Recently, Tianjin Airlines issued an announcement stating that starting from October 28, except for exclusive economy class, other economy class passengers will no longer enjoy free meals, and will launch free checked baggage services for passengers of different types of air tickets. Among them, passengers with air tickets below 40% off (excluding) will not have free checked baggage.
Tianhang launched differentiated services for passengers with different needs, which looks more like an low-cost airline .
Traditional full-service airlines generally provide passengers with airplane meals and luggage check-in services, and the prices of these services are already calculated within the air ticket price. Low-cost airlines are committed to providing differentiated services. If necessary, meals, luggage check-in and in-flight entertainment facilities can be purchased separately to reduce ticket prices and operating costs and improve your competitiveness.
differentiated services are also reflected in paid seat selection. In an announcement released in June this year, Tianjin Airlines announced that it would allow passengers to pay in advance on some international routes. The area is the first row of economy class and the seats at safety passages. The price is 100 yuan and 500 yuan respectively, depending on the length of the route.
In recent years, low-cost aviation is rapidly rising in the global aviation market. Data shows that the global low-cost aviation market share in the past 10 years has rapidly increased from 12.2% in 2003 to 30% in 2017. Among them, the market share of low-cost aircraft in Europe exceeded 40%; the market share of the Asia-Pacific region increased from 3.4% to 25.7% in 10 years.
's "low-cost" operation model is desirable for both airlines and passengers. For passengers, the provision of differentiated services by low-cost airlines gives passengers great autonomy and customize services according to their needs, and the basic fare is lower than other airlines. For low-cost airlines, eliminating airline meals, less free baggage checkouts, narrower seat spacing, etc., means lower operating costs and higher revenue.
Cancel free meals for regular economy class will save airlines considerable expenses. In 2005, Southwest Airlines saved $2 million a year by simply canceling pretzels in domestic route meals. Tianjin Airlines' passenger transport volume exceeded 13 million in 2017. Based on the per capita of 21.5 yuan, this move can save the company at least 280 million yuan per year.
In addition, canceling free luggage check-in can reduce the weight of the aircraft a lot, and it can reduce the fuel costs a lot while international oil prices are gradually rising. Airline fuel expenditure has always been one of the largest expenditure projects for airlines, generally accounting for 20% to 30% of airline operating costs, while an aircraft requires at least 3-4 kg of fuel per hour for every 100 kg load.
Low-cost airlines can also increase revenue channels by selling auxiliary business income other than air tickets. Such as overweight luggage fees, mileage points sales, on-board duty-free sales, on-board advertising, etc. Auxiliary camps are an important source of income, and sometimes they can even account for half of their revenue. In 2017, 48.4% of the revenue of American low-cost airline Spirit Airlines came from fees other than air tickets. The concept of
"low cost" is widely accepted by the market. In the future, you may not be able to eat airline meals in more flights.
Some airlines are gradually transforming towards low-cost aviation. Currently, China's low-cost airlines mainly include Spring Airlines , Western Airlines , China United Airlines, Xiangpeng Airlines and Jiuyuan Airlines, and none of them provide free air meals and checked baggage quotas. In addition, Chengdu Airlines, Urumqi Airlines, Tianjin Airlines, Changan Airlines, , etc. have cancelled economy class meals and changed luggage checkout rules to make them have a certain low-cost color. In addition to the transformation,
, full-service airlines have also canceled airline meals on some routes to compete head-on with low-cost airlines. For example, British Airways canceled the free meal supply for short-haul flights in 2017; in the past few years, American airlines no longer provide free meals to economy class passengers for short-haul and some long-haul domestic flights, but they still provide free meal services on intercontinental routes.
The low-cost airline you are riding in may also be made by large airlines, which resist the operating pressure brought by market changes by forming low-cost airlines.For example, Singapore Airlines established Scoot (Scoot) as early as 2011, mainly operating short- and medium- and short-term routes from Singapore to China, Australia and Southeast Asia. In 2017, Scoot Airlines merged with Tiger Airlines , accounting for 41% of the total seats in Singapore's low-cost flights. In terms of Lufthansa , its low-cost aviation Eurowings has performed well. Lufthansa released data showing that Eurowings' operating profit in 2015 was 8 million euros, promoting a 55% increase in operating profit of the entire Lufthansa Group.
However, low-cost aviation is still in its early stages of development in China. According to statistics from the Asia Pacific Aviation Center, my country's low-cost airline market share is only 9.7%, far lower than the global and other regions in the Asia Pacific region. In 2014, the Civil Aviation Administration issued the "Guiding Opinions of the Civil Aviation Administration on Promoting the Development of Low-Cost Aviation", proposing a number of policy guarantee measures to promote the development of China's low-cost aviation. Li Jiaxiang, then director of the Civil Aviation Administration, said that it is expected that the share of low-cost aviation will reach 20% to 30% in 2030, covering 1.5 billion consumers.
