Low-Fare Airlines Try To Look Grown-Up Struggling Carriers Spiff Up, Offer More Options
Some of the airline industry’s youngest members, fighting for both customers and respect, are trying to act more grown-up.
Struggling low-fare carriers such as Western Pacific and Vanguard are revising strategies built around casual, leisure-oriented marketing strategies and bare-bones service.
They are putting workers in more dignified uniforms than the casual garb that Western Pacific marketing chief Mark Coleman describes as “near grunge.”
They’re adding assigned seating options and joining travel agent reservation systems rather than relying solely on cheaper in-house bookings. Vanguard, based in Kansas City, is adding legroom in a bid to woo business fliers. Western Pacific, now in the process of merging with Denver-based Frontier Airlines, also has introduced “hearty gourmet” sandwich meals.
Once the merger is completed, it will ditch a “logo jet” program in which corporate sponsors use WestPac 737s as flying billboards. One is festooned with images from the Fox TV network’s “The Simpsons” program.
Atlanta-based ValuJet also is considering product changes as it prepares for a holding company merger with the parent of Florida-based AirTran. ValuJet will adopt the AirTran name and erase its cartoonish “critter” logo.
ValuJet in June joined two computer reservations systems used by travel agents, breaking from its past strategy of strictly in-house bookings to avoid system fees and agent commissions.
ValuJet spokesman Gregg Kenyon said the carrier isn’t yet ready to discuss service changes that will accompany its name change.
“We’re looking at a number of options,” he said. “With the rollout of a new name you really have a chance to step back and consider everything.”
While travelers love low fares, many “feel more comfortable on a more traditional airline,” said Coleman, part of a new management team at Western Pacific, which has limited service to Atlanta. “That’s not to say it has to include every single aspect of major airline service.”
Indeed, these moves hardly spell the end of the no-frills approach. Low-fare success story Southwest Airlines still makes money with open seating, bare-bones service and a carefully cultivated offbeat image.
But unlike many of the newer low-fare carriers, Southwest avoids head-to-head competition with major airlines at big airports, where the contrast between a no-frills operation and the businesslike trappings of a megacarrier is more apparent to travelers. It also has a quarter-century track record of solid operations to prevent any negative association between no-frills service and questions of reliability or safety.
“Southwest is in a niche of their own and they have that (colorful CEO) Herb Kelleher mentality that no one else seems to be able to quite latch onto,” said John Presburg, vice president of the consulting firm Aviation Systems Research.
Delta and United airlines have started low-fare, low-frills divisions to compete with Southwest in Florida and California, respectively. But even with those operations, service and image distinctions from the parent carriers are subtle.