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July/August 2008 |
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THE INSIDE WORD Same company, different brands and better seats Swiss has just announced that it is to fit a revolutionary new flatbed in its Business cabins from the spring of 2009. The big selling point of the seat is that it appears to overcome the problem that all airline seats which turn into beds have. If you sit in an armchair at home and then try sitting on your bed, you will find the armchair is much softer than the bed. Airlines have really struggled with this issue because it is impossible to make one unit that is soft enough to be comfortable as a chair and firm enough to give a good night’s sleep. The result is normally an uneasy compromise, with the seat being rather on the hard side. The design company employed by Swiss claims to have solved this problem: its new seat allows you to pump air into it to make it harder or softer, depending on whether you want to sleep or sit. We have no idea whether this will work in practice – sometimes these ‘revolutionary’ ideas can be abject failures. However, the new beds do have some other definite advantages in that they are genuinely lie-flat (as opposed to angled) and rather bigger than some currently in use. When the airline announced the new beds, Swiss was careful to use the opportunity to differentiate itself from its owner, Lufthansa. The ownership of Swiss by Lufthansa appears to have been a major success. The smaller airline has gained massive economies of scale in such things as frequent-flyer programmes, purchasing and marketing on a worldwide basis, while at the same time maintaining its own individual identity and, indeed, being encouraged to develop its own unique products. While Swiss was too diplomatic to say this, the new beds are far superior to anything Lufthansa has, or plans to have. Indeed, though Lufthansa’s Business service has improved somewhat in the last few years, it is still towards the lower end of what one would expect from a major airline (at the end of the year, the airline will decide whether to fit proper flatbeds in Business Class). Swiss is very open about wishing to be regarded as a premium airline (as the old Swissair was). Lufthansa is happy to encourage this, even if it loses a handful of passengers, because it is taking the profit, whichever airline the passenger uses. Air France has also made a great success out of its effective takeover of KLM. Economic synergies have been developed but the passenger retains a choice between two airlines that remain quite different in many ways. Contrast this sophisticated European approach with what happens in the States: Delta and Northwest are about to merge (effectively, Northwest will disappear). There will be a loss of identity, huge wrangling between unions and affected employees and, almost certainly, a loss of market share. The Europeans appear to have mastered the art of adding two and two together and getting four and a half. The Americans seem unable to get past the stage where two plus two equals three. **** FlyOpenSkies If you want to travel between Orly and New York on BA’s new subsidiary, you can book tickets either via the BA website or at www.flyopenskies.com. We were intrigued to see the pricing levels for this service because they are working, partly, on a codeshare basis with the French Business-only airline L’Avion. The two airlines actually have markedly different products. L’Avion has armchair seats, a good level of food and service and fairly basic entertainment. OpenSkies has a much more sophisticated, state-of-the-art Business product with proper flatbeds, it also has a Premium Economy cabin, which is better than almost any other Premium Economy service, as well as a small, and rather select, Economy cabin. You cannot codeshare two products that are so different and it seems, for the moment at least, neither airline is seriously attempting to do so. OpenSkies’ prices for Business are roughly the same as discounted Paris–London–New York Business fares, while L’Avion’s promotional fares are much lower. **** The budgets and the agents Nowadays, nearly all airlines want you to book direct on their website. This particularly applies to the budget airlines, all of whom have avoided selling tickets through agents. It is still possible to buy tickets on a budget airline from an agent but there will always be an extra charge, of £5 or so, for the doubtful pleasure of using an intermediary. Ryanair even went one stage further. It threatened legal action against agents who were selling its tickets... read the rest of this article by signing-up for a free trial issue of Inside Traveller - Save 40% by ordering online now!
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