The Culture Of Demand Chapter 9: The Powerless Passenger Can Demand?

The manufacturer and the airline controls ticket prices for what is provided, all the passenger can do is shop cheap airline tickets online. The limits of passenger demand is from what flight outbound has the cheapest seat and then it must suffer its outcome because trains and buses are pure torture and not convenient for world travel.

Premium Economy Class seats for former Business Class passengers.

The passenger pushes an airline by not filling an airplane up on a particular route. If the airline can’t fill its seats regularly, it will eventually cancel the route offered, and the passenger then must find a plan “B” for its travel options. The airline is a groping monster looking for a way to make money for its stockholders. If it can’t cram passengers on-board, then it will cancel the offer entirely. Passengers remain glued to ticket price in the process, and has little to do in a product demand participation. 

Most airlines want to upgrade its business class at the expense of a first class section. So the wealthy passenger who may look at price for bragging rights within its own friends circle has lost its power of demand for a sensible ticket deal and has been downgraded to business class offering. Where the business class is downgraded and enticed into Premium Economy and so forth.

Once again passenger demand has little power in commercial aviation. Most manufacturing giants of aircraft brag about three metrics, flight range, customer capacity and fuel efficiency. Airbus has gone five inches wider than Boeing, and markets that point as the main reason to fly with an XWB Airbus. What does 5” really mean to the passengers? Start with dividing a 9 seat row and duo aisles by 5 inches. These eleven units mentioned are from the 9 seats and two aisles and can amount to an average of .45 inches in expansion width for each seat or aisle width for the equation. A 16.5 inch wide seat on a 787 could also be about 17 inches wide seat on an Airbus A-350. A 20 inch wide aisle on a 787 can also be a 20.45 inch wide aisle on an Airbus A350. It amounts to finger's width advantage for the Airbus for each passenger. Don’t even talk to Airbus about having 8 across seating. It about the number of passengers it loads on its “extra-wide-body” aircraft.

Boeing with the 787 dynamic went for efficiency improvement at every corner and remained resolute that it built the 787 for the passenger's travel senses when applying every technology it could muster. Electronic lights, dim-able large windows, and LED lights to name a few. They pioneered breathable air with a 6,000 foot cabin pressure rather than having a 8,000 foot cabin atmosphere. However, they had Airbus at every corner so Airbus went wider than Boeing in its medium wide body.

Boeing also is offering the 777X by 2020. It will be wider than either the Boeing 787 or Airbus A350. The passenger reward for this feat could be 10 across seating by some airlines. The passenger will have no say with this airline demand, because both manufacturers are playing the customer card with the airlines, presenting a profit machine based on seats possible. It won’t be a manufacturer problem but an airline problem for how many seats it orders up for its delivery aircraft. Needing to go to Australia for the lowest cost is a passenger problem. The Airline has to pay for the airplane costing $350 million, so the passenger must pay for this large flying and seating arena. Once again if a passenger needs to get there, they will pay and that’s the airline’s demand. The manufacturer once again is in the business to sell a profit machine pleasing both the airline and its passengers. It falls on the airline to stuff how many seats in each aircraft delivered, and it’s the passenger who demands a low ticket price. 

The passenger surrenders its demand power in place of a low ticket price. An extra wide 5 inches in the cabin is pure marketing genius which the customer won’t analyze when looking at its ticket receipt. Airbus has done an excellent job of a knock-off of the 787 with its A350. When in fact both types are once again, just "profit machines" for stockholders. There is a point in this discussion passengers are just lemmings lured to the edge, with who has what for a travel pleasure at the lowest cost, and this idea trickles down into the single aisle market.