Should flyers be moved to unused premium-economy seats?
By B.R.
LAST week, a fellow Gulliver posted a story about how United Airlines, seemingly everyone’s least-favourite full-service carrier, is slowly becoming less awful. Among the general gnashing of teeth and the horror stories that were posted in reply to the piece, two readers voiced the same, specific beef against the airline. In the comments section, one complained of how a family of four had been placed at the back of an otherwise empty plane. When they asked whether they could move to better seats they were told that it would cost them $120. Another responded to the article by posting a picture on Twitter of a half-full flight with the gripe that “Empty econ+, but @united stews won't let pax sit there unless pay $”.
Coincidentally, a long-limbed colleague had recently shelled out for a premium-economy seat on a Delta flight from Orlando to New York. When he got back to London he cornered me in the office and launched into the sort of angry “I’ll tell you what you ought to write about” conversation that business-travel bloggers must regularly endure. My colleague had been outraged when, just before take-off, a man in the cheap seats asked the stewardess whether he could nab the empty seat next to him. The stewardess happily agreed. What was the point in paying an extra $50, he moaned, if you can get the upgrade free, just by asking? It made him feel “a schlub” for paying the premium, he said.
How to deal with empty premium seats presents airlines with a dilemma. My colleague was being irrational—but then, as behavioural economists are always telling us, consumers do tend to be. Being over six feet tall, he had decided that $50 was an acceptable amount to pay to guarantee a comfortable flight. He should have viewed that decision as being independent from the good fortune of the upgraded passenger. Yet, it piqued his sense of fairness—just as leaving the seat unused would have irritated the people at the back of the plane. Their argument would have run that the airline was being unnecessarily spiteful in confining them to the horrors of non-premium coach class when, for seemingly no extra cost, it could have bestowed a nice surprise upon one of them. (In fact, the Delta stewardess seems to have broken the airline's own rules on the matter. In its FAQs, it states "passengers may not select complimentary Delta Comfort+ seats while on board, regardless of elite status or fare class".)
Traditional marketing theory suggests that airlines should concentrate on keeping their most profitable customers happy—even when their complaints are irrational. In any case, the marginal benefit of upgrading a passenger would seem to be small. Those flying at the very back of the plane overwhelmingly tend to choose a flight based on its cost and convenience. Giving one of them a nice warm feeling by conferring a bit of extra comfort is unlikely to change that—unless he then decides that the premium-economy experience is so luxurious he will pay more on future flights to guarantee it.
A preferable course of action for airlines is to reward frequent flyers with the upgrade at the desk—that way the schlub who paid extra won’t get resentful, knowing the person next to him had secured a bargain. But the best way of all to deal with such spare capacity is to auction it off. In the not-too-distant future, this could be done even up to the point that the plane starts to taxi. Amadeus, a travel-technology firm, is already developing an app that will offer flyers a chance to bid for empty premium berths on their smartphones. This will be made possible by using beacons—small location devices—embedded in aircraft seats. Put-upon passengers will no doubt bemoan the loss of one of the last ways they can get something for nothing. But at least those on both sides of the premium divide would no longer be able to moan about fairness.
