Why not?
It’s time airlines began rethinking the concepts of seasonality and charters. Currently, seasonal services rely on predicted or proven demand swells to justify a change in capacity for a fixed period of time – usually on a recurring basis, most commonly up-gauging around holidays. There can be no doubt that this practice makes sense. However, given the cutthroat nature of the current aviation market I am surprised no carrier has taken it a step further and pursued a more aggressive approach where seasons are in fact not even a season long. This would involve one (or two, or three) off services between city pairs designed to aggressively target pockets of new revenue. The haphazard nature of this approach would make it seem almost like a charter service – and in many respects it would be – but with one key difference; airlines would no longer be the suitors, waiting around for clients to pitch them. Rather they would become the aggressors and would take the fight pitch to prospective clients.
Let me offer an example. I am attending the Microsoft TechEd 2010 tradeshow in New Orleans next week. Attendance is rumored to be hovering between 8,000 and 9,000 people. Given that it’s a Microsoft show it will come as no surprise that a large contingent will be making their way down to New Orleans from the Redmond, WA area. While there are countless one-stop possibilities to New Orleans from Seattle (to suit any airline allegiance) there is no direct service. For a sizeable portion of the people making this journey a direct flight would be too good to pass up, frequent flier miles be damned. All it would take is for Alaska Airlines (or any other major player in the northwest) to recognize the needs of their market and react. For this particular example I’m sure a few services straddling the tradeshow’s timeline would sell out in minutes. The same issue exists for Canadian attendees of the show – there is no direct service from New Orleans to anywhere in Canada. Would this not then be the perfect time for a Canadian carrier to offer “seasonal” services around this event to New Orleans from Toronto and Calgary? I’m willing to bet it would work. Inevitably airlines would cannibalize some of their own routes by adopting this approach but it would at the same time attract passengers that would preliminarily favor another carrier.
Pursuing opportunities like this would be straightforward. Route Ops teams at carriers would simply have to contact the largest convention centers around their continent(s) and get their annual schedules. With that information and some research into their attendees and organizers, opportunities like this would light up any airline’s route map like a Christmas tree.
Recently I blogged about the challenges facing the top brass at WestJet. In the time that has passed a couple of interesting things have happened.
A change at the top
Sean Durfy’s resignation announcement has paved the way for Gregg Saretsky to assume the reins as CEO. While this caught me by surprise the reason given – the desire to spend more time with his family – seemed perfectly plausible. However, the cynics of this world were not quite so willing to accept this, with a number of people choosing to believe he was shown the door for the less-than-elegant adoption of the new reservation system. You could forgive the cynics for their speculation as CEOs have been at the centre of upheaval at WestJet in the past. Whatever the case may be I think it’s a win for all concerned. Durfy gets to live life at a smell the roses pace for a while. WestJet benefits from the experience and energy of a new CEO who already understands the inner workings of the company and has a stellar track record to boot. It’s great to see somebody with a sincere passion for aviation leading the charge – there are far too many “suits” running the show at other carriers.
A new dance partner
For years we’ve heard about potential tie-ups between WestJet and Southwest. It’s one of those stories that just won’t go away – murmurs about codeshares and ground handling agreements seem to flare up periodically and then vanish as quickly as they appeared. WestJet themselves have fueled this fire on a number of occasions with ambiguous statements declaring interest but only ever offering vague timelines. Personally I’ve always felt that the synergy potential between WestJet and Southwest is overblown. Though they were founded on similar business models WestJet is for all intents and purposes a full service carrier. It seems I’m not the only one with this mindset; this weekend WestJet went public with the fact that they are courting Delta with a view to drumming up US traffic through codeshares. WestJet is set to receive 5 slot pairs at LaGuardia (subject to regulatory approval) which will allow them to exchange traffic with Delta. Indications are that theses slots are to be used for flights to Toronto and Montreal. The folks at Delta must be happy about this; additional feeder traffic to LaGuardia (where they are trying to grow their presence) without using any of their own planes and crews and without signing a capacity-purchase agreement. All of this in exchange for slots they would likely have been forced to give up anyway. Talk about getting something for nothing.
Walk. Don’t run.
Despite WestJet’s friendly demeanor towards Air France/KLM and this new cozying up towards Delta I remain confident that they are not positioning themselves to enter SkyTeam – there’s simply not enough in it for either party. SkyTeam currently plays second fiddle to the Star Alliance in Canada and adding WestJet would do little to change that. What it would do is tie WestJet’s hands in terms of partner opportunities with OneWorld carriers. It’s far more likely that they will cherry pick codeshare partners from both SkyTeam and OneWorld under the “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” mantra with a view to building a robust codeshare network à la Alaska Airlines. Did I mention Saretsky used to work there?
