Passenger experience: low-cost is not the problem, low-care is!

Passengers have a love-hate relationship with low-cost airlines, which are both criticized for their service and praised because they make flying affordable for almost everyone.

An unfair low-cost bashing

We sometimes see what looks like low-cost bashing and although we are not fans of this type of travel we can’t help but find it a bit unfair.

So yes, sometimes they abuse a bit on the promise and reality of the rate. Once you have paid for all the possible and imaginable options (and some low-cost airlines are very good at making you pay for the most basic things) it is not uncommon to realize that you get the same price as on a “traditional” airline.

But besides that, when you pay less than 100 euros for a return trip to Lisbon or wherever, you can’t expect a 5-star service!

You get what you pay for

And even without talking about the service, the fact of the multiplication of the paying options is at the base of the business model. This unbundling of the service allows the passenger to pay only for the most minimal service and to sell options to those who want more. Bottom line : if you want a full -options service, you might as well go with a traditional airline, the price will often not be more expensive.

In short and to put it simply: you only get what you pay for! Complaining about the service, the paid options etc. etc. but not wanting to put more than 80 euros in a Paris Prague is somehow inconsistent.

Flying low-cost and complaining about the service is like buying a house on the runway of a big airport because the price per square meter is very low and then going to protest against the noise pollution.

Traditional airlines also abuse

But while we cannot demand from a low-cost airline the service of a traditional one, we have to admit that the latter are not free of criticism either. If we can’t blame low-cost airlines for doing low-cost, we can blame traditional airlines for sometimes doing low-cost without having the corresponding fares.

The medium-haul of SAS or Finnair to speak only of them does not bring much more than a low-cost. When we see that this summer in medium-haul Air France offered on its medium-haul flights a tiny ice cream that lasted more than two hours, we can say to ourselves that it is better to serve nothing at all or to do “buy on board”. In fact, my few medium-haul flights this summer almost made me nostalgic for Joon, that’s saying something! Even some of our readers were so “surprised” that we got some “feedback” not necessarily complimentary.

Service on a Paris-Lisbon flight of 2h30 this summer on Air France

The idea of the ice cream, let’s be honest, was excellent and surprising. But having them on all flights, and especially on flights longer than 2 hours, is totally inconsistent. At least perceived as such by the customer.

The low-cost landscape is not uniform

And then how to make generalizations about low cost? Although I’m not a fan of the concept I don’t remember being disappointed once by EasyJet. When you fly on Thai Smile in Asia, you don’t feel like you’re flying a low-cost airline at all, it’s even better than many traditional airlines in Europe.

And what can we say about Norwegian? I have only heard positive feedback on them from the moment the customer understood what they were paying for.

On the other hand, the obvious cases of contempt and disdain for the passenger are legion, we cannot deny it and in general it is always the same airlines that are pointed out.

This tells us two things:

1°) There is not “the low-cost” but different type of low-cost.

2°) The real “problem” is not the low-cost model but rather a certain business culture and approach to the passenger experience.

Low Cost is not Low Care

Indeed, what shocks and irritates the most the honest passenger in relation to what he paid is not so much the service as the attitude of the airline and its staff.

The passenger who books a low-cost flight knows (except in cases of intellectual dishonesty) what to expect in terms of service. But he still expects a minimum of politeness, consideration and attention both in service and in the way any problems that may arise during his trip are handled.

There is a huge difference between “you won’t get anything more than you paid for” and “screw you, we don’t care about you”.

I think that this is where the distinction between good and bad low cost airlines is made. Not on the service but on the attention given to the passenger.

Attention costs nothing

It’s a shame to disappoint on the attention because basically it doesn’t cost anything to an airline, so in a low cost model it might be the only thing they can afford to give for free!

To what is this due? Lack of training of the crews, certainly. But this is only the tree that hides the forest: if the crew is poorly trained, if the service protocol does not provide for anything in this regard, it is indeed a consequence of the business model (a little) and the corporate culture (a lot).

There is also an employee experience problem in some airlines. It has been said that an employee will not give the customer what his employer does not give him, that the limit of the quality of the relationship between a brand and its customers and that of the relationship between the brand and its employees. From there, when we see the treatment of the staff of some of these airlines, we should not expect them to have the slightest attention, the least empathy for the customer.

Low Care, the real distinction in air transport

Finally, we see happy and unhappy passengers in low cost and traditional airlines, so the economic model does not explain everything. Even nothing at all.

In my opinion, the real distinction in the airline market is not between low-cost and not low-cost but between low-care and not low care.

This distinction is all the more relevant as it allows us to put traditional airlines under the same umbrella as some low-cost airlines and, conversely, to consider that some low-cost airlines are as good as regular airlines.

Regardless of the price of the ticket, the passenger’s satisfaction depends at least as much, if not more, on the attention, the “care” of which he has been the object, than on the service.

A lesson perhaps for the low-cost airlines but finally especially for the traditional airlines which sometimes find themselves on a slippery slope on the subject and do not understand why a passenger hardly sees any difference between them and a low-cost.

Photo : low cost airlines de Patryk Kosmider via Shutterstock