Close User Name Password
Login Register
Travel alerts straight to your inbox:
 

Tags: / / / / / /

WestJet Figures Out Way To Monetize Empty Seats

Where: Canada
October 26, 2009 at 4:29 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

For one reason or another, Canadian low cost carrier WestJet flies planes to Hawaii at less than full capacity. Being an airline, and an LCC at that, they've naturally come up with a way to use that reality to charge passengers. Customers who prefer to have an empty seat next to them - and who doesn't - will now be able to pay to lock in that privilege:

WestJet’s simple solution is to leave the middle seat empty in the first eight to ten rows of its Boeing 737-700s flying between Calgary and Hawaii. The company says there will be a small price increase for passengers wanting the extra elbow room... The empty seats are actually necessary to make the flight to Hawaii... The company’s 737-700s have been flying the shorter non-stop route between Vancouver and Hawaii for several years now. But the airplane... can’t make the longer flight from Calgary to Hawaii with a full passenger load because of range limitations based on the fuel it can carry.

We'd actually be willing to bet that the empty seats have a good deal to do with travel downturn as well. Of course all we've got to go on are WestJet's lowered earnings and tenuous market position, coupled with ongoing insider skepticism about their reporting habits. So maybe it's purely the fuel thing.

Either way, the motive doesn't really matter. Neither does our nagging feeling that this is somehow unfair. What matters is that - like so many other airline revenue-boosting schemes - this is a customer service disaster in the making.

Has anyone at WestJet considered what will happen when they inevitably fly a half-empty plane? The airplane will be divided between all the people in front who paid for their empty seats and many people in the back who just got lucky. It seems like in this situation WestJet's top "premier" passengers - the ones willing to spend the most and the ones the airline wants to retain - will resent having paid for something the plebes got for free. Resentment makes a poor foundation for brand loyalty.

[Photo: gloom / Wiki Commons]

Related Stories:
· Airline Leaves Middle Seats Empty [Wided Autoia]
· WestJet Coverage [Jaunted]
· Airline News [Jaunted]

0 Comments

Post a Comment

Return to » WestJet Figures Out Way To Monetize Empty Seats

Leave a Comment

Not yet a member? Click here to become a member.

Already a member? Log in below:

Comment with your Facebook account.