Quick Question..

[Aerlingus1916]

I am thinking of opening a new route with a competitor already flying it, we are both using A320s but his have 156 seats (default, mid-comfort) and I have 180 seats on mine (poor comfort). Will the passengers pick the other airline/will he gain majority of the route since he has better seat quality/comfort? Even though the demand is ~ 180 pax/day.

This was probably asked before and it is probably in the guides but I thought I might ask

Thanks!

[Monica]

Yes, they will. But instead of putting 180 tightly packed seats in your aircraft, put 174 (or something along those lines) and get a FAIR comfort rating instead of poor. It will help a lot. The seats just get spaced a bit more apart.

Once your Route Image has grown, my experience is that pax are usually willing to fly in a Fair comfort rating almost just as much as in a Good one. It also depends on supply vs demand though.

But in your example, where the demand is 180 seats, and he offers 156 seats, pax will first go to him (if prices and schedule is equal), the rest will go to you. You could create an incentive by lowering your prices to fill up your plane. But then you're flying more pax for less money and burning more fuel. Also, there are a lot of other factors in play.

[schro]

Seating comfort is only one of the many variables that are considered with who will sell more seats.

If ALL other variables are equal and the only difference is seat comfort, your opponent will sell more seats than you. However, this can be combatted with price, appropriate frequency, CI, etc. Stage length of the flight makes a huge difference - wander north of 3 hours and you're boned anyway.

Overall, it is probably not worth spending the cash to reconfig that plane to HD - put the HD plane somewhere that is running full loads and pull a non-HD one for that route.

[Aerlingus1916]

Thanks guys, helped alot.