First Class 

Southwest Airlines has just announced that it will charge $10 for passengers who want to board its planes early, which means after the more expensive Business Select and mileage award ticket holders have already grabbed their seats. This is first class seating, in everything but name. 

I wonder what it does to the Southwest brand?

The airline has been built upon the foundation of cheap, fun travel (my words), and its community of fliers has traditionally possessed a real spirit that sometimes borders on fanaticism.  This resulted in large part from the spirited fanaticism of its employees, who pitch in and do one another's jobs, have the latitude to crack bad jokes on airplane mics, and make the Southwest experience something unique in its industry.  Everyone got the deal and knew how it worked, which really defined a "two-way conversation" long before the social media types hijacked the term.

Now, some pigs are definitely more equal than others.

Southwest has proven itself unable to avoid the accretive detritus of customer exploitation that afflicts all of its competitors.  Fees, premium ticket pricing, and now boarding privileges that all but amount to first class seating (since all the seats are the same, location becomes the difference, so finding a seat early is better than getting handed the middle seat that awaits one-third of the passengers). Nobody expects better food or comfy seats. Avoidance of discomfort is a real perk.

There have to be better ways to make flying profitable again.  I wrote earlier this week about the potential benefits of creating "inflight communities" that let passengers find value playing games with one another, exchanging business offers, or otherwise doing social things on planes that let every seat link-up to a central server.  A dim bulber wrote in to tell me that Virgin America already does some of this.

What about simply basing boarding status on frequency of travel, so the folks who fly most often get to board first?  This would at least allow passengers to "earn" the privilege through their commitment to the airline, and making your most frequent fliers also the happiest might be a good thing for the brand.

The very premise of buying benefits establishes a clear demarcation between customers who do, and customers who don't/can't.  Charging for services doesn't do the same thing, as far as I can tell; everyone is penalized equally, and there's the protective cover of "everyone is doing it" to help deflect blame.

But by offering "new things" for a fee, as a Southwest spokesman explained of the early-boarding benefit, I worry that the airline is just deducting value from its brand.

The Bulb Asks:

  • What's more important, your operational behavior, or your declarations of branding?
  • Do optional benefits impact all of your customers, whether they use them or not?
  • When you plan a new marketing activity, do you take into account its potential impact on the "system" of actions involving you and your customers?