Airlines’ next move: charge passengers by the pound?
What’s next for the cash-crunched airlines seeking new revenues: charging people by the pound perhaps?
“You listen to the airline CEOs, and nothing is beyond their imagination,” David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association told Bloomberg. “They have already begun to think exotically. Nothing is not under the microscope.”
Bloggers are having a grand time merrily debating whether this be the airline’s next step.
“I think we all knew this idea was going to float to the surface,” wrote travel columnist Jeanne Leblanc. “As if we were fright. Oh wait. News flash. We ARE freight.”
As far-fetched as the idea may be, it has come up before.
Another travel columnist, Al Lewis, almost two years ago suggested that the move would solve both the airline’s problem of “customers of size†as well as those carrying too much baggage.
“Considering that two-thirds of Americans are overweight, I am certain most people would NOT like the idea of charging by the pound. But airlines need to do something now that more of us are super sized,†he wrote.
With fuel costs tripled since 2000, Airlines’ recent and creative ways of cutting costs have included:
.US Airways has eliminated snacks.
·Delta Air Lines Inc. is charging $25 for phone messages.
·Southwest Airlines is flying slower — by 72 seconds, for example, on Houston-Los Angeles flights, which now take 3 hours 14 minutes. That saves 8.7 gallons of fuel for each of the airline’s four daily non-stops on the 1,387-mile route, or 34.8 gallons a day overall, said a company spokeswoman.
·American Airlines has switched from using on-board power units that draw down jet fuel while planes are parked at gates to electrical generators on the ground, said Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association.
·Some airlines are also cutting back on planes. American, for example, said up to 45 planes, most of them aging Boeing Co. MD-80s, would be dropped from its 655-jet fleet along with as many as 40 aircraft from its 305-plane Eagle regional unit.
Southwest comes closest to charging for weight, asking passengers to buy a second seat if their girth prevents the armrest from lowering.
But joking aside, could fares based on a passenger’s weight be next?
“If you look at the air-freight business, that’s the way they’ve always done it,” said Robert Mann, an aviation consultant. “We’re getting treated like air freight when we travel by airlines, anyway.”
David
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