US Air just announced that they are dropping inflight entertainment from all domestic flights. According to the article inflight entertainment systems are simply too heavy and removing them will save the company $10MM a year in fuel costs.
Airlines executives want us to believe that fuel costs and labor unions are the reasons why their companies are failing and that it has nothing to do with gross mismanagement or making consumer unfriendly choices. Like taking out inflight entertainment.
I know absolutely nothing about running an airline or US Air's operations. But I do have Wikipedia and a calculator.
According to the US Air Wikipedia entry the airline has 3,500 daily flights. The also have their fleet size:
- 196 - A319/320/321s
- 9 - A330s
- 81 - 737s
- 42 - 757s
- 10 - 767s
- 16 - Embraer 190s
Using the airplane configuration information, the average narrow body plane has 132 coach seats on it. This means that US Air is saving $0.06 per passenger by taking out inflight entertainment. Remember: this isn't US Air charging for the service, they are flat removing the equipment.
This of course assumes that no revenue will be lost from passengers choosing a different airline and that there will be no cost associated with removing the equipment.
As I said, above, I don't know much about running an airline, but I struggle to see how this can be anything but shortsighted anti-customer decisions caused by gross incompetence in management.
A much better solution would be to ground the entire 737-300/400 fleet, and cut the thin routes they serve. These are the older generation 737s that are far less fuel efficient than either the 737 NGs or the A320 series. For the 757 fleet they should invest in winglets like CO and AA have. They cut fuel consumption by 5-7%. At current fuel prices, it doesn't make any sense to put anything but the most fuel-efficient planes available in the air, but there are much better ways to do it than ripping out the crappy entertainment systems.
The sad part about the airline business is that as much as people bitch and moan about poor service the average leisure traveler will, at the time of booking, behave completely irrationally to save a few bucks. I've heard from insiders that Expedia actually had to tune their algorithms to prevent people from booking SEA-LAX via an east coast hub just to save $20 over a direct flight. The mere fact that it would take nine extra hours to get to LA wasn't enough to dissuade them.
Posted by: vengroff | July 09, 2008 at 10:46 PM
To their credit US Air has installed the winglets on he 757s (at least according to Wikipedia). WIkipedia also says that US Air can't furlough their 737 Classic fleet like United because the unions won't let them.
Posted by: rdicker | July 09, 2008 at 11:07 PM
CO has had the winglets for ages, I've always kind of wondered why other airlines were so slow to follow. That said, I bring my own entertainment and food on every flight because I'm picky and don't so much want to watch Catwoman while eating mystery meat. My macbook has enough battery power to watch itunes TV shows from EWR to SEA nonstop. Hello 4 hours of House MD ;)
Posted by: wendy | July 10, 2008 at 05:59 AM
US Airways has a long way to go with winglets.
The original motivation for the 757 winglet kits was to extend the plane's range, as opposed to saving fuel on routes already in range. The goal was to support transatlantic service to secondary markets like MAN and DUS (and arguably PHL on this side). CO went heavily into these secondary markets out of EWR and ended up adding winglets to most if not all of the fleet. US Airways initially bought winglets for only seven 757s to support these routes. I'm not sure if they have done more since, but they still fly a bunch of them without winglets domestically. I saw one at SEA yesterday.
Winglet kits are also available for the 737 classics, though they are smaller than the 737NG winglets. But they could still help a lot if they have to keep flying those older models. The only problem is the kits are close to $1MM per plane installed and US Airways may not have the spare cash to buy them.
Posted by: vengroff | July 10, 2008 at 10:16 AM
I think you calculation assumes that there is no cost to having the inflight movie systems. I'm sure that in addition to the fuel costs to carry it, they have to pay to lease the films. My assumption is that enough customers weren't purchasing the $5 headsets to offset the leasing costs and providing the entertainment was no longer a large enough benefit to persuade customers to fly with them. (As I'm sure other customers like you either watch media on their laptop, or rent the inflight DVD players and watch the movie they want to as opposed to the latest G rated edited film)
http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2007/04/22/british-airways-battles-virgin-atlantic-by-editing-richard-branson-out-of-inflight-movies/
Posted by: Rob LaRubbio | July 10, 2008 at 10:45 AM
That editing out richard branson link is too funny.
Posted by: wendy | July 10, 2008 at 11:38 AM
I just got an email with the subject "An open letter to all airline customers" signed by CEOs of most of the major US airlines. It reads, in part,
"Speculators buy up large amounts of oil and then sell it to each other again and again. A barrel of oil may trade 20-plus times before it is delivered and used; the price goes up with each trade and consumers pick up the final tab. Some market experts estimate that current prices reflect as much as $30 to $60 per barrel in unnecessary speculative costs."
If this is really the case then here's my suggestion to the airlines: buy your fuel from speculator number one in the chain instead of number twenty. That way you don't have to pay a cut to the other nineteen. If the price really goes up each time its sold to the next speculator in the chain, then why buy from the end of the chain? Even better, buy it from the producer that speculator number one buys from.
If these guys are as clueless as the above quote suggests what are they doing running multibillion dollar companies? Winglets aren't going to help.
Posted by: vengroff | July 10, 2008 at 03:39 PM
Pretty short-sighted, and it will cost them in the long run as peoples fickle "impressions" of the airline are going to be altered to the negative.
Thankfully, I don't have to travel anymore, and I don't choose to fly at any time. (I think that had to do with their strip-searching my 2 year old at the airport :)
Posted by: Pam T | October 26, 2008 at 05:13 AM