Qantas Staff Travel

[Pedota]

Jet-A-One & Cart Elevator

Many thanks for your responses. I have been away for a few days and am just getting back to this thread.

In order of arrival – Jet-A-One . . . I do indeed appreciate the 50th passenger metaphor on a 50 passenger bus. There would be a very small marginal cost of carrying the extra passenger. However, the question remains how that ‘additional benefit’ should be attributed across the entire passenger group. Using your reasoning, one person should derive all the benefit.

With modern yield management algorithms and management systems these things are pretty much predictable . . . there is sufficient knowledge of the elasticity of supply/demand such that aircraft (or theatres, concert halls, etc) can be filled with highest possible yield. To charge some people the maximum possible and ‘give away’ very low yielding products/services/seats to others is one way to manage the issue, but there are others.

Secondly, to Cart Elevator’s third point . . . having a loyal staff (through incentives such as decent staff travel schemes) does in turn increase the satisfaction (and loyalty) of customers is valid. It is an excellent point . . . although I would argue that the staff (and extended family) benefits already represent an exceptional incentive.

But to your second point about full fare paying customers subsidising the staff travel scheme. I ask if someone to buy a product or service at 10% of the advertised price (plus taxes and charges) on the assumption that it is ‘at cost’, then it presumes the offering company is making somewhere around a 90% margin. My reading of QF’s annual reports (and year to date) is that EBIT is nowhere these numbers.

And to your first point . . . it is of course a folly that customers should expect the seat beside them should remain vacant. That would be unreasonable as you should only expect what you pay for.

And yet . . . this all assumes that customers do not notice the ‘on board’ shenanigans of what ‘unofficially’ goes on once everyone is on the aircraft – the flash of the staff card, the nod/wink, late shuffling of seats such that ‘persons unknown’ are mysteriously provided with additional benefits. For example, you wouldn’t expect all the J passengers to be ‘crammed’ together (albeit in their very expensive and luxurious $6,000 seats) so that mysterious others have the benefit of a lots of space, would you?

Is this a wind up . . . I can assure you it is definitely not. But am I asking that ‘full service’ airlines deliver against their purported value proposition – yes, because it is is all our interests.

To both Jet-A-One and Cart Elevator, I rather liked Caneworm’s comment “always reckoned this would be a great job if it wasn't for those pesky passengers” – and have you ever thought about the real meaning behind the rather amusing term of “self loading freight”?

Happy to continue the conversation.

Best to all

Cheers

Pedota