Thoughts
American Airlines
By Nathan Johnson
You probably saw the story on the news or read it online recently. Starting June 15, American Airlines will charge a $15 fee for the first piece of checked luggage on flights. While the announcement was not specifically a planned advertising or public relations campaign, the announcement did generate hundreds of pieces of news coverage.
So, is this a smart move for American? It probably helps them make a dent in their rising fuel costs (by the way, if you played a drinking game where you took a drink every time someone used the term “skyrocketing fuel costs” in one of these stories, you’d have alcohol poisoning in about 15 minutes), but they clearly spent little time assessing the public relations impact of making such an announcement.
Other airlines have policies requiring a charge for baggage over a certain weight limit, or they charge for the second piece of luggage. American could have done that or somehow quietly increased its ticket prices across the board, citing fuel costs. Passengers understand that flights are going to cost more because of the increasing fuel costs. Those same passengers will be less understanding about being charged for checking luggage when many other airlines do not charge for that first piece.
Capitalizing on that impending passenger intolerance for increased luggage fees on American Airlines, some other airlines have already incorporated it into their marketing. Southwest Airlines, for instance, has begun running communications with the line, “Fees Don’t Fly.” Even some luggage companies are using American Airlines as a sort of whipping boy. For instance, apparel and baggage maker Patagonia, known for its use of organic materials in its products, has advertised how roomy its carry-on-size bags are, the better to help users avoid the unpleasant luggage charges.
In addition to up-front passenger displeasure, American is going to create some serious problems on its flights as passengers stuff oversized luggage into the overhead bins.
People aren’t going to check luggage if they don’t have to, and it’s going to force the safety personnel at the checkpoints to be even more vigilant. That’s going to take extra time and make security lines longer – angering passengers and further frustrating security workers.
Oversized bags that somehow make it through security will become the problem of the flight attendants. Can you imagine the frustration of knowing you paid $15 to check your bag when the guy in the seat next to you is mashing his too-big bag into the overhead bin because he was able to sneak it through somehow? There’s going to be some tattling happening, making passengers angrier and delaying flights as flight attendants have to move bags from the bins to designated baggage storage areas.
Neither American nor its competitors could have escaped the inevitability of increased fuel prices and the need to raise ticket prices to compensate, but American Airlines just picked an extremely poor and extremely public way to go about addressing that issue. Fast on the heels of the thousands of cancelled flights fiasco (another issue American handled with abysmal PR crisis management), American is compiling an impressive (or unimpressive, depending on your point of view) portfolio of poor public relations thus far in 2008.
E-mail the author: Nathan Johnson
