bread goes off, the sense of smell goes down and tastebuds go dull. It doesn’t have to be the Etihad-style on-demand menu, but it should be more than a pot of instant noodles. As in business, drinks are crucial to business class. A handy test of the amount of importance an airline places on its business class passenger experience is the champagne on offer. And a quick scan of UK pricing (Poms drink the most champers per capita, so pricing is well correlated to quality) is a reasonable cross-check for how good the bubbles are. Red and white wines need to be selected well for interesting varieties that drink well at altitude – particularly the fruitier, bolder reds Australia is famous for, and selections of the incredible variety of whites produced domestically. Both Qantas and Virgin Australia do an excellent job picking local wine, though Qantas can probably be judged a little further ahead with its champagne selections.

The 2013 crash of Asiana flight 214 showed that flight attendants are anything but the air hostesses of years past. Courageous stories of cabin crew saving passengers’ lives are not new. Neither are the stories of “here for your safety” crew who slide the fulcrum of inflight safety and inflight service to the other extreme. It’s a rare airline that wants to talk about the safety aspects, preferring instead to focus, Singapore Girl-style, on the service aspects. Yet even Singapore Airlines is changing tack, adjusting its message from pliable waifs at your service to knowledgeable connoisseurs carefully selecting your seat material, entertainment and tea varietals.

Up front on the short haul

When returning to Australia from overseas, it’s always a pleasant surprise to realise how much better domestic business class is here than practically anywhere else. Reclining seats, decent food, wine in proper glasses, entertainment and good service beat out the rest of the world.

Will 2014 be the year that passengers decide “no more” to narrow seats on long-haul?

European business class is mired in the convertible ‘Eurobusiness’ style of regular economy seats with the middle seat free. Yes, European business class flights are shorter than the coast-to-coast runs to Perth, but the average can’t be shorter than Sydney-Melbourne, where Australian airlines’ passenger experience outpaces their European cousins significantly.

In the US, domestic first class is at least a recliner seat, but the cabin is always crammed full of free upgrades, alternatively trying to avoid a heart attack from the food and spending hours on the plane with no meal. All too often it’s an experience of slugging down bargain bucket wine or bad beer from plastic cups, and hoping the flight attendants are in a good mood lest they have the police meet the plane when you arrive.

Asian regional business class is as good as it is unpredictable. Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways are renowned for their variety of fleets and the pot-luckyou take when you book a business ticket. Will you be on a long-haul business bed? Or a recliner that feels older than you are? It’s a mystery, but not a pleasant one. And the world-leading quality of economy class on all three airlines means that the impetus to fly business might not be there for shorter flights.

Down the back

Short-haul economy class is, these days, much of a muchness. That’s especially true in Australia, where the majority of flying takes less than 120 minutes. Qantas can get away with swapping QantasLink turboprops onto routes previously served by more comfortable jets because it’s just a short hop anyway.

At the other end of the spectrum, has there ever been more variation in the long-haul economy class products available on the world’s major airlines? On the one hand, Korean Air and Japan Airlines have over 34in of seat pitch and seats over 18. 5in wide on long-haul Boeing 777s. On the other, Qatar Airways’ Boeing 787 seats are under 17inwide. That’s an important difference if you’re spending nearly a day on a flight via Doha. And there’s all kinds of offerings in between, from the relative standard of a ten-across Boeing 747 to the ever-increasing number of Boeing 777 aircraft delivered in a 3-4-3 configuration.

Yet narrow seats are not new on regional flights. Cathay Pacific once operated Lockheed L-1011 aircraft with a 3-4-3 economy layout. Charter operators have added an extra seat in each row onboard Airbus’s widebodies since the A300. And the proffered rationalisation for 17in seats on the long-haul is that it’s the Boeing standard, dating back to the Boeing 707 and stretching through the 737, 757 and, after initially seeing a nine-across configuration with wider seats, the 747.

It’s hard to argue that people are the same size and shape as they were nearly 57 years ago when the Boeing 707 first flew, though. Inches taller, inches wider – have a 20-year-old stand next to a 77-year-old and see how human beings have evolved. Sectors are longer too, load factors higher, and the chance of a stretch every few hours now rare.

Will 2014 be the year that passengers decide they have had enough of narrow seats on long-haul flights? Airbus is already pushing its 18in agenda, possibly thanks to the cabin diameter on in-production A320, A330 and A380 aircraft, plus the upcoming A350 large composite twinjet. Yet no airline has stepped up to make the pledge. Lufthansa declared a forceful “nein” after launching the Boeing 777-9, as did its fellow launch carriers from the Gulf. Emirates went further with talk of an eleven-across A380 lower deck – possible in terms of certification thanks to the airline’s relatively generous 32in pitch on the A380.

Both the A350 and its Boeing787 and 777X competitors can be outfitted with the more cramped ‘extra’ seat in each row. Most 787 operators have chosen nine-across seating. Most 777X operators will likely choose ten-across on the wider 777 cabin diameter, pointing to Boeing carving an inch or two out of the cabin sidewalls as an excuse. Regardless, these layouts are pretty miserable on a long flight, and not just because of the seat width – it’s the aisle too. With narrower aisles comes more bumping into aisle passengers en route, which means the aisle person can’t do the subtle lean away from the middle-seat passenger. So a cramped situation becomes even more cramped.

The answer is eventually likely to be in the form of an adjustable seat. London design house Seymourpowell released a concept for the Morph, a seat with fabric stretched across horizontally adjustable vertical struts. It’s more flexible than Airbus’ 20-17-17 concept and, crucially, allows for flight-by-flight adjustment and the opportunity to increase revenue with ancillary charges.

Subject to certification and production, the Morph could conceivably be a successor to the winched-across physically convertible Eurobusiness seats on British Airways, where one middle seat contracts and another expands. The trick will be in succeeding where Airbus failed. The 20-17-17 concept was perceived as “making some seats narrower”, when the extra cabin diameter on an A320 would mean the 17” seats of the trio would be no narrower than on a 737.

Among a plethora of wild ideas and dearth of relatively promising alternative options is the 2011-vintage Thompson Cozy Suite, a staggered trio of economy seats with an innovative tilt-up seat pan for faster entry and egress into the row, which gives more privacy andthe extra benefit of a side headrest to snooze on.

Bread and circuses

The trend in economy is not to add space – despite laudable attempts by some premium Asian carriers – but to distract from the pain with improved entertainment. Even among the laggards, like United’s elderly Boeing 747-400 aircraft, still flying for more than half a day across the Pacific with overhead entertainment, wireless streaming products are being installed. Now all you need is 14 hours of battery life, because plugs are not on the menu. That’s one reason why seatback on-demand entertainment isn’t going anywhere fast.

Cathay Pacific’s StudioCX, Emirates’ ice digital widescreen and Singapore Airlines’ KrisWorld are firmly in the lead when it comes to entertainment systems. A new fleet helps, as does a healthy content budget. But blockbusters are not the be-all and end-all of entertainment. Hidden bonuses of the Emirates system include the extensive classical music education radio shows and wide range of world programming. On British Airways, a concert from the famous Proms is a treat. And Finnair was recently showing a documentary on the history of European holiday travel – just the kind of interesting, short and fun program to watch during dinner before getting some kip.

The inflight entertainment side of the aviation industry seems to be at something of a crossroads: increasingly powerful and wide-ranging seatback touchscreens or the “iview server on the plane” model that streams content via a wireless network. Qantas’s Q Streaming and Virgin Australia’s less-snappily monickered Wireless In-flight Entertainment systems are just fine for short- to medium-haul flights, but it’s hard to see airlines

Setting and meeting expectations is the crux of the passenger experience.

offering wireless streaming to passengers’ own devices on long-haul flights without somewhere to charge them up.

Fortunately, there is a slight up-tick in the trend of airlines having their aircraft delivered with seatback USB power for tablets and smartphones, plus in some cases AC sockets for larger devices. That won’t help if you’re trying to get more than a few hours of viewing done on a laptop, but just fling the iPad in your bag and keep it topped up to distract yourself from the fact that the seat’s so tight you can’t feel your lower legs. You probably can’t use the laptop comfortably anyway – most standard 13in laptops are just about fine to use if the person in front has their seat upright, but once the recline goes back so does your chance of keeping the thing open at a useful angle.

Please ensure your electronics are turned on

The other reason to pack a tablet rather than a laptop is that 2014 will almost certainly be the year Singapore Airlines’ 777-300 medium-haul seatthat Australian airlines allow gate-to-gate use of personal electronic devices. Yet laptops over around 900g must remain stowed under the US FAA regulations that started the worldwide wave of allowing electronics to be used.

Gate-to-gate entertainment isn’t all that new. Several airlines, including British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, allow it on flights from Australia – but it’s been surprisingly slow to spread. Being able to relax with a movie, TV show or some music in the dead time between doors closing and the 10,000ft ‘bing’ is a big plus, especially at airports with long taxi delays.

An even bigger plus will be the opportunity to get work done or continue email and short message conversations during that time as airlines start enabling their Wi‑Fi below 10,000ft. Satellite connectivity providers are already scrambling to provide the holy grail of inflight productivity: never having to be offline. New, faster Ku-band satellite Wi-Fi is receiving rave reviews from early testing in the US, with speedsin the tens of megabits per second, which is faster than most Australian home connections.

For triangle flights on Australia’s east coast, where a significant proportion of travel time is taken up by taxi, takeoff, approach and landing, the gains of being able to use electronics will be significant. Technical challenges remain, with southern hemisphere coverage among the top hurdles to clear, but airlines and travellers have much to gain.

Tell, do, review

Setting and meeting expectations is the crux of the passenger experience, particularly as airlines move away from global alliances to bilateral cooperation agreements, as smaller airlines are swallowed by larger ones or merge into groups, and maintaining a consistent experience becomes more difficult. Knowledgeable passengers can make informed decisions based on a high level of information. The trick will be enabling passengers who are currently less knowledgeable to do the same.