Hey, I have a novel idea – let’s pick on an industry that doesn’t seem to be in the news enough; the airline industry. Before you say, “Come on Rob, are you running out of blogs already!? This is too easy!” I’ll make you a deal. We’ll just stick to this week’s target practice topic – our luggage.
For years we Road Warriors have endured the stares of others. You think we don’t notice, but we do! It comes from the Weekend Warriors who stamp their glare with a, “How come you can’t just check that bag like everyone else?!” look. The short answer to that look is, “Because we travel a lot, get low number zone assignments as a reward, and because we can. What Weekend Warriors don’t understand is that we are not visiting Aunt Millie. We are hustling to a meeting, or better yet, hustling home to a family. We are hustling home to try and get through that door before our children close their eyes and another day is lost. Every second counts.
We still see those scowls however. We try to keep our space down – honest we do. We buy new bags that fall into that 21 – 22 inch length. We do that so we don’t have to turn our bag sideways and take someone else’s space. Of course as soon as we buy those bags, the airlines start putting us in planes with smaller cargo areas that have been reconfigured to make many of those new bags obsolete, but I digress. More stares.
Well, the stares have finally stopped, and Road Warriors have the airlines to thank for this! (I smell some sarcasm here.) Yes, now that the airlines charge passengers to check their baggage Weekend Warriors have joined the ranks of those wanting to bring their bags aboard to save the additional costs. Ironically Road Warriors, or as the airlines call us, “elite flyers” are not be charged if we check our bags or not. Of course, “elite flyers” don’t typically check their luggage anyway.
As air travelers continue to jam the airports, and flights are more and more crowded, it’s a free-for-all getting these bags on board… and here come the holidays. That means with the policy as it stands now, everyone is staring at everyone.
It’s a little like teaching people how to work with a split audience, meaning, an audience comprised of those who want to go fast, and those who want to go slow. At the risk of losing one part of the audience or another, the strategy is to pick a speed the goes down the middle, and essentially irritate everyone at a lower level. That’s the airline industry. It’s an equal opportunity irritator.
And, they are wrong once again. If my audience consisted of half that are my best, and most loyal customers, and half that are my casual customers, guess who I’m pandering to? The airlines seem to have guessed wrong.
Business lesson here: One of the best two ways I know of driving business away is to irritate your best customers. Another way of driving business away is to irritate your casual customers. As an equal opportunity irritator, the airlines have come up with a plan to irritate everyone.