Crisis aftermath: Airlines out scapels to cut costs and increase revenues

Airlines "penny pinching" is something we're familliar with. The industry has always been, in those highly contested cutthroat markets, caracterised by either negative bottom lines or relatively low profit margins, say less then 5%, excluded the "norms defying carriers" that are Ryanair and Southwest of course.

The current crisis has severely hit the major airlines, and the latest results published do not smell good at all and they confirm that the industry still has to fight to survive the impact of the recession. Air France-KLM, Lufthansa, American, SAS, BA, JAL.. etc, have all posted net losses for the last three quaters. IATA has recently predicted that airlines could loose up to 12 billion US Dollars this year, which comes after a nearly $16 billion deep hole digged by the financial crisis in carriers' pockets last year. When combined, 2008-2009 results could reach  $28 billion, which would give the industry's its worst biannual performance ever.

Although analysts say the recession is bottoming out and that we've seen the worst of it, airlines are still looking for safe harbors. We were used to measures such as alliances building, layoff, salaries freeze, benefit limitation, fleet simplification, e-booking-checking, Demand/Capacity ratio adaptation, carry-on limits reduction, turnaround times minimization, outsourcing, fuel hedging and so on. This is on the cost side of the equation. They also started to charge checked baggage, even Air france. Air France? Yes you heard it well.  They are charging everything they can and they all seem to head toward no frills or "no free meal" policy. Who is to blame? soring oil prices and weakening demand, mainly in premium passengers segments.

We can understand that can't we? YES WE CAN. These are strategic reasonnable steps a business can be forced to in order to keep running. But, airlines are now coming out with scapels to cut costs and fill their pockets, and they are reaching unprecedented steps.

Read this. An carrier in China has recently required from its passengers that they relieve themselves before boarding, to, they explained, "reduce the cost of powering the flush of toilets" at high altitudes.  You better not eat too much sauerkraut before travelling with that airline. Another airline in the US proposed to suppress videos on its domestic flights, officially to reduce aircraft weight.   How much pounds does a video set weight? I hope they did not expect to lure anybody with that big lie as at the same time, they reveilled figures showing that the number of passengers willing to pay for headphones were droping dramatically, whereas they still have to pay patterns to broadcast films onboard. The weight of cattering carts and pillows are also questionned by some carriers. Other have decided to suppress seatback pockets to speed aircarft cleaning and again reduce weight. An airline has even thought of stripping the paint off its aircraft and to increase the frequency of engine wash. Another is thinking of reducing cruise speed to safe fuel. What about paying to use the toilets? the idea is progressing within the industry. And the cutting edge of all this new costs saving and revenues genration"battle", is the idea that passengers could be charged based on their weight. Just go to the following website and have a bit of a yellow laugh and turn green http://flyderrie-air.com/.

Ok, now that they are cutting flights and putting basic amenities at stake, aren't passengers going to  find themselves in a situation where they receive less services and pay more. What about providing passengers value for their money as they all pretend in their adverts?

Have they decided to cut passengers throat and prevent them from travelling? When are these ultra sophisticated if not ridiculus measures going to end? I thing we have not finished to pay to for stockatic oil prices, which are more and more becoming the troyan horse used to empty passengers pockets. Ok oil prices soaring and demand weakness are serious issues to the airline industry. But lets bet that once the crisis is over, these ridiculus measures won't be cancelled, and air ticket price won't return to where it was before.