[Anonymous]

[openfly]

……….called ”Low Cost”???

Invariably the final fare, with all the add-ons, is the same as traditional airlines, but offering little service and few facilities.

Should the likes of Ryanair and easyjet, even BMI, be referred to as ‘Low Service” airlines, not ‘Lo-Co?

Maybe we frequent fliers could start a grading system whereby airlines with a full service are ‘A Class’, partial service such Easyjet and FlyBe are ‘B Class’ and the likes of Ryanair are ‘C Class’.

LOW-SERVE not LOW-COST

Just a thought.

[continentalclub]

Low-cost airlines are referred to as such, for the most part, quite incorrectly.

‘Low-cost’ relates to the cost base of the carrier, not the price of their tickets.

It is far better, I believe, to use the term ‘no-frills’ when referring to the actual service provision of certain airlines.

Thus both Ryanair and Air Berlin are ‘low-cost’ carriers, but only Ryanair is ‘no-frills’.

The persistent use of the term ‘low-cost’ by the media permeates into general conversation. It is probably one of the several subtle accelerants in the general race-for-the-bottom that we observe in economy class travel service standards. Many passengers simply cannot discriminate between the no-frills and full-service carriers when they are erroneously and generically referred to as ‘low-cost,’ and either don’t value the ‘frills’ when they are provided, or don’t realise that one ticket price from, say AB, includes them and a competitor price from, say U2, does not.

It is no wonder that the legacy carriers struggle to get their message across without the benefit of lurid liveries and other marketing means that are specifically designed to create the impression of ‘cheap’.

Witness the curious phenomenon of unassigned seating. It’s a purely marketing-driven service standard – it actually takes longer and costs more to board an aircraft this way, but the general scrum and lack of civility ‘looks’ cheap and adds to the impression that costs have been cut to the bone and therefore ticket prices must be the cheapest that they possibly can be. It appeals to the majority mindset who will never bother to check the less vividly-liveried carriers’ websites, on the assumption that the latter must be more expensive.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

Openfly

If you look at the work of Prof Michael Porter of Harvard Business School, one of his famous theories is ‘generic stategies.’

One of these generic strategies is cost leadership and the term ‘low cost’ derives from this, as in achieving low costs in pursuing the strategy.

If your firm achieves cost leadership, then it can attack competitors aggressively or harvest a bigger margin. Think Ryanair.

[TominScotland]

An old chestnut this, folks. Who is “low cost” and who is “full-service” – no clear answer to this. After all, Swiss and bmi offer “low service” features with their pay for menus in economy.

While examples exist of “full service” airlines offering lower fares than the “low cost” competition on occasions, I think the average cost evidence is fairly conclusive. Ryanair’s average fares are consistently significantly lower that that of the competition (“full service” and other “low costs”), even taking charges into account. As an anecdotal example, just booked Glasgow – Dublin return on Ryanair for £26 all in; Aer Lingus wanted £148 for like timings on the same dates.

[LuganoPirate]

TominScotland, Swiss offer free food and drinks on all their flights in Economy. Granted on shorter flights it may just be a sandwich but it is not a “pay for menu” at all.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

Swiss did go through a period of BoB, but it ended after LH acquired them.

[AMcWhirter]

OS also went through a period of charging. SAS still does today.

[conair346]

I really don’t like the term applied to them really, cause the fact faced by most passengers is that its high cost if wanting to go on holiday for a week with them, and even Charter airlines have moved to the ‘low cost’ model where seats together and meals are optional extras.

The general public are blind sheep, they don’t know that other ‘real’ airlines exist. When I tell people what I’m doing after my degree, I end up saying ‘the German national airline’ as they haven’t heard of Lufthansa. Flying to Spain- Who are Iberia?

I much prefer travelling on ‘real’ airlines as I like to call them. I actually save money that way – for my Christmas snowboard trip I fly LX. Last year return for £80, this year return for £130. Free food, drink, no luggage charges, snowboard travels free and on the ARJ its 5 abreast seating. With U2 I’d have paid £110 this year, plus a card fee, luggage, snowboard and any food or drink I choose to have; I think the final U2 cost was about £180.

Marketing has a lot to do with it too. U2, FR and BE all put copious amounts of print & online ads out everywhere. The likes of BA, LX and OS appear to me to target their marketing. LH is a strange one, MAN has become a mini UK hub for them and there’s lots of advertising around the city, I think its proved effective as their numbers are up 20% here. With full service and £49 fares, they are appealing.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

Conair346

With the very greatest of respect, you are confusing cost and price.

Low cost is about the airline establishing a cost leadership position, such as Ryanair.

What it does on pricing fares is a different matter.

You may notice that Ryanair advertises itself as ‘the low fares airline’, not ‘the low cost airline.’

Revenues minus costs = profit 🙂

You are absolutely right in your comments about obtaining best value and that will often not come from the low cost airlines.

[andrew.gill]

surely the opposite to full service carriers would be low service 🙂

andrew

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

Andrew

Sorry, that is an illogical statement 😉

The opposite to full service is no service!

But I know what you mean.

[andrew.gill]

empty service sounded worse 🙂

[TominScotland]

Perhaps we should really talk about “Rather-fuller-but-rapidly-emptying-service airlines” as opposed to “As-little-service-as-we-can-get-away-with-unless-you-are-willing-to-pay-extra airlines ” . I will leave you to decide which airlines fit into which category but the Qantas announcement, following in the footsteps of BA, to charge for seat reservations may give some help with this process.

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