Over the years, flying has become a commodity and airlines are constantly striving to offer the best prices possible. Because all other airlines are picking up low-fare pricing tabs as well, Southwest Airlines is finding it harder to stand out from the competition. Now a perfect market, Southwest Airlines needs to find something that will make their company catch a customer’s eye to fly. A proposal has been brought up to fix their problem.
The idea is that Southwest would offer business classes on their longer flights. With more comfortable seats, more legroom, and free readings from magazines to movies, along with meals, drinks, and Wi-Fi, this class will sure be an eye catcher for longer flights or business travels. Along with inside the cabin benefits, these passengers would get priority boarding and de-boarding flights. If the first test of adding this to the flights goes as expected, then Southwest would consider including this first class idea on all of their flights.
Even though this sounds great for an idea of generating more profits, it will take some time and work to make it happen in the first place. With what seems like a small change within the airline company would make a huge impact of the successfulness of the company.
The lack of a first class portion represents a threat to their market niche. Southwest Airlines will need to take a number of steps to adjust to this reality. Southwest will need to make adaptations to their business while keeping their current profits in tact. All from products to services will need to be created to offer these new positives.
Some challenges will be greater than others. Because Southwest Airlines works on a first-come, first-serve basis, with no assigned seats, customers wait within 3 separate lines. Southwest Airlines can easily just identify one of these lines as ‘first class’. Something more complicated would be modifying these aircrafts.
Switching the design of the already existing planes would be quite time consuming and costly. With this process and capacity modification, each individual plane would now carry fewer passengers due to having more space for you in first class. Southwest would also need to incorporate which locational flights to add first class into. Along with this, Southwest would need to install their own Wi-Fi and pay for new drinks, food, and movies, etc. for every single flight each day.
Quality operations would take a place in improvement in adding first class seats because first class customers now have priority over other flyers. The employees who work within the priority section would need more training compared to an employee who does not work in first class. A new HR program would most likely be needed for this to be successful within the company.
Lastly, maintaining these aircrafts and servicing them would take a toll on how often and what the new prices would be for adding a first class section in the aircrafts belonging to Southwest Airlines. As long as if all of these updates in the operations of the company are incorporated and additional costs are kept accounted for, then Southwest Airlines can expect to be rewarded for this new feature within their airplanes.
Southwest Airlines would need to market their new business, or ‘first’ class section heavily. They can achieve this through online advertisements, commercially, and the cheapest option, word of mouth. The marketing department would have to talk with members of the new class who have flown it and see if, and if so, how, it is better than what they were previously flying. Along with the services the new class comes equipped with, Southwest would need to market the pricing strategically and prove that they are the superior brand. Marketing this first class portion would be alike to almost presenting a whole new product itself within the airline industry under Southwest Airlines.
Financially, this department would need to incorporate how much these modifications to the company will cost and what future costs will be as well. This department would also be in charge of how long Southwest Airlines would need to wait in order to make their money back and give monthly updates of the progress they have made with their new modifications and how much they would’ve made without adding first class into their flights. The finance department needs to see how revenues are affected long term and short term.
HR would need to make sure and verify that employees picked in dealing with business class customers are trained correctly and go through new classes annually on how to treat these customers. This can be done by teaching seminars online or through a classroom. HR would also be in charge of what happens on the plane and after the flight. They would also need to train their employees on how to fix the Wi-Fi and clean up after customers that food is now incorporated in Southwest’s flights.
One of the most strategically based question that came from Southwest Airlines’ operational department was whether Southwest would change its boarding procedure and to install a first class cabin. With a fear of change, the efforts to transform the Customer experience involved changes in fares, products, services, and policies to successfully execute a Business Select program to provide greater convenience to business flyers.