I am going to run a LCC. Not ULCC, but rather JetBlue/Frontier style LCC. I want to differentiate between domestic short haul and international medium haul routes. So I plan to do chepo economy seating for domestic Y, and second-step economy seating for medium haul Y.
My question is the following:
I plan to run economy and premium economy section (something like jetblue's front section) where seats will be bigger and customers will receive a $0.70 snack instead of $0.35 snack. You get the picture.
I am planning to use step-above seats for this premium eocnomy, so Short Haul would have cheapo ecnomy/regular economy seat combination and Medium Haul would have regular economy/economy plus seats. I would charge about 35% more for premium economy (economy plus seats), the difference 15-20% in seating, and additional 15% for revenue adjustment.
My question is, if I price this premium economy in the "Business Class" section, would it work? E.g. Y fare $100 and C fare $135, whereas there is no actual C class only a premium economy (which I would designate C in airlinesim). Because there is only Y, C, F pricing, and no premium economy pricing, I am trying to figure out whether I could use premium Y in C setting.
Has anybody ever tried it and would such model work? Or would the computer brain consider Economy Plus seating in C as inadequate (even though my C fare would be closer to Y fare than to other's C fare)? Would you recommend my model, or should I just stick to full economy seating for LCC?
I haven't re-done seat configs yet so I would appreciate your advice while the AC is being transferred to the base.
Works just fine, at least on short routes. I am doing just that in some of my small regional prop planes that don´t really earn a profit but serve as feeders. The passengers are not too happy about it, but for short routes (300 miles max) they seem to bite the bullet.
If I were you I´d just configure one or two machines that way and test the waters. See how long the routing can actually be before the passengers refuse to fly with you (check the ORS often, it´s a valuable tool). It´s probably not gonna work for intercontinental flights (or coast to coast if you are based in the US), but short haul should work just fine as long as the competition is not too strong on a particular route.
You can create new seating configurations without installing them in your aircraft. Once you've saved a new configuration, take a look at the Ratings tab for your new config and you can get an idea of how your seats will be received by passengers.
Just as a side note, premium economy (or the US airlines' Slightly-less-crappy-coach-class or whatever they call it) doesn't exist in the game. Business/First class passengers are exactly as the wrapper describes, and they expect service and comfort proportional to the fare paid for their booking class. Premium passengers may be willing to sit in an Economy or EcoPlus seat, but generally only for shorter flights. Again, the ratings for a seat configuration will tell you an approximate range that your passengers will be willing to sit in those lesser seats for.
My experience shows that this is possible - even on longer routes. One important aspect is - however - that I have to lower the fares in Business Class and the image is rather bad. The only reason for selecting such seats is that I want to squeeze a clearly defined number of seats onto my planes to copy seating-arrangements from real airlines and this results in rather bad comfort.
I do this ie with my airilne in Nigeria on domestic routes where I have no competition and it's very profitable. I don't even have to lower prices much.
... and image is rather bad.
I think the quality of seats isn't affecting your image, only density does.
Oh!I thought that the quality has an impact :huh:. My fault :blush: . Neverthless: My experience is that such seats are OK unless you have a strategy with the aim to provide the highest level of comfort.