Maybe Spirit’s Carry-On Fees are a Good Idea
When I first saw the tweet from Forrester’s Henry Harteveldt (who got my vote for most trusted person in travel) this morning that Spirit Airlines will be charging fees for carry-on items I had the same reaction that many probably did when they saw the headline: “Enough is enough, stop trying to shake me down every time I get on an airplane in the endless pursuit of ancillary revenue!” (I’m sure the guys at Southwest did handstands when they saw the news). And from a purely non-analytical sentiment analysis of reactions on Twitter, it seemed that plenty of people felt the same way.
But then I read the press release and I completely turned around my point of view. I love it. I applaud it. What we have here is more of a “failure to communicate” rather than a bad idea.
Here’s the Good
The important part in evaluating the new fees are the following graphic:
Yes, they’re charging for carry-ons, but note they are charging LESS for checked baggage than carry-ons (and there is a long list of excluded items + you get one free that fits under the seat). What they’re encouraging — although not marketing — is to change passengers behaviors to make it easier to load/unload the plane. One of my pet peeves is when people bring on big rollerboards that don’t fit in the overhead bins which both takes room away from other passengers (sometimes forcing others to stow their bags far from their actual seat) and takes longer to stow. So now all those people who are trying to cut a few minutes from their travel plans by not checking their luggage (and yes it is their luggage) will have to pay for that privilege…or check the damn bag.
The second good move for Spirit is that they’re discounting for people who are members of their $9 Club (promoting loyalty) and also rewarding those who plan ahead — which in turn allows Spirit to better plan ahead and increase the efficiency of their operations.
And now for the bad…
The only real problem I have with the move as you can tell is the way they communicated it. First of all they combined the announcement of their PENNY PLUS fares which seems to deliver lower fares and deliver a tremendous level of cost transparency to their passengers to show why the fares cost the amount they do. But then they muck up this great message (did you see any headlines about this or just the carry-on baggage fees?) by merging it with the new bag fee structure. Which leads me to my second point.
Now I recognize that Spirit is a low cost carrier and wants to continue to position every move they make as one that enables them to provide the lowest fares to their passengers. But I argue that they should have positioned the baggage fee move to highlight the improvement to the majority of their customers’ travel experiences (faster boarding, better on time performance) as the primary benefit and then show that it also supports their position as the low cost leader. Spirit’s Chief Operating Officer Ken McKenzie said “Bring less; pay less. It’s simple.” and the release does acknowledge the improvement to the customer experience. I just think they put the emphasis on the wrong syl-lable (as my high-school Spanish teacher used to say)…and it showed up in the headlines that were written.
So what do you think about Spirit’s move? Does this post make you feel any different than you did before you read it? Let me know.
I get your point and the idea of incentivizing to check bags vs carry on is a good one. However, this airline is the king of nickel and diming. My $600 Low fare to FL recently added on another $100 as I had to pay to check a bag AND book a seat. Shouldn’t seats be included in the ticket? I’m not talking about premium seats. I’m talking about some type of fee for any seat. To me, this is just one more reason to dislike Spirit, regardless of their intent. Their added fees, poor service, and tasteless ad campaigns are a huge turn off.
Glenn, I think you make a good point in that Spirit did a terrible job with its communications. I also like the fact that Spirit’s $9 fare club — tasteless ads aside — does provide its memebers with tangible value.
But airlines are a service business. Sp[irit’s latest move ignores the fact that when we travel — especially on a leisure airline like Spirit — we need to bring things with us.
Airlines have a responsibility to provide a fundamental level of accommodation for passengers and our belongings. Unless you’re doing a day-trip, chances are you’ll have an item too large to stow beneath your seat (especially given the limited amount of legroom found on most airlines, Spirit included). If Spirit said it was eliminating checked bag fees and instead charging for carry-on, I’d have no issue. What Spirit has done is to indirectly hike fares because now nearly every passenger will have to pay a fee to bring their luggage.
Still, it doesn’t matter what we think or say or what journalists write or say. As long as people continue to buy tickets on Spirit, which some will, the airline will remain in business. As long as Spirit operates in a safe and reliable manner, that’s ultimately what free enterprise is about.
Henry, thanks as always for your comments. It’s always a compliment just to know you’re reading.
I, as well as my wife (see comment below) and I’m sure many others have general disdain for the never ending pursuit of ancillary revenues which are most cases are not upgrades of service, just charges for what used to come for free. I was talking to Robert Cole this morning and he had a similar view. I also agree that it would have been a lesser issue if they didn’t charge for checked baggage. But that would imply that the primary intent behind the move was to change passenger behavior — which I do not believe to be the case. It’s just potentially a benefit that results from their new structure.
But back to the communications issues, I’m surprised that I have seen no response by Spirit to any of the negative publicity…and not even support for my post
Just foolish. Robert pointed out today that they could have cited passenger research that said boarding delays/inconveniences due to too many large carry-ons was the number one complaint and this is how they were addressing it. But of course that’s not what’s happened. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel that anyone other than the pilots and flight attendants from the airlines actually fly on their own system. Or maybe worse, that because they get free or near-free fares, they don’t SEE what normal everyday passengers do, and therefore miss the opportunity to act as a service business as you state, and provide passengers an experience they want to have again and again (I would omit Virgin and perhaps SWA and JetBlue from the list of offenders).
Glenn, that was a very insightful post. Its a shame i had to cross all the way over to Linked-In to get a true understanding of what was going on behind the Spirit PR debacle. Their logic may have been intact, but the execution was grossly miscalculated,
and even worse, they didn’t even try to clean up the mess. How is it that so many companies in service industries keep dropping the ball like this???
Fabian, thanks for the comment and following the thread over from LinkedIN. It sure would be great if LinkedIN somehow could integrate the comments on their forums with the blog source itself to provide the full depth of discussion in one place.
To you question, I think that perhaps airlines in particular, are in such a tough financial position that they care about that more than they think about their responsibilities as a service company. But another commenter on the LinkedIN thread noted that airlines moves to abstract out things that used to be free is the mad drive to provide the lowest base fare and therefore move up on the list of searches on the OTAs and meta-search engines. Again, unfortunately at the expense of how they treat their customers and obfuscate the real costs of travel.