Measuring success or failure is the basic scientific method and works just as well in the airline business as it does in the lab.

In principle the criteria are simple: more profit is good and less profit is bad. Applying that in practice is a little more tricky.

For Sales specialists, success tends to look like meeting a revenue budget on a specific route or market. For Revenue Managers success is maximising network revenue.

For Network Planners and Schedulers, profitability this year and next is what matters. Aircraft buyers and Fleet Planners analyse longer periods.

But for Loyalty teams success is a bit more esoteric.

When programmes change by adjusting the way travellers earn and burn points, or earn status, defining success criteria is not obvious. When Loyalty is a separate company to operating airlines even profit and loss can get hard to define.

This article explains why measuring the success and failure of Loyalty programme changes is hard. It then presents a few ideas based on Revenue Management principles which might help Loyalty teams measure their success.

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Why is measuring the success or failure of Loyalty programme changes hard?

Imagine you are running an airline Loyalty team and you want to change your programme significantly. The way people earn status is going to change. The way people earn and burn points for redemptions is going to change too.

What will you want to look at?

The first thing that might come to mind is the number of status holders. How many people hold a shiny Gold or Silver card before and after the changes?

Some might say that should be a good indicator of success. Silvers moving up to Gold. People qualifying for Silver for the first time.

But that is not always the case. You might want to reduce the number of status holders if you think your lounges are too busy or your priority boarding queues too long.

On the other hand you might be worried that too many people earning status are flying using their employer’s money and you want to reward people who spend their own cash.

The second point you might think of is revenue. You might want to reward to highest spenders with access to swanky lounges and oodles of points.

The problem with that is that high spenders are not always particularly valuable. The people buying their tickets might get corporate discounts at year end. Highly priced seats are high demand so might easily be sold to someone else. Passengers buying the last seats might not have options on other carriers.

You might then imagine attracting new passengers, or getting existing buyers to spend more.

Unfortunately when people change their travel patterns you do not know why.

When new traffic arrives your airline might be stealing market share from competitors. But it might also be selling seats to somebody who has only recently needed to fly.

When established passengers stop buying they might have defected to somebody else. But they might also no longer need to fly. Maybe they changed jobs, retired, got married, had children or did any of the other things that happen on the flight through life.

Even when your airline is stealing market share it is hard to know whether that is because of changes to Loyalty. It might be due to schedule changes, new routes or other parts of the service.

On the miles and points rather than status side of the programme you might look at breakage too. These are the points earned but never redeemed.

Once again, measuring the impact of changes is tricky. People might find it harder or easier to redeem points under a new structure. But on the other hand, Revenue Management may see the need to change the number of reward seats they release due to shifting market dynamics.

In the next part of this article I will present three tests based on Revenue Management-style data that are designed to overcome these challenges.

RM-style test 1: Fare class mix

If I were managing the Loyalty programme changes, this is the first thing I would do.

I would look for members with a consistent track record of purchasing fares assigned to specific fare classes.

For example, Virgin Atlantic uses W, S, H and K in that order and where W is the higher for their Premium Economy cabin. It is quite plausible that there are many customers who only buy K class fares.

In Business Class the airline uses J, C, D, I and Z, again in that order with J the highest. Once again, it is likely that there are many shoppers who will only buy when the Z fare is available.

I would then look at the following data after the Loyalty programme changes:

1. Have a statistically significant number of people who only ever booked K or Z before the changes now booked an H, I or higher fare?

2. Is the proportion of those Loyalty programme members who purchased a higher fare significantly higher than the general shift across all the airline’s passengers to the higher fares?

If the answer to both of those questions is year, that suggests the Loyalty programme changes have been successful. It indicates that Loyalty programme members are now more likely to book when fares are higher. That means Loyalty is doing its job well.

The first question evaluates Loyalty members specifically. It looks for people who paid more for travel with your airline after the programme changes. The second question controls for Revenue Management’s overall inventory behaviour, allowing comparison of specific programme members with passengers in general.

Drilling down to the fare level is much more helpful than looking at status holders, overall revenue or market share. It inspects the underlying dynamics of how programme members are changing their behaviour.

The same logic works in reverse too. If people were booking W and S, or J and C, and are now booking only lower fares, if the rest of the airline’s inventory mix is unchanged that suggests Loyalty is in trouble.

Meanwhile behind the curtain, Economy has many more inventory classes. Virgin Atlantic has 13. Fares are lower too. Those two factors together mean that upsells between classes tend to be lower in Economy than in other cabins.

One solution is to look at clusters of fare classes. For example, comparing passengers who book M-E-Q (sixth to eighth in the hierarchy) with those booking R-L-U (third to fifth).

RM-style test 2: Advance purchase

Read more

Michael O’Leary really hates taxes. Last Thursday on Ryanair’s YouTube channel he said:

“Failed Minister Puente presides over high aviation taxes … this year Slovakia, Ireland, Sweden, regional Italy is abolishing aviation taxes … until they’re zero, Spain has high aviation taxes.”

Mr O’Leary is right to criticise Spain’s taxes. He is also right that when it comes to aviation any tax is too high. This article explains why.

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At the time of writing Spain’s Security Tax is €3.99. There is also an aviation and security fee of €0.63. Together Ryanair passengers have to pay €4.62 each to Spain’s tax office the Agencia Tributaria just to leave the country.

They need to pay airport fees too, which vary by airport and route. Madrid charges €20.80 for passengers going to California and €14.95 for passengers going to Dublin.

Barcelona is slightly cheaper – €13.98 to Dublin. Alicante charges €6.73, making €11.35 in non-airline taxes, fees and charges for the passenger to pay.

Meanwhile passengers leaving Stockholm to fly to Dublin pay SEK 103 (€7.93) to Arlanda airport, €3.42 less than travellers from Alicante when you include taxes and airport charges together. Recall that Spain’s Security Tax is €3.99 and accounts for most of the difference.

€3.42 may not sound like much money. €13.68 for a family of four represents 0.04% of annual household income, which was €36,500 in 2025 according to the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica.

But €3.42 per person could make a difference to Spanish travel demand in two ways. First, it might affect the decision about where to fly for people considering travel into Spain.

Imagine a family looking at a holiday in Turkey at €550 and a holiday in Spain at €555. If both look good, they might choose Turkey as it is slightly cheaper and appears higher up the page when the family is travel shopping online.

The price difference might also cause some people to travel or not travel at all. Consumers do not only use their fun budget to buy holidays. They also buy pizzas, movies and Madonna albums. Business travel budgets can also be used to recruit staff, paint the office or buy more computers.

Facing slightly higher travel prices will cause some potential passengers to decide not to fly at all and enjoy something else instead.

Small price differences can make a difference to aggregate demand, which helps explain why Ryanair is flying less to Spain than they were.

The price difference will also impact Ryanair’s decision whether or not to fly at all.

On the first Saturday in August this year (8-Aug-2026) Ryanair scheduled 628 flights and 120,127 seats from Spain, according to OAG data.

That includes Ryanair’s mainline flights and also their flights operated under their UK, Buzz, Malta Air and Lauda Air certificates.

Ryanair reported 94% booked Load Factor for both 2025 and 2026 in their latest annual report. If that translates into Seat Factor, there would be 112,919 passengers travelling from Spain on our second Saturday of August. They were probably closer to being fully booked and carrying 120,000 passengers.

That means Ryanair needed to hand over at least €521,000 and more likely €554,400 to the Agencia Tributaria just for one day of flying.

No wonder Ryanair reduced their Spanish operations in 2026 against the 2025 flying programme. On the second Saturday in August 2025 (9-Aug-2025), Ryanair scheduled 654 flights and 125,084 (5,000 more than this year) out of Spain.

The Agencia Tributaria could have lowered taxes by around 18.4 Euro cents and broken even on the aviation component alone. In practice the 5,000 extra seats a day probably represents significantly less tourism business (and hence tax) for Spain.

Airlines like Ryanair may be hit more by taxation than other firms in the Spanish economy too, making Mr O’Leary’s arguments more powerful.

Basic Economics teaches that taxes impact both consumers and suppliers. The “incidence” of a tax is felt more by the side of the market which is more inelastic. In the airline business, that means the carriers.

The GCSE-style supply and demand chart below shows this clearly.

Ryanair’s supply curve in the chart is the least elastic because it is steep. A large change in price causes a small change in supply. This makes sense for airlines because they commit to flying a year ahead of time.

Consumer demand in the chart is more elastic because it is less steep. A small change in price causes a large change in demand. That sounds like traditional air travel models.

The salmon area is lost consumer surplus and the much larger pink area is lost Ryanair surplus, where “surplus” is abstractly defined economic benefit rather than clearly defined accounting profit.

In practice Ryanair’s Spanish demand and supply curves will look little like this. Ryanair can and do change flights if necessary due to operational requirements. Their Revenue Management system will use a dial-a-yield method to fill seats.

But the basic idea stands.

I am not convinced that Spain is going to eliminate its aviation taxes based on Mr O’Leary’s comments. Each country has to decide what its government needs and how to pay for it. No tax is ideal, but taxes of some kind are a necessary part of life.

Airlines are characterised by inelastic supply and elastic demand. That makes them poor candidates for taxes. And it is important to understand that airline taxes are higher than you might think. Governments should seek to meet their revenue needs from other industries, or if travel must be taxed then not from airlines.

As we saw, Ryanair will have paid more than half a million Euros on one Saturday this August. Every time an Emirates A380 takes off from London Heathrow fully loaded the British Exchequer earns £70,700. Is that not enough?

The case for reducing aviation taxes in Spain may be strong just based on Ryanair’s decision alone. The case for low aviation taxes everywhere is even more strong.

Like many airlines Air France-KLM follows the progressive unbundling school of thought. Flexibility, baggage and seat selection are well established as services that were once included but now may be charged separately.

Lounge access on Business Class tickets is now unbundled too. After some time as a product on cash fares, last week Air France-KLM announced that they are extending the model to reward bookings too.

My home carrier Qatar Airways has experimented with the idea. Plenty of others have too.

In this article I will set out the case that unbundling lounge access for Business Class travellers introduces risks for airlines and is unlikely to raise revenue significantly. I do not think it is a strategy worth pursuing.

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The idea is not to give travellers the chance to save money by going without the lounge, but to extract more cash from those willing to pay a bit more. In practice there is probably some of what economists call “incidence” involved.

The ticket price with unbundled lounge access is unlikely in practice to be the fully bundled ticket price plus a pre-set delta.

People buying lounge access will be paying slightly more than they would if lounge access was fully bundled. Others not buying lounge access are probably paying slightly less.

Setting a price defines a value & brings problems

The first problem with charging for lounge access is that it sets a published commercial rate on a product that was otherwise of only nominal value.

This matters when passengers cannot access a lounge. British Airways lounges in Boston are currently closed for renovation. The airline is handing out $45 (£33) airport catering vouchers.

BA does not unbundle lounge access, but Air France-KLM does. On this example of a flight from Newcastle to Bangkok via Paris Charles de Gaul, the European airline group is asking for £100 more each way to use their lounge.

If they closed their lounge for renovation they would probably be able to work this into the pricing in advance.

But if a passenger was denied access due to overcrowding, a power cut, a flood or some other reason, Air France-KLM would be on the hook to pay back the published price.

Airlines are presumably pricing the lounge access at greater than cost to earn a profit. So in case of denied entry the airline is worse off with unbundled prices than without. That makes lounge unbundling more risky for airlines than the fully-bundled model.

People value short connections where lounge access makes less sense

When I flew KLM to Cape Town last year I only had one hour and 45 minutes to transfer at Amsterdam.

Long-haul flights often board around 50 minutes prior to departure. You might budget 20 minutes to get from arrival gate to departure gate. That only leaves 25 minutes of theoretical lounge time.

I spent that time sitting on a normal seat next to the gate. (When my ticket was booked the lounge unbundled option was not available so fortunately no money was wasted.)

Business Class travellers might buy expensive tickets. That does not mean they have money to spaff up the wall or require constant luxury. In the business travel market, some companies might pay for lounge access but many will not.

£100 will go a long way in the terminal. The normal seats are fine for 25 minutes.

The value proposition of lounge access for short amounts of time is questionable. Airlines like KLM optimise their schedules for connectivity and good connections come at higher fares.

Unbundling lounge access is at variance with this pricing strategy. It does not make sense for airlines to invest in a high quality schedule and then give people who buy a good connection an incentive not to experience the whole product.

Quality considerations

When it comes to lounge quality there are three possibilities.

The lounge might be great. Imagine the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse or Cathay Pacific’s The Pier in Hone Kong. These lounges attract sales, generate demand and so increase revenue.

Airlines operating these lounges and considering charging for access might think about pricing high to reflect their quality and cost base. That would be a bad idea.

Charging high prices for access to a great lounge might make consumers think twice before buying tickets with that airline. That loses the airline money in the long term.

Charting low prices is a bad idea too. That will signal to the market that the lounge might not be as good as expected, reducing demand and revenue. It may also give cost budget holders an incentive to cut the quality of the lounge, damaging the branding proposition that led to it being so good in the first place.

Such airlines are better off with a fully-bundled lounge product to support their network sales.

On the other hand the lounge might be OK. American Airlines Admirals Club or British Airways Galleries are probably good examples. Once again airlines are better off not unbundling as the lounges are just not worth a meaningful amount of cash.

I don’t believe that airlines like BA and AA have the institutional capability required to turn their lounges into great experiences. So they will continue to be just about OK, even if access is unbundled.

Charging for lounge access in such places will likely crowd out people who just want somewhere to sit for an hour. It will continue to attract people who want to eat and drink a lot.

That will put pressure on the cost per user and may lead to further price increases. Eventually the lounge will become more expensive, attracting fewer customers who want somewhere to sit and so the cycle continues. The only possible outcome is a high priced and poor quality lounge.

That will harm airline revenue in the long term, so once again carriers are better off with fully bundled lounges.

A third possibility is that the lounge is poor. There are plenty of these. Unbundling access in such places probably just costs the airline money through the “incidence” effect.

There does seem to be an element of irrationality around lounge access.

I suspect that the people keenest to get into lounges are not travelling in First or Business Class. For such travellers the lounge is the glamorous part of the experience. It is understandable that airlines might unbundle access to capture their willingness to pay.

But for Business Class travellers, I think that unbundling lounge access is unwise.

Structural benefits of unbundling may not apply to lounges

Flexibility, baggage and seating all offer airlines structural advantages from unbundling.

Flexible tickets might be cancelled, increasing the risk that a seat might go out unsold, or spoiled as we say in the trade. Charging for flexibility mitigates that risk.

Arguably a premium of a few hundred Dollars on a lower end Business Class fare might be more trouble than it is worth for an airline. But that is a question for another time.

Unbundling baggage is always a great idea. Baggage is pure cost and complexity. If there were no need for passengers to check in their bags, airports would be much simpler than they are today.

Charging for baggage helps airlines avoid passengers bringing a bag that they do not need. They may contract fewer handlers as a result. Check-in might also take less time.

Aircraft turn-around time is likely to be improved without bags. That does not just benefit airlines by providing time for more flights and ticket sales, it also helps boost consumer choice.

Advance seat selection fees are also helpful for airlines, even in Business Class. Thanks to Revenue Management lower priced seats are often sold further in advance than higher priced seats.

Fees for advance seat selection inspire some travellers not to pre-select. That helps passengers paying higher fares get a better choice.

It is hard to see how unbundling lounge access makes the experience better for passengers. It might however save airlines some money if they no longer need to pay a third-party provider. I doubt that this saving is worth losing Business Class market share over though.

Conclusion

Unbundling lounge access does not offer the sort of structural benefits to airlines that they have achieved by unbundling other products and services. In fact it presents problems around value definition, connectivity and quality. Airlines should be cautious of going too far with this model.

There were some interesting facts about travel agents published in The Economist last week. The dismal science’s favourite newspaper (not magazine!) reported:

1. The travel trade association ABTA reckon around a third of British travellers book through a human

2. Membership of the American Society of Travel Advisers has risen from 190,000 in 2024 to 310,000 today

3. Social media platform LinkedIn thinks the role is one of America’s fastest growing jobs.

My own news feed presented interesting news last week too. Groovy-funky Virgin Atlantic is getting in on the action and opening a travel shop at Battersea Power Station for Holidays bookings. They are currently hiring a Retail Store Manager and you can apply here before 27-Aug.

Thinking about these stories in the light of trends like Modern Airline Retailing and agentic commerce made me wonder if airlines can ever really hope to replicate travel agent services. I don’t think they can without building bricks and mortar shops. And surprisingly, Modern Airline Retailing may be an incentive for them to do this.

Read on to find out why…

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Why do consumers still use travel agents?

A British high street travel agent these days is in some ways unchanged from the ones I remember back in the 80s and 90s.

Handwritten signs in the window (pictured) still promise sun, sea and sand. Glossy brochures show skyscrapers, mountains and the occasional cruise ship.

In some markets airlines like Emirates have shifted the mix of destinations further east from the traditional Turkey, Med and Caribbean. As far as many travellers are concerned, sandy beaches and sunshine in the Indian Ocean are good substitutes for a Caribbean island.

In one other respect though travel agents have changed a great deal.

Back in the 80s and 90s there was no doubt good money to be made on holidays. But a large amount of a shop’s footfall would have been from domestic train tickets, ferries and the occasional short-haul flight. All those are now booked online.

Thanks to mobile technology consumers are now used to buying with their device. And thanks to Revenue Management fares are often cheaper than they used to be in real terms. That makes it less risky for consumers to buy their own tickets than it used to be, so a travel agent is less often required.

But whole trips are much more complex than air, ocean or rail fares alone. They require hotels, transfers, guides, activities and more. Travel agents add value to holiday bookers in three ways.

First they offers consumers their experience and judgement. Experienced agents understand the holidays they are selling. Many will have been on similar trips at some point.

Sitting in front of travellers helps them discuss taste and preferences, and personally assess which packages might resonate best with each customer. Over time, consumers and their travel agents can build good relationships. That helps the agent sell the next holiday too.

Agents also offer travellers reassurance that if something goes wrong it will be put right.

Airline counters can be a great help at the airport, but in times of disruption queues may be long. Meanwhile phone lines are not always answered quickly. Cruise community lore suggests that ship operators are even harder to deal with than airlines when things go wrong. A travel agent can take care of that heavy lifting.

Finally, agents can often offer customers specific expertise that is not easily available through online engines, even those powered by AI. Examples include travel for allergy sufferers or tourists who want to travel with their pets.

Why do business travellers still use travel agents?

Booking through agents also comes with advantages for business travellers.

Business travel is sometimes booked at the last minute. Airlines and banks are wary of last-minute transactions booked on credit cards due to fraud risk and may not always allow such bookings to be completed, even if a website will show a price.

With agents airlines accept bookings right up until departure as they know they should get paid. Using agents can make it easier for business travellers to get the flights they need.

The second benefit of using agents comes from fares targeting business travellers sometimes (but not always) being more expensive than those sold to consumers.

Revenue managers know the travel patterns which characterise business travel. They implement Saturday night stay rules or inventory management strategies to charge these passengers more, even if flights are not otherwise busy.

Putting pricey tickets on personal credit cards is unlikely to be attractive for many employees. Many employees may not have enough personal credit to carry long-distance First and Business Class purchases.

And although some may relish the opportunity to earn miles and points, others will baulk at carrying the risk of an employer taking a long time to reimburse.

Meanwhile agents simply sign contracts with companies and issue invoices for the travel purchased accordingly.

Compliance is the third way in which businesses use agents to handle their travel.

If a company’s travel policy is First Class flights and five star hotels they do not need a policy. Any such business traveller can count themselves lucky. Most must navigate a complex web of rules, combining seniority, flight time and destination profile with cabin class, baggage allowance, seat selection and more.

Travel rules are complex. That makes them costly for buying firms to implement and manage. A travel agent’s processes and systems may be better suited to buying in-policy travel than a businesses own administrators.

Might airline travel shops be due a resurgence?

London’s Piccadilly thoroughfare was well populated with airlines 20 years ago. Sadly most are now gone.

Air France was there. Korean Air still is. Iran Air had an enormous shop – presumably they took out a long lease before the revolution.

Thai Airways was nearby. So was Uzbekistan Airways – your favourite airline revenue economist popped in to buy a ticket, was told “cash only” and went to book online instead…

British Airways closed their Piccadilly shop and others in 2006. A FlyerTalk thread at the time said:

The proposed changes will affect around 300 staff who work in the 17 high street travel shops, corporate travel agency Worldlink, based at Heathrow, and its back office support areas. A further 100 staff currently work in the Belfast call centre.

‘It is clear that an increasing number of our customers want to book and organise their travel plans with BA via the internet,’ said commercial director Martin George.

‘This is a travel industry wide trend and we have to ensure that our business reflects this.’

Mr George was right. At the time consumers were switching to online booking. BA did not need their shops anymore.

Yet as I mentioned earlier, Virgin Atlantic is now opening a Holidays shop at Battersea Power Station. Their website describes it as “standalone” suggesting there will not be any more.

There are reasons to believe that travel shops could have a new role for airlines, even BA and airlines like easyJet who never had a Piccadilly presence..

These airlines are among many who are investing in their holidays products. Any hotel commission earned is pure margin for the retailing airline. BA offers bonus tier points and Avios currency to holidays bookers.

The business case for a travel shop targeting Holidays customers rather than just selling flights is based on the high margin nature of these products. I wonder if we will see BA and easyJet open new shops just for holidays.

Holidays shops could help boost core airline revenue too.

They can show customers the benefits of upgrading to higher cabins. Think amenity kits and champagne glasses in display cases rather than model flat bed seats, which would be expensive to keep clean and in good working order.

As brand ambassadors travel shops will be excellent centres for the airline to have occasional exhibitions to inspire people to come in. Think uniforms, model planes and posters. Today’s intrigued passer by could become tomorrow’s customer.

The Virgin Atlantic travel shop will also be an excellent venue for the airline’s own corporate hospitality. The area around the shop is covered in pricey apartments inhabited by long-haul travel buyers.

If I were Virgin Atlantic I would invite local residents in from time to time for a glass of fizz and a canape.

What does this mean for Modern Airline Retailing?

Modern Airline Retailing is supposed to turn airlines into general purpose travel retailers. There are many high margin and high revenue market segments where it is hard to see the new schemas substituting for traditional travel agents.

However Modern Airline Retailing is helping airlines see the benefit of investing in just the type of holidays products which can best be supported by face to face retailing in a bricks and mortar shop.

It would be ironic if the trend towards digital Modern Airline Retailing actually ended up encouraging airlines to reopen the travel shops they closed a long time ago, only with a holidays rather than general purpose set up. I hope that is what happens.

The UK’s largest orange-branded airline easyJet may be taken over by American asset managers Apollo.

According to Squeezy’s website Apollo has four plans for the airline:

1. Continuing the ongoing fleet modernisation and up-gauging strategy

2. Enhancing the airline’s ancillary and loyalty offerings

3. Scaling the easyJet Holidays business into a structurally differentiated earnings stream

4. Identifying and retaining key staff, recognizing the important contribution of easyJet’s employees to the company’s past and future success

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All sound sensible. Airbus A320neo and A321neo in the order book are set to offer between 186 and 235 seats, against 156 to 186 seats per plane currently. That will help easyJet capture growth in western Europe’s congested air traffic market.

Enhancing ancillary, loyalty and holidays into money spinners is a tried and tested route for European airlines. easyJet is already quite good at giving passengers what they want, with retailing and not just airline specialists on the management team. But there is no reason to think that they cannot do better.

Viewing the airline’s team as a strategic asset that makes the airline work rather than just a cost centre is also good news. Nominated regulatory post holders aside, airline knowledge is easily lost.

As well as thinking about what the airline might do under new management, it is also interesting to think about things they should not do. Today’s article explores three of these.

easyJet should not join an alliance or enter codeshares

easyJet’s success has been powered by simplicity across three domains. Extensive agreements with other airlines would remove this simplicity, increasing cost and degrading passenger experience. So easyJet should not join an alliance or enter codeshares.

First up is Information Technology.

Price up a flight on BA of Lufty’s website and you can almost hear cogs turning and steam being vented as the engine tries to cough up a price. Meanwhile on easyJet.com the flights and prices appear almost instantly.

Airline websites rely on back-end IT to find flights and figure out the correct fare. Supporting this IT is a large network of interline and special prorate agreements, fare databases and accounting rules.

When more than one airline is involved, things get complex fast. The marginal benefits from joining an alliance or entering codeshares will make easyJet’s IT more clunky. I doubt that is a price worth paying.

The next domain where easyJet has engineered simplicity is in network design. Their network is characterised by direct flights between a wide range of airports, not a hub and spoke system.

Their three London operating bases at Gatwick, Stansted and Luton for example do not integrate with mainline airlines or regional connections. They serve Scotland but not England.

Networks at these three airports are set up for point to point itineraries. easyJet.com will happily sell a connection, but it is clearly marketed as such.

easyJet’s network structure is not as optimised from a cost perspective as hub and spoke is. They are unable to take advantage of economies of scale in maintenance or airport services.

But they help passengers get where they want to go. Aside from direct flights, they also offer a choice of connecting points, giving consumers more options than with mainline European carriers.

For example, if I want to go from Newcastle to Athens on Thu-10-Sep the airline will sell me connections via Paris, Prague, Bristol, Malaga and Majorca. None go through London or Amsterdam, the usual connecting points for Newcastle-originating passengers.

Some are convenient – a Bristol connection involves 9h20 total travel time and arrives on the same day it left. Others are not – Prague’s connection involves an overnight stop and the total travel time is 18h45.

The purpose of joining an alliance or entering a codeshare is to give consumers more choice. easyJet arguably already achieves this thanks to their network design.

The third domain where easyJet has turned simplicity into a growth strategy is Loyalty. Rather than creating a complex programme of miles and points they operate easyJet Plus. The programme offers benefits at the airport like priority bag drop and speedy boarding, and benefits on the plane too including free-of-charge front row and exit seats.

easyJet already partners with Emirates. I used Skywards miles that would otherwise have been orphaned a few years ago to jet between Barcelona and Newcastle.

A Virgin Atlantic partnership in the same vein would complement the existing Emirates relationship nicely. From the perspective of easyJet’s core west European customers, Emirates would take care of the “east” and Virgin Atlantic the “west”. Both easyJet and Virgin Atlantic are lifestyle brands.

easyJet could also build a lounge at one or more of its major airports. Air travellers go wild for lounge access and such a product could support a more expensive membership tier for easyJet Plus.

Lounges are not exactly cheap, but they align with easyJet’s “low cost” brand in the sense that it is cheaper to supply a premium “club”-type experience on the ground than it is in the air. A lounge would also support easyJet as a lifestyle brand, which was nicely encapsulated in the “Generation easyJet” ad campaign before COVID.

Once again, easyJet would not need to actually incur the costs of entering an alliance or using codeshares for their passengers to enjoy these benefits.

easyJet should not launch Business Class

Business Class in Europe follows the moveable curtain model. Airlines with two cabins set three, four, five or more rows where middle seats are blocked. Sometimes a table occupies the middle seat, sometimes not.

This model with convertible Economy seats offers advantages over wider but fixed “premium” seats for both airlines and passengers.

Whilst not as ostensibly comfortable, they are likely to be more plentiful and easy for passengers to buy. They also offer comfier connections to longhaul flat beds, supporting revenue for the airline’s highest cost products.

The economics of these seats explain why easyJet does not need them. There is no longhaul network to support.

easyJet Plus offers ground benefits by membership scheme rather than by cabin. It offers free seat selection for the most desirable seats on the planes.

The only thing missing is the blocked middle seat, and even that can be done in practice. Buy a seat under the name OBJ Edward OBJ Smith, plonk that down next to your actual seat and badda-bing-badda-boom, you have Euro-Biz easyJet style.

Launching Business Class would add more complexity to easyJet’s model. Check-in systems would need to handle the new cabin. Upgrades or downgrades might be needed. Fancy catering would require extensive contracting and expensive performance monitoring.

easyJet is better off sticking with one cabin under the new owners.

easyJet should not chase corporate or volume incentive deals

It may be tempting for the new owners of easyJet to go after business travellers. easyJet is already well regarded in the business market. Problems could materialise if a desire for high corporate traffic goes too far.

easyJet’s value proposition is offering good value fares for everyone. If under Apollo’s ownership the airline were to chase volume deals, they might start offering discounts to do so.

Revenue Management could then be distorted in some ways. They might be under pressure to push up the public fares to compensate, making it harder for ordinary travellers to get the best deals. Or they might distort network and inventory availability decisions to favour the corporate traveller to the detriment of the core customer base.

easyJet should continue to offer “business” fare products like flexibility and priority check-in or boarding services. They should continue to target business travellers.

But they should not forget that a company enjoying a discount for a seat they would have purchased anyway is diluting rather than supporting revenue. Where incremental sales are achieved, if these are low value easyJet might have been better off chasing the premium leisure market.

Conclusion

easyJet’s success has been built on simplicity. Simple IT, simple networks, simple Loyalty and a simple consumer value proposition: affordable air travel for everyone.

Under new ownership the airline should avoid losing what made it great in the first place.

They should not seek to enter codeshares or alliances as this would complicate IT, distribution and the network.

They should not introduce Business Class as this would complicate the onboard product.

And they should not chase the corporate volume market as this would complicate revenue management as undermine the airline’s value proposition.

Do that, and as long as the airline is not asset stripped or loaded with debt it should be happily tootling around Europe for decades to come.

New IATA Director General Saadia Zahidi is an Economist rather than an Engineer or a Pilot.

To celebrate the the dismal science and its associate disciplines here on Airline Revenue Economics, I am covering career opportunities for Social Scientists in aviation.

Last week I wrote about careers for specialists in Anthropology, Accounting, Economics, Economic History, Finance, Geography, Environment, History and International Relations.

Today I am covering Law, Management, Maths, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Sociology & Social Policy, and Statistics.

These are all departments at the London School of Economics (pictured above) that offer undergraduate degrees in the Social Sciences.

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Airline Revenue Economics is on holiday. During August there will be one article a week rather than the usual three. Returning on Wed-2-Sep.

Aviation careers for Law

The warmest feedback I ever received in my career came from Qatar Airways head of Contracts Marius Kotze.

In response to my first draft of a Scope of Service and Deliverables section in a Contract, he said “Dear Oliver, The proposed wording is acceptable”. If you have ever had cause to deal with an airline’s Contracts department, who are well known for high standards and requiring many re-drafts, you will realise that is high praise indeed. Thanks Marius!

The Contracts department at an airline is one of the few parts of the organisation that actually cover everything. Aircraft, fuel, personnel, IT consumables, accountancy services and more all have to be bought and paid for.

Many legal eagles might see Contracts as their natural home. But Industry Affairs departments which cover the relationships between airlines, other carriers and nation states also get heavily involved in Law.

Both paths are good for Law specialists.

Aviation careers for Management

Digging out my copy of the LSE undergraduate course guide from 2002-3 I see much in the Management Sciences degree that looks right at home in an aviation context.

Courses listed include “Operational Research Methods”, “Statistics for Management Science”, “Aspects of Market Research” and “Simulation Modelling and Analysis”.

Airline Operations Research departments answer some questions that are undoubtedly fascinating.

Some outcomes are elegantly simple corner solutions, reached by leaps of faith rather than extensive step-by-step optimisation analysis.

For example, on an Airbus A300 freighter aircraft the water gauge sometimes only has two levels, empty and full. You cannot just plug in a hose for half the usual time and hope for the best as the gauge may look like the aircraft is half loaded with water even if it is actually not.

But to fully load the plane with water when there are only two pilots on board is wasteful as water is heavy. The Operations Research-type solution is to load bottled water for the pilots instead.

Operations Research teams also answer some questions that sound a bit off at first glance but when you think about it are quite interesting, statistically speaking.

An example would be how often an airline should de-scale its lavatories. Scale creates weight and is added flight by flight and burns fuel. On the other hand, de-scaling is costly and may require extensions to aircraft down-time, so the aircraft cannot be out earning revenue.

An Operations Research specialist would figure out when the benefits of de-scaling exceed the costs.

It is easy to see Management graduates in many airline departments.

Aviation careers for Maths

You might imagine Maths as something more associated with the natural Sciences and Engineering than Social Science. But Maths is just as much a part of Social Science as anything else.

Mathematical logic is used extensively in Philosophy, and Economics can get quite mathsey too. Especially for those really into Econometrics.

Using Maths to create models that simplify the world to derive important truths is an important part of any field. Those models come in particular use in industries with complex market dynamics like aviation.

Maths specialists are often highly skilled in developing algorithms. They would fit right in to Revenue Management or Operations Research.

But in all honesty it is hard to see a career paths in aviation where Maths would not fit in somehow.

Aviation careers for Philosophy

While Philosophy is not obviously commercial, that does not mean it is unhelpful for airlines. In fact the contrary may be true. Philosophy specialists might help airlines avoid optimising away all the good stuff.

Philosophy teaches decision-making based on logic, argument and first principles. Many airline departments are asked to trade-off one course of action against another.

It is hard to see a Philosophy specialist signing off on BA’s decision to offer breakfast at 12 noon in Business Class on long-distance flights because they would actually think about it.

Philosophy specialists could find careers in Fleet and Network Planning, Revenue Management, Industry Affairs, Sustainability and elsewhere.

When it comes to Revenue Management, Philosophy adds an interesting ethical dimension. Current airline pricing is not always fair for consumers because published fares do not always reflect what airlines will actually accept.

At some points in the booking window, some airlines expect most people buying seats to have corporate or high volume discounts of some kind. Accordingly they inflate the fares published so the discount reflects what they will be happy with.

Whether or not airlines should seek to receive and then accept or decline price offers from customers comes with ethical benefits as well as potential profit.

AI in Pricing also involves ethical questions, such as the extent to which human decision-makers should be involved at all.

Airlines would benefit from having people with a Philosophy background on the team to help assess opportunities like this. The best option for Philosphy experts keen on joining airlines will be to look for conventional commercial opportunities and start shaping their career once in.

Aviation careers for Politics

Airline exposure to government, regulation, tax, labour policy and foreign policy is unusually high. Not only do they deal with governments in their home and destination countries, international politics can affect flight paths and fuel burn directly as airlines over-fly third-party states.

Out of all the Social Sciences, Politics may be the single most relevant one to aviation. Without Economics and the rest, airlines cannot fly profitably. Without strong or at least reasonably favourable political relationships, they may not be able to fly at all.

A Politics graduate starting out in aviation might look for roles that cover briefings, lobbying, consultation responses and stakeholder management. Airport work and environmental regulation projects may also appeal.

Aviation careers for Psychology

Airlines are fundamentally people businesses. That does not mean Psychology specialists should join Human Resources, although that is an option.

How flight, cabin and ground crew work together requires careful management. Safety culture must be nurtured. Psychologists have a good background to make that happen.

But elsewhere it would be fascinating to set a group of Psychologists loose on an airline’s frequent flyer database, tasked with figuring out how the Loyalty programme is or is not optimised for real consumers.

Behavioural analysis conducted by psychologists can be helpful for almost all customer-facing parts of an airline. Think queue management in Ground Services or at the Contact Centre, compensation policy for delays and disruption. Even upselling paths and loss aversion strategies in Pricing.

Aviation careers for Sociology & Social Policy

Sociology and Social Policy are strong fits for aviation because airlines are always interacting with public systems, regulations and questions of fairness. Airlines and airports are also part of wider social infrastructure, supporting skilled jobs, regional development and investment.

Social Policy specialists are likely to bring a practical understanding of how policy choices affect different group of people in different ways. Related issues might include disability access, family travel and workforce policy. All are relevant in the cabin, in the airport and even in the airline’s office.

British Airways say:

”We care about our people and value their contributions to our business. Creating a workplace which creates a sense of wellbeing and belonging enables people to thrive. This philosophy is championed by our leaders and colleagues and supported by our relationships with external partners … Establishing a network of over 570 wellbeing champions and sponsors throughout the business ensures that support is provided where it’s needed most”.

Could have been written by Social Policy expert!

Sociology is closely related to Social Policy and addresses behaviour, institutions, inequality, access and how people respond to rules and incentives. As elsewhere, it would be fascinating to let Sociologists loose on Loyalty and fare rules databases.

Sociology graduates might find careers Loyalty, Customer Experience, HR, Internal Communications and even Network Planning, where route decisions can have social as well as commercial effects.

For those with a Social Policy background should consider careers in Accessibility, Government Affairs, Sustainability, Corporate Responsibility and customer disruption policy, where airlines are often judged not just on efficiency but on how they treat people.

Aviation careers for Statistics

Statistics is relevant to every part of aviation. Operational optimisation, Revenue Management, Sales & Marketing, Flight Operations and others all use detailed data to take decisions.

As with Maths, it is hard to imagine a career path in aviation where a Statistics specialist would not fit in. All airline departments need their data scientists.

One of the key challenges for airlines today is using data across silos. Finding ways that established data can solve new problems will be valuable to airlines.

I have made something of a career of this myself, using Revenue Management-style data to help Product Development teams figure out what types of seating, catering, service and entertainment are most likely to be profitable.

Conclusion

Airlines are full of career opportunities for Social Scientists. I encourage everyone interested to have a go and apply.

Economists rejoice! In an industry traditionally dominated by Engineering and Ops, the new IATA Director General has dedicated her career to pursuing the dismal science.

Saadia Zahidi holds a Bachelors of Economics and an MPhil in International Economics. I look forward to seeing her grappling with the challenges of our industry’s largest trade association.

Most of us are unlikely to become the Director General of IATA. So rather than write my wish list of things I think Ms Zahidi should do, I thought I would take the opportunity to cover career opportunities in aviation for Economists and other Social Scientists.

I am specifically evaluating cases where Social Scientists can actually use these skills at an airline, rather than say training to be Flight Deck Crew or Cabin Crew.

These opportunities go both ways. Specialists in Social Science fields can be inspired to apply for jobs in aviation. But airlines and their stakeholders might also benefit by designing new jobs and career paths for Social Scientists.

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Airline Revenue Economics is on holiday. During August there will be one article a week rather than the usual three. Returning on Wed-2-Sep.

What exactly constitutes a Social Science is up for debate. I took my two degrees in Economics from LSE which, Carlsberg-style, is probably the best Social Science institution in the world. Undergraduate degrees at LSE are offered by 16 departments:

Anthropology | Accounting | Economics | Economic History | Finance | Geography & Environment | History | International Relations | Law | Management | Maths | Philosophy | Politics | Psychology | Social Policy | Statistics

16 separate departments is quite a lot to cover in one article. So this will be a two-parter. Eight today and eight next week, in alphabetical order.

Aviation careers for Anthropology

Anthropologists should fit right in to airline Marketing and Loyalty departments, which have much to gain by focusing on understanding elements of human behaviour.

Cognitive Anthropology for example is all about understanding knowledge sharing and cultural innovation. It would be fascinating to apply these ideas to cover frequent flyer communities.

Understanding how communities rather than individual travellers respond to airline commercial products is probably an under-covered part of the industry today. That is good news and bad news for job seekers with an Anthropology background and job posters looking for them.

The good news is that there is likely to be a large amount of low-hanging fruit which airlines can benefit from.

The bad news is that the relevant jobs are unlikely to be around today. So wannabe airline anthropologists might have to be working for an airline already to start or get involved with such projects.

Aviation careers for Accounting

People who are enthusiastic about the airline business and who actually understand Accounting are the industry’s best friends. They can evaluate new business cases, manage assets effectively and handle a complex web of records and audits.

Even accountants who are not enthusiastic about the airline business can be helpful. Skilled in business, they offer a helpful reality check to some of the more bonkers ideas that the bosses can come up with.

The successful airline accountant needs to look at cost and revenue together.

Unfortunately airlines have spent the last 70 years becoming extremely good at saving money. All the best opportunities were optimised a long time ago. It now costs a lot of money to make savings. The low-hanging fruit is on the revenue side.

Young accountants might find themselves in an airline’s Finance department on either cost or revenue side. The key to success is always to look at both together.

Accounting specialists can probably forge careers in most of an airline’s Commercial departments as well as Finance, including Revenue Management, Marketing, Sales, e-Commerce and more.

Planning, covering Scheduling, Network and Fleet, is also likely to be a good option.

Aviation careers for Economics

A large number of IATA’s core topics are relevant for Ms Zahidi. Tax, fuel cost, sustainability, profitability and airport access charges are likely to be on her agenda.

She may also decide to look at the “institutions” of the airline business that are supported by IATA. For example, is the “working group” model still the best way to run things?

I note with interest that Ms Zahidi’s MPhil was in International Economics, which typically covers trade between countries and exchange rates.

Trade is a large driver of demand for air travel. Foreign exchange is a large driver of risk. It will be interesting to see the extent to which these topics appear in Ms Zahidi’s list of priorities.

For other Economists, career opportunities and pathways may be just as wide-ranging even if individual jobs are not.

Economists and accountants have overlapping career opportunities. Both would do well in many Commercial or Planning roles and Analyst positions in any of these departments would be good entry points for young economists.

But the match is not perfect. It is easier to see an accountant thriving in Billing and Settlement, which covers payment between airlines and their travel industry partners.

It is easier to see an economist thriving in Industry Affairs, handling relationships between airlines, governments, regulators and others.

I believe that there is still great opportunity for airlines to expand on economist roles in their organisations.

The standard IATA Economics presentation shows the demand for air travel going up, apart from blips due to recessions and a COVID-era trough. Unfortunately they normally leave it there.

There is so much more to Economics in aviation than that. Consider for example my article about how economic theory explains why airlines are so safe. Wannabe airline economists are likely to need to get a standard Commercial job in the industry first before moving to a more innovative field.

Aviation careers for Economic History

Economic History explains how the economies of the world today became the way they are. There are two high-level dimensions to the discipline.

First-up is the role of institutions such as the rule of law, the work ethic and the consumer society, which act as the foundations necessary for economies to thrive. Next is the analysis of how events caused things to change over time.

Both are highly relevant for airlines today.

Aviation has its own set of institutions. I mentioned IATA’s “working groups” in the previous section. My recent paper for Accelya presented Payment Orchestration, Settlement and Order Integrity as the institutions necessary for Modern Airline Retailing.

Economic historians can help airlines determine the extent to which they are successfully integrated into the industry’s institutions. If working at industry bodies like IATA or in the supply chain, they might ask whether or not the institutions are working effectively or if they need to be redesigned.

Economic History is also highly relevant for Commercial and Planning roles. Revenue Management considers market history as an excellent predictor of what is likely to happen next. Fleet and Network Planning teams use historical data to help decide which aircraft to buy

The right role for economic historians will depend on their quantitative background. There are opportunities in aviation for both the analyst and the essay writer.

Aviation careers for Finance

An airline’s Finance department typically covers accountancy and audit. The Chief Financial Officer is in charge. But there are both established and emerging opportunities for specialists in Finance itself.

Airlines need piles of money to operate. Fuel, airport space, overflying, crew, catering and insurance are all hungry for cash.

Getting established requires oodles of capital too. Assets such as aircraft, avionics, wheels and brakes, galleys, lavatories, seats and entertainment systems all need to be put in place and then managed once they are there.

Getting the Finance in place is not always a breeze. Some airlines, think Emirates and Qatar Airways, can borrow at preferential sovereign rates and have it easy.

Others have it harder. Ethiopian Airlines for example is well managed and profitable but struggles with putting capital together for aircraft purchases due to their home country’s risk profile.

The industry has developed some ways of dealing with challenges faced by Ethiopian Airlines and other similar carriers. Airbus Bank for example essentially borrows money at the Airbus rate and then lends it one to airlines who can pay for their planes but would otherwise struggle to raise cash.

Fuel purchase and trading are other well established areas to consider for the budding Finance specialist. In the words of the Qatar Airways Vice President Capital Markets who was responsible for fuel hedging in 2012:

“If the Commercial Department work really hard at being useless for a whole year they can lose a billion Dollars. I can lose a billion Dollars in an hour’s trading”.

Today’s world seems less stable than the way things used to be. It is likely that Finance specialists interested in buying, trading and hedging fuel will have opportunities opening soon.

But while fuel is the most widespread airline tradable, it is not the only one. In principle airlines could commodify their output and sell it in the futures market. Bundles of Available Seat Kilometres could be sold in advance. Options and derivatives against these could be traded.

The advantage for airlines is simple. If such a market existed they could commit to operating flights and be sure of profitability. It is just the same way that farmers sell corn before planting.

The technology behind such trading is not new, but it is as yet unproven. My Qatar Airways colleague John Lancaster had a go in the early 2000s but was thwarted by 9/11.

Matthew Tringham and Elise Weber tried to launch Airbus Skytra to do a similar thing in 2018 and 19 but COVID got in the way.

I am sure that a futures market for air travel can thrive one day. It will need Finance specialists to make it happen.

Aviation careers for Geography & Environment

The LSE Geography and Environment department is something of a two-sided coin. Both (Human) Geography and Environment are solid skills for founding an airline career.

I did two Geography and Environment courses as part of my LSE Economics degree – GY201 Location & Spatial Analysis, which covered the economics of cities and regions, and GY222 Environmental Economics. Both have been helpful in my airline career.

On the Environment side, there is much more to airline Sustainability than fuel and emissions alone. My article with Volodymyr Bilotkach outlines the idea & policy frameworks that are shaping the industry.

Airlines involved with Emissions Trading Schemes and frameworks like ICAO’s Carbon-offsettng CORSIA programme all need Environment specialists.

For human geographers aviation also offers abundant careers. While Economic History covers the events shaping regional development, Human Geography explains how regional development has shaped historical events.

Geography degree holders will be familiar with Geographical Information Systems technology, which quantifies events in terms of space and place.

Airline Revenue Management Systems produce a related output – they forecast where and when demand is coming from and where and when it is going to. Human Geography and airline Revenue Management are complementary disciplines.

Aviation careers for History

A university History prospectus often claims that a historian’s skills are transferable but it is not always clear exactly how this works in practice.

Aviation is a great place for History graduates, provided they are willing to use data.

Airlines have large amounts of information to hand and too few people or tools to analyse it effectively.

A quantitative historian’s skill condensing large amounts of information into meaningful insights can be of great use when defining Fleet or Network strategy.

A narrative historian might feel most at home in an airline’s Industry Affairs department, covering its regulatory and aero-political context. Modern aviation has a vast technical architecture, but it is also fundamentally based in History.

The Chicago Convention, Bermuda agreements, open skies. the European single market and all manner of bilateral agreements all emerged from somewhere for reasons that were important at the time. Airlines need people who can understand the history of treaties, trace policy evolution and explain how today’s constraints emerged.

Aviation careers for International Relations

We have seen how seven Social Sciences explain the role of place, space, society, incentives, institutions and money for airlines. International Relations adds power to the mix.

That means answering questions like:

1. Which airlines get to fly where?

2. What are the rules and who writes them?

3. How does aviation improve prospects for states to meet their objectives?

Accordingly International Relations is a natural fit for parts of the business that are most political. There are five main areas.

Roles for IR specialists are likely to include negotiating bilateral and multilateral air service agreements and overflight permissions. These are essential for many airlines. Without them, a single-hub carrier cannot fly far (if anywhere).

Government and regulatory relations is a second area where IR specialists may find interesting careers. Policy development needs to be monitored and regulatory submissions made.

Security may also be relevant, for example does a country consider another nation’s security standards high enough to accept connecting traffic without additional scans.

Immigration is the fourth area of interest for IR specialists. In the face of the EU’s questionable Entry and Exit system, should the UK ban EU passport holders from e-gates?

The fifth main career path for IR specialists is in conflict and sanctions management. Airlines are unable to overfly war zones. Sanctions regimes influence the ability of carriers to use air space. Understanding how changes in these environments may impact operations or insurance makes IR a critical domain for airlines.

Coming next week

Aviation careers for students of Law, Management, Maths, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Social Policy & Statistics

Today’s article is about a piece of my writing that you can read free of charge on another website.

I recently prepared a white paper for Accelya that I hope all readers interested in airline revenue will find interesting. It is called “The hidden engine of airline profitability: getting settlement & order integrity right” and can be downloaded at this address:

https://w3.accelya.com/resources/whitepapers/the-hidden-engine-of-airline-profitability/

The paper is free to read but you will need to give your name and work e-mail to Accelya to receive a copy. The paper is written as a neutral shaping-the-conversation piece.

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During August I will be on holiday – instead of “sending a postcard” once in two or three weeks like last year there will be one article a week instead of the usual three through the whole month

There are five parts in the Accelya paper.

Parts One and Two examine the legacy institutions of airline sales and distribution prior to Modern Airline Retailing.

Revenue Accounting and Revenue Integrity were developed to ensure accurate revenue allocation and trusted partner interactions. They became the data foundations required for pricing and Revenue Management.

These institutions will continue to play a critical role as airlines transition to new models.

Parts Three, Four and Five introduce payments, settlement and order integrity as the next generation of airline commercial institutions. These capabilities extend beyond

traditional control functions, enabling real-time coordination, mutual benefits with partners and scalable retailing.

Together they build on the legacy foundations to form the institutional backbone of Modern Airline Retailing, shaping how airlines capture revenue, manage risk and deliver profitability in the decade ahead.

I also outline five “insight boxes” setting out things that airlines can bear in mind now as they shape their plans to make Modern Airline Retailing a reality. These are:

Box one:

Revenue Accounting is more than a back-office function, it is a core institution that underpins airline profitability today and will continue to do so under Modern Airline Retailing.

It enables industry-wide trust, ensures accurate revenue allocation between partners, and provides the data foundation for pricing and Revenue Management.

There are three implications for airline executives:

1. Revenue Accounting is not optional infrastructure but it is the system that ensures revenue is correctly captured, shared and audited across increasingly complex commercial relationships

2. Pricing and Revenue Management are only as effective as the data they are built on; inaccurate or delayed Revenue Accounting directly weakens forecasting and optimisation

3. As airlines move to Modern Airline Retailing, the need for accurate, timely and trusted revenue data increases, making Order Accounting more – not less – strategically important.

Box two:

Revenue Integrity is the trust framework that underpins airline commercial performance and will be expanded under Modern Airline Retailing.

It ensures that bookings convert into revenue, aligns incentives between airlines and partners, and protects the integrity of demand data.

Airline executives should consider three implications:

1. Revenue Integrity is not just a control function as it directly impacts revenue, forecast accuracy and inventory efficiency

2. Weak controls distort demand signals, dilute yield and increase the risk of unsold Inventory

3. In Modern Airline Retailing, Revenue Integrity must evolve into real-time, multi-party trust infrastructure spanning orders, payments and fulfilment.

Box three:

Payment orchestration is a core institution of Modern Airline Retailing, determining whether complex offers convert into revenue. Airline leaders should consider three points carefully:

1. Payment performance directly impacts conversion, customer experience and profitability

2. Increasing transaction complexity requires coordinated orchestration across multiple partners and systems

3. In a Modern Airline Retailing world, payment becomes a real-time capability that confirms commitment and enables fulfilment.

Box four:

Settlement ensures that revenue is realised and not just recorded across a complex, multi-party ecosystem. Three key points for airline leaders include:

1. As airlines become merchants of record, they take on greater responsibility for distributing funds accurately and on time, and bear the risk and costs of consumer chargebacks

2. Weak settlement processes create financial risk, partner friction and potential liquidity challenges

3. Real-time, transparent settlement capabilities will become a key enabler of scalable airline retailing.

Box five:

Order integrity ensures that what airlines sell, price and promise is delivered consistently across the retailing lifecycle. Airline leaders handling Modern Airline Retailing projects should bear these three points in mind:

1. Misalignment between offer, payment and fulfilment erodes customer trust and reduces repeat purchase behaviour

2. Increasing personalisation and bundling require stronger real-time coordination across systems and partners

3. Simple, transparent and reliable customer experiences supported by strong order integrity drive long-term retail success.

If you choose to download and read the paper, I hope you enjoy it! Please also let me know if, having read it, you have any questions.

This is the third of four white papers that I have prepared for Accelya. Stay tuned for the fourth and final one, which will be called “Delivering what you sell: the next frontier of airline retailing”. Meanwhile the first two are available here:

Decoding Modern Retailing: A Practical Guide to Offer, Order, Settle, Deliver (OOSD)

https://w3.accelya.com/resources/whitepapers/decoding-modern-airline-retailing-oosd-guide/

Lessons from Amazon: what great retail looks like in aviation:

https://w3.accelya.com/resources/whitepapers/modern-airline-retailing-lessons-amazon/

I had the good fortune to see the Vertical Aerospace Valo perform a demonstration flight at the Farnborough Airshow on Wednesday.

The eight propellers whirred, the aircraft whizzed around reasonably quietly for about ten minutes and then rotated 360 degrees as it landed. Luckily I was in just the right place to catch both the landing and a blast of wind from the engines as it did so.

I don’t know how well the aircraft actually performed. No doubt Vertical’s boffins are pouring over the technical data as we speak. But as a spectator it looked good to me.

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So today I thought I would revisit the EVTOL* topic as I have not written about it for three years.

* EVTOL = Electric Vertical Take-Off & Landing aircraft are powered by batteries

In today’s article we will be looking at why I believe that EVTOL will one day be a thing. Then I will present my three favourite use cases for aircraft like the Valo.

I don’t want to follow the airshow by writing a junior school-style essay about my big day out, but there will be some shots of the Valo flying around at the end.

Could EVTOL really become a big thing?

Technology tends to underperform against expectations in the short-term and over-perform in the long-term.

Following walkmans the iPod was always going to be big, but its transformation into the iPhone and other smartphones became life changing for people all over the world. Virtual reality and the metaverse may go the same way. So might blockchain. And so might EVTOL.

The Valo is particularly well equipped to be a success as it has a volumetric lift capacity exceeding other similar aircraft. That means it can carry suitcases and equipment as well as regular passengers.

Aircraft like the Valo might also become part of military operations, which would create economies of scale transferable to the commercial model.

It is easy to imagine Valos surrounded by a swarm of drones delivering personnel and equipment to the front line in Ukraine. EVTOL are much stealthier than helicopters because they are battery powered.

My gut feel is that if EVTOL is to be a success in commercial aviation it needs to be a product if not for everybody then at least for the higher end of the mass market.

It will need to be a vehicle that will be flown in by people who normally travel Business Class or Premium Economy. It will need to perform missions that make a tangible difference to ordinary people’s lives. Fortunately my three favourite use cases are designed to achieve exactly that.

My favourite use case number one: life-saving organ transportation

Imagine a patient is in hospital in need of a heart transplant. In another hospital 100 miles away a heart becomes available. EVTOL can carry the heart straight over a busy city to save the patient’s life.

Stealthy electric aircraft might have access to straighter paths unavailable to helicopters, which could get hearts where they need to be faster. EVTOL technology can help save people’s lives.

My favourite use case number two: the market share stealer & yield booster

There is only one flight a day from Raleigh-Durham Airport in North Carolina to London Heathrow. This summer it leaves at 7.05pm and arrives at 7.40am.

North Carolina is a centre of the biotech industry and demand to London is significant. Many of these flyers are bought Business Class tickets by their employers. There are good reasons to imagine that busy executives may prefer a wider range of arrival times.

Earlier arrivals could help people attend breakfast meetings or get home in time to take their kids to school. Later arrivals could help prioritise sleep and rest, or allow passengers to put their kids to bed before leaving the house. The existing air service is fit for purpose but not ideal.

Meanwhile at Atlanta 356 miles away, Delta and Virgin Atlantic have four daily flights between them, with arrival times in London between 6.25am and 11.20am.

A connecting commercial flight involves a good deal of hassle. Airlines like Delta and Virgin Atlantic could integrate EVTOL to feed high yield traffic into their existing long-distance network in a way that helps passengers avoid hassle. Airlines with EVTOL might be able to steal market share and corporate contract traffic from incumbent American Airlines.

Some passengers might find the case for EVTOL plus regular flight compelling. Some might be willing to pay. A demand boost could help sell otherwise spoiled seats.

In some cases Revenue Management algorithms might see the extra demand and transform $5,000 seats on conventional planes into $10,000 seats. EVTOL need not generate revenue directly if it can support revenue growth elsewhere on airline networks.

Using empty seats as a loyalty perk for shiny card holders might not generate revenue directly either, but it could be extremely powerful loyalty driver. Flyers already prize their lounge access. Shuttling around on EVTOL could become the new frequent traveller status symbol, keeping people buying tickets with their preferred airline even at higher prices than market rate.

My favourite use case number three: the slow sleeper

Some flights are just too short.

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When I was checking out IAG’s 2025 Annual Report for Tuesday’s Aer Lingus article I noticed an interesting comment on page 8. According to IAG, “Madrid is the new Miami”.

They mean that Madrid is the new hub for Latin America and the Caribbean, noting a 43% increase in the number of Latin American visitors received into Madrid between October 2019 and October 2025.

Madrid is certainly something like Miami for IAG – the large airline group will operate 1,132 flights to Latin America and 206 flights to the Caribbean from the Spanish capital this September.

But is Madrid really the new Miami? I decided to find out and am only partly convinced. Read on to find out why…

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This article was written using data from OAG Schedules Analyser: visit oag.com. Thanks OAG!

I took a look at schedule data for the month of September for every flight to and from Miami and every flight to and from Madrid to answer four questions:

Q1. How do Madrid & Miami compare based on standard airline KPIs?

Q2. How do Madrid & Miami compare based on range of destinations?

Q3. Are Madrid & Miami equally competitive to Caribbean & Latin America?

Q4. What is the real reason behind IAG’s statement?

I divided the western hemisphere into three groups – Caribbean, Latin America and North America. For the purposes of this analysis I included Mexico in North America but all other Central American countries in Latin America.

The boundaries are not always precisely defined. As shown in the map below, Bimini in the Bahamas is only 64 miles from Miami classified as Caribbean. Meanwhile Key West, another island with an airport, is 126 miles southwest of Miami and classified as North America.

Generated by the excellent Great Circle Mapper: visit gcmap.com

Used with permission | play with the map here

How do Madrid & Miami compare based on standard airline KPIs?

The table below shows high level statistics from the OAG schedule data. As you would expect, Miami and Madrid have quite different patterns of flights and capacity.

Miami has 8.1 times the flights of Madrid to the Caribbean and 42% more flights to Latin America.

Miami also features many more seats from Madrid to the Caribbean – 4.3 times as many as Madrid. But Madrid actually beats Miami in terms of the number of number of seats to Latin America, with just over 906 thousand versus 818 thousand seats in September 2026.

When it comes to total capacity commitment and capital employed, Latin America and the Caribbean seem much more important for Madrid than Miami. In Available Seat Kilometre terms Madrid will be 16.9% ahead of Miami to the Caribbean this September, and 167% ahead to Latin America.

This is down to geography alone – short-distance flights are better served with small aircraft and shorter stage lengths, leading to more flexibility in terms of number of destinations served and frequency.

Overall Caribbean and Latin America are more important to Madrid than they are to Miami. Only 33.9% of Miami’s ASKs go to or from the two regions, while 41.2% of Madrid’s ASKs do. It is likely that revenue contribution may be proportional.

Both in absolute and relative terms, Caribbean and Latin America are more important to Madrid than they are to Miami. Madrid is not just a “new Miami”. As a gateway to the two regions it has surpassed Miami.

How do Madrid & Miami compare based on range of destinations?

The map below shows all Caribbean and Latin American destinations served from either Madrid or Miami.

The red airports are served from Madrid alone, the blue ones just from Miami and the orange airports from both.

Generated by the excellent Great Circle Mapper: visit gcmap.com

Used with permission | play with the map here

Only seven destinations are Madrid exclusives and all of these are in South America. These represent 315 (9.2%) of Madrid’s 3,410 flights to the region.

Meanwhile 37 Caribbean routes and nine Latin American routes are Miami exclusives. Together these represent 3,022 (37.0%) of 8,157 flights.

So in terms of the range of destinations served, Madrid cannot match Miami.

The comparison is not entirely fair. Small airports like Bimini are never going to be served by capital intensive twin-aisle planes from Europe, in the same way that large planes are unlikely to fly into second- and third-tier European cities from Miami.

Are Madrid & Miami equally competitive to Caribbean & Latin America?

Madrid and Miami seem structurally different in terms of the airlines which serve Caribbean and Latin America. 18 airlines serve the two regions from Madrid, but 29 carriers fly from Miami.

However that does not mean Miami is more competitve than Madrid.

The most committed airline to the two regions from Madrid is Iberia with 55.0% more flights than the second most committed – Air Europa. Iberia has roughly 39% of the flights, seats and capacity.

Meanwhile in Miami American Airlines is the largest airline with 10.5 times as many flights and 12.2 times as many seats as the second largest, Envoy Air, who operate many flights under the AA-associated American Eagle brand.

Together AA and Envoy have 65.3% of flights, 61.7% of seats and 52.4% of ASKs.

The Herfindahl Index of market concentration gives Madrid a score of roughly 23% for flights, seats and ASKs. Meanwhile Miami’s scores are 43.5% concentration of flights, 39.0% concentration of seats and 29.7% concentration of ASKs.

Miami is much less competitive than Madrid.

What is the real reason behind IAG’s statement?

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Airline revenue managers do not talk about margin much. Since costs are fixed in the short term, maximising gross revenue is the key to profitability. The same is not true in other industries, where margin optimisation is important.

I have personal experience grappling with this distinction.

When my business participated in an accelerator in 2017, many others in the programme with me sold to supermarkets. For them and the supermarket buyers, margin not revenue was the first thing they calculated.

More recently as a non-exec of a London-based bar and dining room I spend time engaging with margin data on food, drink and other consumables.

It is interesting to have the opportunity to think about margin rather than pure revenue. The two disciplines overlap to some extent. An airline filling a flight with low-yield passengers is comparable to a bar selling pints of beer at close to cost.

So recent news about how IAG are down-gauging their Aer Lingus operations due to margin rather than revenue or profitability sparked my interest.

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In this article I will explore IAG’s approach to margin and what this may mean for the future of Aer Lingus’s fleet. I will then explain why I agree with IAG’s view that Aer Lingus can achieve higher margins. Finally, I will take a look at the role Loyalty may have had in shaping IAG’s decision.

IAG’s approach to margin

IAG CEO Luis Gallego wrote in his group’s 2025 Annual Report:

“We continue to execute on our transformation which is delivering market-leading margins at Group and at individual operating company level. Group margins of 15.1% are now at the top of our through-the-cycle range whilst Iberia delivered a 16.2% margin, an excellent performance, with British Airways not far behind at 15.2%. Our margins, as in previous years, continue to be significantly better than those of our global competitors.”

IAG has three medium term profitability targets, of which operating margin is one. These are:

1. 12% to 15% operating margin

2. 13% to 16% Return on Invested Capital

3. Under 1.8x net leverage.

Are Lingus achieved 11.1% margin in 2025. This was a 2.5% improvement on 2024. For comparison Barcelona-based Vueling, another IAG airline, achieved 12.0%.

Margin seems particularly important to IAG on their North Atlantic and Latin American routes, which represent 46.7% of all capacity and 70.4% of long-distance capacity across the group. The 2025 Annual Report says:

In the North Atlantic, IAG is driving returns and margins principally through the rebuilding of British Airways’ premium capacity to pre-COVID levels and through Iberia and Aer Lingus’s new A321XLR aircraft, which are already exceeding expectations from both a customer and financial standpoint. In the Latin American market, Iberia’s earnings growth is being accelerated by its fleet of A350 and now A321XLR aircraft.

It is interesting to bear this in mind when looking at the routes which Aer Lingus is suspending.

Minneapolis is currently operated by the Airbus A321XLR – presumably this aircraft will be deployed somewhere more profitable either on Aer Lingus or Iberia.

Denver and Las Vegas are currently operated by an A330, as is Seattle which will become a summer-only service. The Annual Report remarks that the 21 A330-900 aircraft which IAG ordered in 2025 “can be deployed within Aer Lingus, Iberia or LEVEL”.

The Annual Report says little about the current A330-200 and -300s operated by Iberia and Aer Lingus. But it is likely that the principle of using aircraft across brands can be extended to these older planes.

Presumably the aircraft freed up by suspending Denver and Las Vegas, and Seattle in the winter, will be used to increase higher margin frequencies with Iberia in Latin America.

Aer Lingus’s loss will be IAG’s gain

One objection to Aer Lingus’s schedule cuts, which also lead to job losses, is that the flights being suspended are profitable.

Their 11.1% margin on €2,529 million produced €282 million operating profit in 2025.

Let’s do a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Suppose revenue reduces by 10% to €2,276 million and margin increases to 12% in line with Vueling. Operating profit would be €273 million, which is less than current.

Some might argue that since Aer Lingus will earn less profit than before the cuts are wrong. This is incorrect from IAG’s point of view. By deploying aircraft on more profitable routes they will expect profits at their other brands to increase by more than Aer Lingus’s go down.

IAG says that “all our airlines are capable of margins that are world-leading” and I agree. Aer Lingus probably does have capability to achieve BA or Iberia-level margins.

Ireland’s 7.2 million population is relatively small, at roughly 10% of the United Kingdom’s and 14% of Spain’s. But it is nominal GDP per capita which drives demand for air travel and Ireland’s is high. This is why Qatar (population three million) and Singapore (population six million) can both support large airlines.

World Bank data shows Ireland’s nominal GDP per capita at $107k in 2024, against $52.6k in the United Kingdom and $35.3k in Spain. Ireland as a whole even beats BA’s lucrative London hub, where GDP per capita is between $90k and $95k.

Aer Lingus is also exposed to high income markets in the United States. In their markets, incomes are likely to be closer to Ireland’s GDP per capita than the US average of $85.8k.

By trimming a few routes and focusing on those currently working well, Aer Lingus could emerge an even more successful airline.

Margin and Loyalty

It may be no co-incidence that the IAG co-brand credit card in Ireland is relatively weak compared to BA and Iberia alternatives.

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Before omnishambles there was mockasham.

The first was coined by famously angry TV character Malcolm Tucker in 2009. The second was used at LSE when I was there in the early 2000s.

Both could apply to a recent promotion by British Airways and American Express, which went drastically wrong on Wednesday.

Despite the issues the airline and the card issuer encountered, there may have been rational reasons why the initiative was set up to fail.

In this article will first briefly cover what went wrong. Then I will outline how things could have been designed differently, and indeed to reward airline Loyalty KPIs. Finally I will explain why they were not.

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Note: I can’t claim credit for the British Errorways title, which must go to online poster “Nick”!

What went wrong?

When I wrote about the BA and Amex co-brand card five years ago there were probably around 500 thousand cards in circulation, roughly 90% on the free version. Rob Burgess of HeadforPoints, a blog, recently reckoned that circulation is now 750k.

The co-brand has been in effect for 25 years and your favourite airline revenue economist has been a holder for 20. To celebrate, BA is turning one of its regular flights to New York JFK into a party plane.

BA177 on Thu-15-Oct and BA180 on Sun-18-Oct are currently in the reservations system, but have been zeroed out for some time.

The deal was the co-brand card holders could register in advance and then log on to book at 12 noon on Wed-15-Jul. No cash element was required for tickets – only Avios.

It seems that avios.com went down before 12 noon. To add further confusion, there was an open link to make bookings too which did not require pre-registration.

Thousands of people tried to book. There were only 256 seats on the plane. Inevitably people who followed the rules and logged in on time did not get any seats.

Noteworthy aside

Interestingly there are no seat reservations on the two special flights assigned at the time of writing, 22 hours after the promo took place. This suggests that passengers have not yet received booking codes.

How could things have been designed differently?

The system used was, even if it had worked, a lottery. Essentially it was fastest finger first. A ballot would have saved all the people trying to book a lot of stressed.

It could have even rewarded loyalty to the BA and Amex co-brand and might have looked something like this:

Step 1: register for the ballot

Step 2: receive one entry per year of holding the co-brand to reward loyalty

Step 2a: receive another entry per year of holding the paid card to reward loyalty even more

Step 3: specify the lowest cabin you are willing to accept

Step 4: run the ballot drawing First Class seats first, then Business Class, then Premium and finally Economy, eliminating people who will not accept each lower cabin or who do not have enough Avios in their account as you go

Step 5: notify winners, all bookings non-refundable

So why did BA not do this?

The ballot system above has three disadvantages:

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Mastering relations with the media is a key skill for airline CEOs and Anko van der Werff is no exception. Industry commentary about his upcoming move from SAS to Air Canada is as gushing as you would expect.

Things were not always so. Reading the 20 year old FlyerTalk thread “Anko van der Werff needs to get a new job” is an entertaining reminder that today’s respected airline CEOs were once junior managers learning their trade.

With his move to Air Canada, Mr van der Werff is unlikely to make such gaffes again. Running an airline can often follow a standard playbook. The airline is long established, already highly optimised and has its fair share of legacy issues.

After taking safety and operational reliability as his first priorities, Mr van der Werff will likely have a go at shuffling organisational design and ownership structures. He will probably whip out his spreadsheet and try to find a few more cost savings.

On the revenue side, he may build on his experience integrating SAS with Air France-KLM and Skyteam to develop Air Canada’s relationship with Greater Lufty and United. If he can integrate Aeroplan Loyalty with Revenue Management I would be impressed.

But there is one interesting and unique opportunity for Air Canada where Mr van der Werff has a genuine opportunity to do something new. This is in the Province of Alberta.

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This article was written using data from OAG Schedules Analyser: visit oag.com. Thanks OAG!

Alberta is enjoying an economic boom. Just over five million people live there according to the latest estimates from statcan.gc.ca. But nominal GDP per capita is close to USD 100,000, so the average Albertan is likely doing well enough to buy plane tickets and, if they so desire, fly longhaul.

Air Canada’s rival WestJet is well established in the province. Their Boeing 787 fleet operates from Calgary to a wide range of international destinations in both eastern and western hemispheres, including Rome, London, Seoul and Sydney. Together with Lufthansa Technik, WestJet has invested USD 120 million in a maintenance facility at Calgary.

The Alberta opportunity for Air Canada in Alberta is not one of competing more with WestJet to steal market share, as that would just lead to value destruction through a price war. Besides, Air Canada already do compete to a limited extent. A Calgary to London service operates. Connections are good in both directions to international flights via Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

The three maps below show Air Canada’s longhaul network, with the Calgary, Alberta service to London highlighted in blue.

Mape generated by the Great Circle Mapper: visit gcmap.com

Used with permission | Links to maps: map 1, map 2, map 3

But for Alberta’s “other” two Air Canada airports Fort McMurray and Grand Prairie the picture is different. These small cities each have only 60-70,000 residents and are served by 48 Air Canada flights a week between them. They both also have an oil and gas industry, traditionally a consumer of air travel.

Fort McMurray has a three times a week service to Toronto and everything else is to Calgary. At Grand Prairie, all services are to Calgary. It would be interesting to see Mr van der Werff launch a few more flights a week from Alberta’s tier two cities into Vancouver and Toronto.

But traditional airline economics alone are not why Air Canada might be most interested in supporting Alberta. The province also has a separatist movement, with some citizens keen on seceding from Canada to become independent or join the United States.

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Last week we looked at how easyJet is essential transport infrastructure in the United Kingdom. Everyone’s favourite orange airline operates 1,208 domestic flights within Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Today I wanted to extend that analysis in two ways. First to evaluate easyJet’s contribution to international routes from and to the UK. And also to understand the extent to which Ryanair and Jet2.com compete with easyJet. Ryanair includes both their Irish and British operations.

I believe that there is a case for the government to step in and only permit a takeover if easyJet will not be broken up. The airline provides services that are unlikely to be replaced by other carriers and the UK’s regional economies depend on the airline.

Once again we will be looking at data from the first week of the next half term holiday – 17-Oct to 23-Oct-2026.

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This article was written using data from OAG Schedules Analyser: visit oag.com. Thanks OAG!

Competition within the UK

When it comes to easyJet’s UK routes, they genuinely fill a gap in the market. Of the airline’s 1,208 domestic flights, only 212 compete with Ryanair. 142 (67.0%) of these are on Belfast. Another 70 connect Glasgow and Edinburgh with London Stansted.

easyJet and Jet2.com do not compete on UK domestic routes.

Routes shared between easyJet and Ryanair are shown in the map below with green lines. The map also shows Ryanair exclusive routes in blue – these are smaller scale operations with only 30 flights a week between them.

Map generated by the Great Circle Mapper: visit gcmap.com

Play with the map here | Used with permission

International market competition at the airport level

24 airports are served internationally by one of our three airlines. At 12 of these, all three airlines operate. A summary is shown in the table below.

Source: OAG Schedules Analyser, Oliver Ranson’s analysis

This matters because while airlines tend to measure competition at the route level, consumers buy travel from their local airport.

For example a passenger from Newcastle who wants to go to a Mediterranean island can choose Malta or Majorca on any one of the three airlines in our study. Meanwhile easyJet does not go to Ibiza and Ryanair does not go to Rhodes.

Arguably these destinations are interchangeable for many consumers. They all have beaches. They all have scenery, villas and wine. Airlines compete across destinations as well as within routes.

So the three airlines are likely to compete with each other a great deal at many of the airports. The exceptions will be Cardiff, Exeter, Teesside, Newquay and Norwich (Ryanair only) and Southampton (easyJet only). This does not mean those airlines are monopoly operators as the airports are served by non-UK airlines too.

International market competition at the route level

Jet2.com is the airline most exposed to competition from both competitors. Only 19.7% of their 3,066 weekly flights are on markets where they are the only one of the three airlines operating. These represent 295 (32.6%) of 905 origin-destination markets.

For easyJet and Ryanair the corresponding statistics are much higher – 55.1% and 61.3% respectively.

Here is a map showing the exclusive destinations from Newcastle, my home airport. easyJet exclusives are shown in orange, Jet2.com’s in red and Ryanair’s in blue. 47 (52.8%) out of 89 routes are exclusive to one of these three airlines, not counting airlines based in other countries.

My impression is that Jet2.com is much more focused on holiday markets than the other two, which have a mix of both bucket-and-spade and business routes.

easyJet = orange, Jet2.com = red, Ryanair = blue

Map generated by the Great Circle Mapper: visit gcmap.com

Play with the map here | Used with permission

Newcastle’s international routes shared between our three airlines are shown on the map below. These represent 330 (73.2%) of the airport’s 451 services. Note that the three airlines are much more concentrated in these routes than they are in their exclusive markets.

This is because these routes nicely encapsulate Newcastle’s demand profile: stags and hens on tour, or family beach holidays.

Black = easyJet + Jet2.com, purple = Ryanair + Jet2.com, green = easyJet, Ryanair and Jet2.com

Play with the map here | Used with permission

The UK’s aviation market might be less competitive than you think, which makes easyJet hard to replace

The UK short-haul market is not a simple three-player contest. While easyJet, Ryanair and Jet2.com frequently overlap geographically, they are not competing on identical terms.

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easyJet is under offer. I have no idea whether or not the deal will go through. And I have no idea what the plans of prospective buyers Castlelake might be.

But I do know that easyJet is essential aviation infrastructure for the UK. Whatever happens with Castlelake, the government should ensure that everyone’s favourite orange-themed airline must keep flying for as long as it is profitable to do so.

In this article I will explain why I believe this, with reference to the UK’s domestic travel market. Here, easyJet competes with road and rail as well as other airlines. If things proceed with the deal, I may return to easyJet’s UK to overseas markets and British consumers in a future piece.

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This article was written using data from OAG Schedules Analyser: visit oag.com. Thanks OAG!

Consider the next half term holiday. My old school will break up on Sat-17-Oct and return on Sun-1-Nov. During the first of these two weeks, easyJet will operate 1,208 flights entirely within the United Kingdom. 212,382 seats will be available for sale, according to the latest OAG schedule data.

The UK is quite a small place, so most of these flights will be between rather than within the UK’s constituent countries, as shown in the maps below.

You can click these links to play with the maps:

England <> England | England <> N Ireland | England <> Scotland | N Ireland <> Scotland

To understand how easyJet is essential for British travellers, a little local geography is required.

Start with Northern Ireland. The alternative to flying is rail or car across to Great Britain’s west coast, then a ferry. Irish sea crossings are slow. So are the east/west trains. easyJet’s quick and efficient flights are an essential link to England and Scotland.

Next, consider the smaller (for easyJet) England to England market, where viable road and rail alternatives exist. England <> England has 5,678 seats a week, a rare example of a large data source producing an output in four consecutive numbers!

easyJet does not need to fly from Newcastle, Manchester, Bristol or Newquay to London because rail alternatives are fast and plentiful. The East Coast Main Line and GWR services to the west use the country’s shiniest and newest trains.

Flows on these parts of the network tend to be London-centric, so when seats are available they are available all the way.

It is no co-incidence that flights head north west or south east. Cross-country trains are slow and well known to travellers as probably the grubbiest on the network.

Cross-country rail is also demand constrained. People travelling from Newcastle to Sheffield compete for seats with travellers from Darlington to Leeds, or York to Cheltenham.

A Newcastle to Bristol traveller on the cross-country line is competing for seats with many shorter flows, which makes seats on the train expensive and sometimes hard to find. This makes easyJet a good option.

Cornish seaside destination Newquay will be popular at the Michaelmas half term, and tourism is important for the local economy. The road alternatives are slow. Rail involves an inconvenient transfer. Once again, flying easyJet is a good option. Without easyJet flights, some hotels, restaurants and attractions might struggle to survive.

The England and Scotland market is different still. With 562 flights and 98,424 seats a week, this is easyJet’s largest UK domestic market. British Airways alternatives are available from Heathrow and London City Airport.

442 (79.2%) of the 562 flights a week are to the lowland cities Edinburgh and Glasgow. Travellers from these cities can reach London by train in only slightly more time than flying*. Trains are abundant and arguably an easier journey as there are no metal detectors, queues or long waits to get seated.

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This is a guest and sponsored article by Wesley Jacobsson of EPIC Insights.

It is the second in a double-bill covering EPIC’s research in the Irish aviation market and covers airline fare structures. It shows that while Aer Lingus has more than enough ancillary revenue options (and does not need any more), the way the airline presents these options to consumers may need work.

What makes this work distinctive is that it focuses on pure Pricing and product design rather than Revenue Management and optimisation. I thought you would like to hear their results.

You can visit EPIC’s website here – www.epicinsights.io – now, over to Wesley…

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Core finding

Aer Lingus has a missed fare-ladder opportunity. The current Economy architecture leaves value trapped between an underpowered Plus Tier and a scarce AerSpace product.

Rebuilding the middle of the ladder, pricing AerSpace more assertively, and treating guaranteed seating together as a targeted booking-level add-on can unlock meaningful ancillary revenue without simply adding more products.

Setting the stage

Ancillary revenue has become one of the most closely watched lines in airline commercial strategy. The seat, the bag, the boarding, the flexibility, the food: each represents a distinct decision a passenger makes, and a distinct pricing opportunity for the carrier. How those opportunities are structured matters as much as whether they exist at all.

Lock features inside higher fare tiers and some passengers who would happily pay for one benefit will not upgrade to reach it. Sell them as standalone add-ons and you risk pulling passengers away from the tier upgrades that carry higher margin. Both approaches can work. Both can also leave revenue uncaptured, either by putting the right feature in the wrong place or by pricing it in a way that misreads what passengers will actually pay.

The only way to tell which is which, is to stop assuming and start measuring: to put real features, real bundles, and real prices in front of real passengers and watch what they trade off. For Aer Lingus Economy flyers, EPIC did that in two stages.

Our earlier MaxDiff study answered a deliberately narrow question: when price is removed from the comparison, what do Aer Lingus Economy flyers prioritize? The answer was consistent. They reach for certainty rather than novelty, favoring the features that take an uncertain part of the journey and make it feel handled: seat selection, the assurance that a group will sit together, flexibility, and priority boarding. Assurance was the only benefit type to score above average.

Oliver adds: Airline Revenue Economics readers were the first to see this analysis – you can read the original article here:

https://revman.substack.com/p/what-do-aer-lingus-Economy-flyers

That study held price constant by design, which is how we were able to isolate pure

preference. It told us what flyers prefer. It could not tell us what that preference is worth, how the features should be packaged, or what happens when a real fare is attached and choosing one feature means giving up another. It also surfaced a commercial gap that sharpens the point. Two of the features Economy flyers rank highly are absent from the fares most of them actually buy. Guaranteed seating together is not offered as a distinct product. Priority boarding is concentrated at the top of the ladder in AerSpace, where only four seats are available per flight. Part of what we set out to measure here is the value that placement leaves uncaptured.

This paper picks up exactly where the MaxDiff left off. We put price back into the decision and forced real trade-offs.

What we tested

EPIC ran a choice-based conjoint study with Irish Aer Lingus flyers, modelling how simulated demand distributes across different ticket configurations. To understand what drives ticket choice, we tested the range of features and levels below:

The levels tested are based on what Aer Lingus currently offers in its Saver, Plus, Advantage, and AerSpace tiers, with the addition of two novel features which were found to be desirable in the MaxDiff: “guaranteed seating together for those on the same booking, assigned by Aer Lingus with no advance individual selection” and “priority bag delivery”.

Aer Lingus Economy fare tiers as presented in the booking flow.

Note: Price was conditional on the seat product, so the total fare a respondent saw was realistic for the seat in front of them. Base fares ran from about €60 for standard-seat configurations to about €100 for the front-row product. Seven price points, with 30% steps from one to the next, were tested for each product.

Methodology

We surveyed 287 Aer Lingus Economy flyers in Ireland, recruited with quotas on age,

income, and travel purpose to mirror the airline’s Economy base. Respondents qualified only if they had physically boarded and flown Aer Lingus from their local airport in the past 12 months to a European destination.

Each respondent completed 10 choice tasks. In every task they saw three configured fares plus a “none of these” option, so the model captures not only which fare wins but whether a respondent would buy at all. The choice task was tailored to the respondent’s stated travel context and frequent route pattern. For example, respondents who primarily flew for business saw a business-trip framing, while leisure flyers saw a leisure-trip framing. The image below is illustrative rather than a single universal task.

Illustrative conjoint choice task shown to respondents.

Alongside the conjoint, EPIC ran Gabor-Granger price tests on individual add-ons, including priority boarding, flexible changes, fast track security, lounge access, and guaranteed seating together. This gives a direct euro willingness-to-pay read to compare against the conjoint-derived package-based values.

The Gabor-Granger exercise tested one feature at a time as a standalone add-on. Respondents evaluated whether they would buy the feature at specific price points, and the standalone Willingness To Pay values reported later are the price points implied by those accept/reject curves. They are not the same construct as conjoint indifference values, which measure the feature inside a bundled fare.

Illustrative Gabor-Granger task shown to respondents.

The add-ons selected for Gabor-Granger testing were not chosen arbitrarily. Priority boarding, flexible changes, fast track security, and lounge access are all features that scored strongly in the MaxDiff and are sold as standalone ancillaries by other airlines, but are not consistently monetized as simple standalone add-ons across the relevant Aer Lingus Economy booking path.

Conjoint interpretation note: Throughout this article, “preference share” means simulated share of choice within the conjoint model. It is a disciplined way to compare packages, prices, and trade-offs, but it is not the same as an observed booking forecast. Actual bookings will also depend on availability, load factor, booking window, channel, competitor pricing, loyalty and corporate behavior, schedule, seasonality, and revenue-management controls. The results should be read as directional commercial signals to validate in market, not as guaranteed demand.

What the preferences say

Relative importance shows how much each attribute drove choice within the tested feature and price ranges. Ticket price was the single largest lever at 25.7%, as expected once a real fare is in play. What matters more for offer design is that non-price attributes together accounted for roughly three quarters of the decision. Bags carried the most non-price weight at 18.6%, followed by airport experience at 13.5%, in-flight dining at 12.7%, seats at 11.6%, and flexibility at 9.6%. Checked bag priority (6.1%) and standby for an earlier flight (2.2%) sat well behind, with standby barely registering as a decision factor at all.

Figure 1. Relative feature importance.

The importance ranking reflects the MaxDiff’s central finding. The attributes that drove choice most strongly in the conjoint map onto the benefit types that performed best in the previous study. Bags, seats, and flexibility are predominantly Assurance-category benefits, resolving specific journey uncertainties before the passenger boards. Airport experience blends Assurance, through priority boarding, with Ease, through fast-track security and lounge access, and collectively sits third in importance among non-price attributes. In-flight dining, the study’s primary Indulgence attribute, sits mid-table despite having five levels to drive variance. Standby, the most contingent and narrowly applicable feature tested, barely registered at 2.2%.

The feature-level preferences further confirm the MaxDiff findings. Across every attribute, levels that resolve uncertainty outperform levels that simply elevate the experience. In bags, the fuller carry-on-plus-checked combinations lead not because they are premium, but because they resolve the pre-departure anxiety of having everything handled. The most striking illustration is in Seats: guaranteed seating together, which provides the assurance that your whole party will not be split up, and included seat selection rank highest, while the front-row AerSpace-style product scores lowest despite being the most premium physical option.

It is worth noting that in this conjoint the front-row product was anchored to a higher base fare to reflect its real-world pricing, so its lower preference score reflects a combination of price sensitivity and product preference rather than rejection of the seat itself. Within flexibility, cash refund leads over less uncertainty-resolving credit or flight-change options.

Figure 2. Relative feature-level preference.

Commercial read: None of this is the commercial answer on its own. It confirms the direction the MaxDiff established and tells us which levers are live. The questions that matter – what each feature is worth in euros, which bundles to build, what to charge, and whether unbundling captures new demand or simply cannibalizes fare-tier upgrades – require the simulations we turn to next.

Behaviour under the current ladder

We simulate the baseline market using an illustrative current-fare benchmark based on Aer Lingus pricing using the average of 18 one-way fare pulls from Dublin to LHR (London Heathrow), BCN (Barcelona), and AMS (Amsterdam) on Tuesdays and Fridays in March, July, and November. This benchmark is not intended to represent Aer Lingus’s full pricing system, rather, it gives the conjoint simulator a realistic, transparent reference ladder against which alternative packages and prices can be compared. The working ladder is Saver €90, Plus €135, Advantage €170, and AerSpace €185, with steps of roughly €45, €35, and €15 between tiers.

Under these conditions, AerSpace pulls 48% simulated preference share, Saver follows at 26%, Advantage at 14%, and Plus collects 7%. The signal is clear, but it should be read in the right context. When Economy passengers see the full premium ancillary bundle clearly priced and described, a large share gravitate to it, pointing to real appetite for the AerSpace proposition at the modelled price. At the same time, this is an unconstrained choice simulation, not a booking forecast. A top tier priced only modestly above Advantage would be expected to attract a high share when availability is unlimited, so the 48% should be interpreted as appetite at the tested ladder rather than evidence of network-wide demand at any price.

That distinction matters because AerSpace is a four-seat product on a 174-seat aircraft. On any given departure, at most four passengers can buy it. For the remaining 170 Economy seats, the practical ladder is Saver, Plus, and Advantage. The next simulation therefore removes AerSpace from the choice set to show how demand redistributes when the premium cabin product is sold out.

The three-fare reality

We re-ran the simulation with AerSpace removed from the choice set, holding all other prices and packages constant. Given the fact that there are only four AerSpace seats per flight, this shows how consumers who would have selected AerSpace distribute among other tiers when it is not available.

Figure 3. Simulated preference share under three scenarios.

Panel B shows the result. Saver climbs to 42%, Advantage to 37%, and Plus collects approximately 15%. The market becomes bimodal. Displaced premium demand splits between the price floor and the loaded mid-premium tier, with Plus collecting only a fraction of either. The middle of the ladder is hollow.

This is not primarily a price-sensitivity issue. Passengers willingly pay €80 more to step from Saver all the way to Advantage. It is a package-design issue. The €45 step from Saver to Plus buys advance seat selection, a 20kg checked bag, and standby. The next €35 step to Advantage unlocks lounge access, fast track at Dublin, and the flexibility suite of no change fee, refund voucher, and cash refund eligibility. The geometry of the ladder invites passengers to skip the middle entirely.

Rebuilding the ladder

The diagnosis points to a problem deeper than Plus alone. The current ladder has tiers that fail to earn their place relative to each other, with steps small enough that passengers can rationally jump from Saver straight to Advantage. EPIC used the conjoint utility scores to rebuild all three Economy tiers with intentional, utility-grounded differentiation from one tier to the next.

Plus gains its first airport-experience benefit through fast-track security. Moving from “No extras” (utility 9.7) to “Security” (utility 11.5) is a 1.8-point lift, the largest single improvement available without devaluing other higher-fare-tier benefits such as lounge access and priority boarding through crowding. This gives Plus a real reason to exist between Saver’s no-frills floor and Advantage’s full premium bundle.

Advantage receives three changes that distinguish it from the rebuilt Plus on dimensions Plus does not touch. Checked bag priority and light catering (snack plus drink) are small but useful utility lifts that broaden the premium proposition. The seat benefit is extended from “advanced selection of standard seats” to “advanced selection of standard and extra-legroom seats.”

AerSpace also gains checked bag delivery priority and maintains a clear premium step

above Advantage with the empty middle seat and priority boarding. Panel C of Figure 3 shows the result with AerSpace held out of the choice set, the operational reality for most passengers. The bimodal pattern breaks. Plus captures 25% simulated preference share, ahead of Saver at 23%. Advantage holds 47%, capturing the bulk of displaced premium demand cleanly. The middle of the ladder is doing its job, and so are the tiers around it.

Revenue contribution from the rebuild

Figure 4. Modelled per-flight revenue, current vs. rebuilt ladder.

Figure 4 compares modelled per-flight revenue. We treat AerSpace as a fixed contribution of €740 per flight (four seats at the Aer Lingus-referenced avg of €185), since its supply cap means changes at this tier do not scale, and we model the remaining 170 Economy seats using the three-fare simulation that most passengers actually face. On this basis, the current ladder produces approximately €21,260 per flight and the rebuilt ladder produces approximately €23,470, an uplift of €2,210 per flight, or 10.4%.

Revenue interpretation note: These are modelled gross fare-revenue scenarios from the conjoint simulator, not an audited P&L forecast. The figures assume a 174-seat A320 with four AerSpace seats and 170 remaining Economy seats at modelled share. They should be read as directional revenue potential to validate through route-level pricing tests, not as guaranteed uplift.

Pricing optimisation

With the rebuilt ladder in place, each fare’s price-elasticity curve was examined for pricing optimisation opportunities. Saver supports a modest increase from €90 to just under €100, with share declining only slightly from 23.19% to 21.92% while revenue continues to rise. Plus remains at €135, as further increases cause the share loss to outweigh the price gain. Advantage moves from €170 to €177, indicating some remaining pricing headroom within the rebuilt package.

AerSpace is treated differently because supply is capped at four seats per A320 flight. The question is not which price maximizes share, but which price still supports sell-through. At €280, the highest price tested, AerSpace still attracts 22.96% simulated preference share, well above the 2.3% threshold needed to fill four seats. This does not prove the ultimate market-clearing price. It does show that, within the tested range, AerSpace can be priced materially higher while still supporting sell-through of the current four-seat supply. At €280, AerSpace contribution rises from €740 to €1,120 per flight.

Combined revenue impact

Figure 5. Cumulative modelled per-flight revenue across rebuild and pricing stages.

Figure 5 shows the cumulative modelled per-flight revenue across the three stages. The current ladder delivers approximately €21,260 per flight. The package rebuild lifts this to €23,470, an uplift of €2,210, or 10.4%. Layering pricing optimisation on top adds a further €1,335, bringing total modelled per-flight revenue to approximately €24,805. The cumulative uplift from current to fully optimized is approximately €3,545 per flight, or 16.7%. This optimized total prices AerSpace at its highest tested price which works out to approximately €1,120 (four seats at €280), not the €740 baseline used in the rebuild stage.

Conclusions on package and price optimisation

Three opportunities sit alongside the optimized ladder and are worth flagging before we move on to other commercial questions.

AerSpace has scope to expand operationally. The four-seat capacity of AerSpace is a configuration choice, not a structural constraint. Each additional row of AerSpace replaces six standard Economy seats. At the optimized AerSpace price of €280, the incremental revenue from one additional row works out to approximately €280 per flight after accounting for the displaced standard seats: four new AerSpace seats at €280 add €1,120, against six standard Economy seats lost at the optimized blended yield of approximately €140 per seat.

Two additional rows would add roughly €560. The expansion is bounded by demand, which at €280 supports many multiples of the current four-seat capacity. The case for additional AerSpace rows should therefore be tested by route, season, and load factor rather than treated as a network-wide conclusion.

AerSpace has pricing headroom. The conjoint tested AerSpace prices up to €280, and preference share at that price remained well above the threshold needed to sell through the current four seats. The evidence supports a higher price than our highest-tested price point for the existing AerSpace supply. Identifying this exact price point will require additional testing.

Operational availability must be station-specific. Fast track security, lounge access, checked bag priority, catering, and standby are not purely digital benefits. They depend on airport availability, lounge and security capacity, ground-handling execution, flight frequency, disruption conditions, and cost to serve. The conjoint identifies which benefits passengers value; implementation should be validated by route, airport, season, load factor, and operational feasibility.

The optimized ladder should be validated against the competitive set. The conjoint does not observe competitor pricing on the booking platforms where Aer Lingus competes most directly with other carriers. A follow-up exercise comparing the optimized Aer Lingus ladder against published competitor fares on common routes would be a valuable validation step.

Further optimisation opportunities

The package and pricing work above addresses the existing four-tier ladder. The next question is what to do with the specific reassurance benefits the MaxDiff surfaced as valuable, but that are not always easy for Economy passengers to buy directly. Guaranteed seating together is the clearest case, because it ranked strongly when price was removed and does not currently exist as a distinct Aer Lingus product. Priority boarding, fast track security, and lounge access raise a different question: they already have a role inside higher-value offers, but may also have value as targeted add-ons if priced carefully.

Pricing the unbundled features

Each feature was valued two ways. Gabor-Granger gives a standalone willingness to pay: the price a passenger accepts for the feature on its own. The conjoint gives an indifference price: the gap at which two otherwise identical fares draw equal share, which is the feature’s value inside the fare against its base level.

Guaranteed seating together is the one tested feature that clearly does not belong in a fare at all. It is a booking-level benefit, a single purchase that seats a party of up to four together, with no natural home inside any one passenger’s ticket. The two readings show it plainly: as a ticket attribute it is worth €14, but offered as a standalone add-on it draws €30. It earns more as an add-on because that is its natural form: one charge to the booking rather than a group benefit bolted onto an individual fare.

The other four already live in tiers. Three of them read consistently across both methods, all landing in the high teens to low twenties: priority boarding at €20 standalone and €23 in-package, fast track at €20 and €23, and lounge at €25 against €19. Two independent methods agreeing at around €20 apiece confirms these are valued benefits rather than filler, which is what justifies reserving them for the premium tiers. None needs to be unbundled, but offering any as an add-on is a targeted way to reach passengers who will not take the full tier step.

Flexible changes are the reversal. As a fare attribute, the level scores €8 below standard change rules, which looks backward until you read the level as shown: “no change fee, fare difference applies.” Inside a fare, that wording can still feel like a cost because the fare difference applies. Presented on its own with a price attached, the same flexibility is clearly an upgrade and drew €20. The commercial value is messaging-sensitive: any monetisation should present it alone and lead with a clean change-without-fees message. As specified in the fare, it is the weakest candidate.

Figure 6. Standalone willingness to pay against in-package indifference price, by feature.

Business travel as a pricing lens

Airline fares are not sold to an average passenger. They are sold in context. Carriers already see signals at the point of purchase that can shape how the same fare ladder is presented: route, day of week, booking window, party size, channel, and travel context. The commercial question is not whether every traveller needs a different product. It is whether visible demand signals can tell Aer Lingus where the existing ladder has more pricing headroom.

Business travel is the clearest example. Because the choice tasks were tailored to respondents’ stated travel purpose, the business-traveller cut reflects business-led decision-making rather than a generic leisure frame. The cut does not point to a separate fare architecture. It points to Advantage as the right place to capture incremental premium yield when the context is more business-led. In other words, the opportunity is not another fare. It is a sharper read on where the premium tier can carry a higher price.

In the total-sample price optimisation, the rebuilt ladder lands at Saver €100, Plus €135, and Advantage €177. In the business-traveller cut, Saver and Plus remain at the same optimized prices, while Advantage can move to €185 before the revenue curve turns down. That is the central finding. Business travellers do not require a different ladder, but they give Aer Lingus more permission to price Advantage assertively. This confirms the MaxDiff finding that business travellers place a higher value on a full-service Economy product.

The implication is disciplined. Advantage should be treated as the natural business-relevant tier, not because business travellers need a bespoke product, but because they are more tolerant of the price attached to a credible premium package. The messaging should emphasize the parts of Advantage that matter most in a business context: airport control, flexibility, priority handling, and a more complete Economy journey.

For Aer Lingus, the next test is operational and commercial rather than conceptual. Advantage pricing can be more assertive where business demand is denser, such as business-heavy routes, weekday departures, shorter booking windows, solo travellers, or channels where corporate demand is more likely. The point is not to proliferate fare

products. It is to use business intent as a practical filter for when the optimized ladder can work harder.

Conclusion

The conjoint does not replace the MaxDiff. It completes the commercial sequence. The MaxDiff showed which features Aer Lingus Economy flyers value when price is removed from the decision. The conjoint shows what happens when those same features are placed inside real fare structures, real price points, and real trade-offs.

The answer is not that Aer Lingus needs more ancillary options. It is that the current fare ladder can work harder. Plus needs a clearer role, Advantage can carry more premium demand, AerSpace has pricing headroom within the tested range, and some benefits are better monetized as targeted add-ons than locked inside fare tiers. The opportunity is to build a sharper Economy architecture: one that gives passengers clearer reasons to trade up, captures demand that currently sits outside the ladder, and validates the modelled upside in market.

Key takeaways

• The MaxDiff created the right hypothesis. Passengers prioritize certainty over indulgence. The conjoint confirms that this direction still matters when price and fare trade-offs are introduced.

• The current ladder leaves value trapped. Once AerSpace is removed from the available choice set, the market becomes bimodal, with demand pulled toward Saver and Advantage while Plus remains structurally weak.

• The rebuilt ladder strengthens the architecture. Rebuilding the three main Economy fares gives Plus a clearer role and lets Advantage capture premium demand more cleanly. The rebuild lifts modelled per-flight revenue from approximately €21,260 to €23,470, an uplift of €2,210, or 10.4%.

• Pricing optimisation adds further headroom. Layering pricing optimisation onto the rebuilt ladder lifts modelled revenue to approximately €24,805 per flight. That is a cumulative modelled uplift of approximately €3,545, or 16.7%, versus the current ladder.

• AerSpace is scarce and has pricing headroom. At the highest tested price of €280, AerSpace still attracts preference share well above the current supply threshold of four seats. That supports higher pricing for the current supply, while any row expansion should still be tested by route, season, load factor, and competitive context.

• Add-ons should be selective, not automatic. Guaranteed seating together is the clearest standalone opportunity. Priority boarding, fast track security, and lounge access also have value, but they should be priced carefully: high enough to capture passengers who would not buy a premium fare, without undercutting the tiers those benefits also help sell.

• Business travel is a pricing lens, not a separate ladder. Business travellers support more assertive Advantage pricing, with the optimized Advantage price moving from €177 overall to €185 in the business-traveller cut.

• Modelled upside needs market validation. The conjoint is strong for comparing relative offer architecture, but the revenue numbers should be validated against live booking behaviour, competitor fares, operational costs, route mix, and revenue-management constraints.

You can visit EPIC’s website here – www.epicinsights.io

British Airways Airbus A380s have great registration codes. They are all designated G-XLEx, where XLE stands for “Extra Large European”. Put A, B, C etc… on the end to substitute for the x and you complete the registration.

G-XLEF headed off to Manila, which is not a BA destination, on 24-Mar this year. G-XLEJ went there too on 11-May. They are going for heavy maintenance, and presumably will come back with the shiny new cabins and latest seats which BA promised last year.

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Retrofits like these create some interesting challenges for airlines. Aircraft will come back from Manila with new generation 1-2-1-abreast Club Suites, which all have aisle access. There will also be new First Class seats. The planes will then head out into the network.

Meanwhile, existing planes will still be shuttling around with old “Next Generation” Club World. This was launched by the airline around 2006/7, and as a 2-4-2-abreast model offers much less space for passengers.

There are four challenges:

1. Passengers may be unsure which seat they will be experiencing

2. Airline Inventory teams in Revenue Management need to load the correct seat map

3. Changes to the aircraft can mess up seat assignments, either on the day of departure or at any stage in the booking window

4. If the new configuration has less capacity from the old, there may be overbooking and re-accommodation to deal with, and denied boarding costs to pay.

Unfortunately for BA it will be hard to plan exactly where each aircraft will be weeks or months ahead. I wanted to figure out how they can mitigate these challenges.

I took two months of FlightRadar24 data showing where each of BA’s A380s flew in the period 1-May to 3-Jun-2026. The aircraft operated six routes, shown in the map below.

Produced by the Great Circle Mapper. Play with the map here. Used with permission.

In addition to the airports shown, G-XLEE was diverted to Birmingham on the 26-Jun flight from San Francisco. G-XLEK diverted from Dallas to Houston on 24-May.

The chart below shows the movements of G-XLEA, by longitude reached. The idea is that time from goes up the y-axis with 1-May at the bottom and more recent flights at the top. Each longitude represents a specific destination. Similar charts for each of BA’s A380s are shown as an Appendix.

Source: FlightRadar24.com, Oliver Ranson’s analysis, Movements 1-May to 30-Jun-2026

The chart rewards careful inspection. It shows that this aircraft flew across all BA’s A380 routes. It also shows some patterns in the rotation.

Take the flights to San Francisco for example, the furthest west of the A380’s destinations. On five occasions the aircraft came back from San Francisco and then headed off to Los Angeles. After a spot of Hollywood glitz and glamour it then flew south to Johannesburg.

But despite these elements of regularity there were also occasional Boston and Miami trips in the mix. This helps explain why BA, like all airlines, will struggle when only a few aircraft in a fleet type are equipped with the latest seats.

They have to distribute a seat map so their website and agents can allow passengers to book seats. The seat map is filed with flights when they are released 355 days out.

It will be hard for BA to know when exactly the Club Suites plane will be flying on each route.

One option is to set every flight with the old A380 configuration when there are only a few Club Suites planes flying. Then a few weeks or months out, switch over to Club Suite when the airline is “reasonably certain” that this will operate.

Seat changes are not necessarily limited to Club passengers. Depending on the exact arrangements and seat numbers available, some passengers in other cabins might be impacted too. But the biggest impact from the switch-around will probably be in Club.

The advantages of this approach are that as few passengers as possible suffer a seat change and most should be pleasantly surprised to get Club Suite rather than the older forward and backwards model.

There are also problems though. Passengers might choose to avoid BA and book with other carriers, even if their flight ends up being operated with Club Suite. That leads to demand destruction and lost revenue.

Another problem is that some passengers might be switched over twice – first when their plane is moved to Club Suites and then another time when it is moved back. In some extreme cases passengers might be switched over three times or more.

This is a problem because people care about where they sit. Some like windows. Others aisles. Families will be split when changes happen.

Travellers might well forgive a switch to the latest Club Suite. Anything more though and they will likely feel messed around.

Another option is to handle the switch to Club Suite seat maps only at check-in. This approach is still vulnerable to last-minute aircraft swaps. It also risks splitting people without a chance to move back together, as by this stage seat selection is open to all. And it loses a chance to show prospective bookers that Club Suite is likely to be available.

A better third option is to commit as far as possible to sending the A380s equipped with Club Suite on specific routes.

The table below shows that each A380 flew every route, except G-XLEL which did not go to Boston. I have not included G-XLEF and G-XLEJ because they flew to Manila.

A good bet for BA might be to put the first aircraft to be refitted onto Boston or Miami.

The rotation charts in the Appendix show that aircraft G-XLEB and G-XLED go to Boston again and again, sometimes with five rotations on that route in a row. Meanwhile G-XLEH and G-XLEI rotate around Miami again and again.

The reason is that Boston and Miami rotate nicely within 24 hours. So one plane can come and go each day.

59% of flights to Boston in May to June 2026 fully rotated in under 24 hours, with a flight to the aircraft’s next destination taking off less than a day after the plane left Heathrow bound for Boston. 21% of flights to Miami also fully rotated in under one day.

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Hidden in the depths of IATA’s library is an obscure document called “PADIS 18.2 – Enhanced and Simplified Distribution (Implementation Guide)”. If you have not heard of it, you are not alone.

But for those interested in the future of Pricing & Revenue Management, or Modern Airline Retailing, it contains essential knowledge. Specifically it defines a series of “Delivery Status Codes”. These show how delivery of a traveller’s order is progressing.

In today’s article I will be explaining what these are and why you need to know about them.

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This is the twelfth in my “Oliver explains” series. I take things that are either important tools in Revenue Management’s tool kit, sound a bit odd or seem complicated. Hopefully I will be able to make them sound simple.

Some readers might find these articles rather basic. If that is the case for you, then don’t worry, more mind-bending analysis will be coming soon. If you are here to learn, or would like a refresher, read on…

You can read the other eleven here:

1. Why is Business Class sometimes cheaper than Economy?

2. How do airline overbooking algorithms work?

3. How is airline revenue accounting data used in revenue management?

4. What is Revenue Integrity?

5. ATPCO fare categories

6. Why are some plane tickets so expensive?

7. How are plane seats created?

8. Why getting multiple quotes for flights does not work

9. Why is airline IT so clunky?

10. What is the difference between Load Factor and Seat Factor?

11. Why do busy flights not guarantee profitability?

Why should Delivery be a priority for Revenue Managers?

Offer-Order-Settle-Deliver is the four part codex of Modern Airline Retailing. First put together by industry think tank T2RL, the four parts are supposed to cover everything an airline needs to do retailing successfully.

Airlines will make Offers to travel shoppers, who may then place Orders for a wide range of travel services.

The services in an Order are likely to include flights but can also include non-flight elements.

In many Orders these will be products traditionally associated with travel packages – think hotels, cars and insurance. But in others they may be other things a traveller needs, like restaurant meals, meeting rooms and bungee jumps.

Once travellers have made their trip airlines will Settle with the third-parties.

A large collection of technology stacks are being presented to airlines by their vendors, who all want a slice of the Modern Airline Retailing pie.

It is not entirely clear why some large airlines are investing large sums in this unproven technology.

Parkinson’s Laws of Procurement may apply: the time spent by airline boards deciding whether to buy something is directly proportional to how much the directors understand it and indirectly proportional to the budget required.

So while the chocolate vs plain vs no biscuits in the Cabin Crew briefing room discussion consumes most of a meeting, the $200 million Modern Airline Retailing tech stack contract goes through on the nod.

A large amount of discussion in Offer-Order-Settle-Deliver covers the first three. Offers are an extension of Pricing & Revenue Management. Orders complexify the arcane world of reservations and ticketing. Settlement expands Revenue Accounting. Vendors are keen to extend their existing market share into each of these areas.

But Delivery is different. Delivery is not currently part of airline Commercial departments. It is the purview of Cabin Services, Catering, Entertainment and Aircraft Programmes teams.

But under Modern Airline Retailing, Delivery will become critical. I will be publishing a free-to-download white paper for Accelya soon which covers this topic – an announcement will be made here when this is available.

Delivery Status Codes are what turn Delivery into a commercial system

When all is going well the Delivery Status Code will be one of the following:

1. Delivered, after which revenue should be recognised in Order Accounting and third-party suppliers should be paid

2. In progress, for example when a passenger is onboard a flight or staying in a hotel room

3. Ready to deliver, when a service provider is ready to deliver and consumption is imminent – for flights, this means that an aircraft is ready to board

4. Ready to proceed, showing the provider that they should prepare to serve the customer but some time is still expected to pass before consumption takes place, for example an airport desk opening to accept bags.

These codes are more than just operational descriptions. They reflect strategic choices for airlines covering when partners can be paid and when revenue is recognised. They also create the source of truth necessary for audit and evaluation.

Three Delivery Status Codes apply when services are not delivered for reasons outside of a traveller’s control:

1. Failed to deliver, for example when a flight is cancelled or a hotel unexpectedly closed – this status code reflects an issue with a product or service provider

2. Suspended, which means that an airline has decided to take further action before taking a decision on whether or not to deliver, such as when fraud is suspected

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This is a guest and sponsored article by Wesley Jacobsson of EPIC Insights.

We last heard from EPIC back in March with “Who is right? Michael O’Leary or Elon Musk?”, which investigated in-flight Internet access profitability by analysing real Ryanair passengers.

EPIC have been doing more research in the Irish aviation market and I thought that you would like to hear about their results. Even better for Airline Revenue Economics readers, you are the first to see these results and they will be published on EPIC’s Insights Lab shortly.

You can visit EPIC’s website here – www.epicinsights.io.

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The Ryanair study used conjoint analysis, which examines how customers trade off different attributes of products or services.

This time the airline in the spotlight is Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus and the analysis is “MaxDiff”, which shows consumers a wide set of options through short trade-off exercises, where they have to choose which option is best and which is worst for them. The output is a preference ranking of those different options.

Conjoint on the other hand is often understood as a study of the willingness to pay for those features, and often follows MaxDiff analysis. However conjoint analysis can sometimes go a lot further and answer detailed questions about commercial value, without airlines needing to make risky real-life price changes. There will more conjoint analysis from EPIC covering Aer Lingus in another guest article coming soon.

Conjoint and MaxDiff are not widely discussed in aviation, but they should be.

Unlike airline Revenue Management, which uses historical data, these consumer studies are more forward looking. They can be used to understand what consumers are prioritising today to help forecast how they might behave tomorrow if airlines change their commercial features or price points.

In some cases this may be a better indicator of future trends than historical data alone. They are also a lower risk first step of measuring how markets are likely to respond to new commercial policies than implementing those policies and seeing what happens.

There will be another piece from Wesley next week. In the mean time, I will make some comments as we go along. Now, over to Wesley…

Core finding:

Economy flyers are not asking for more extras. They are asking for the right kind of reassurance: control over the moments that make the journey feel uncertain.

Oliver adds: This is a powerful finding. It suggests that many travellers think that the “best” airlines are not those with the most luxurious services or the lowest price, but those which they feel they can rely on.

Strategic implication:

Ancillary strategy should not be built around adding more options to the shelf. It should be built around matching the right reassurance benefit to the right traveller, at the point in the journey when that anxiety is most salient.

What we set out to understand

Ask passengers what they want from a flight and the answers come easily: a good seat, smooth boarding, reliable Wi‑Fi, a meal on a long flight. What is much harder to see is how those needs rank when passengers have to make real trade-offs, when wanting one feature means giving up another.

That is the question this study was designed to answer. We ran a MaxDiff study with 296 Economy class Aer Lingus flyers, testing 22 ancillary features across multiple choice sets. In each set, respondents selected the feature they found most appealing and the one they found least appealing. Every feature appeared multiple times and in different combinations, forcing genuine prioritization rather than unconstrained wish-listing.

Respondents were recruited to reflect the realistic profile of Aer Lingus Economy flyers. Quotas were applied across age, income, travel purpose and route mix, including a deliberate proportion of transatlantic travellers to reflect Aer Lingus’s North American footprint. This helped align our sample with Aer Lingus’s overall Economy flyer base.

Importantly, all 22 features were presented as if they cost the same. Removing price from the comparison isolates pure preference. It reveals not just whether flyers like a feature, but how strongly they prioritize it relative to the rest of the ancillary menu.

Respondents answered the study with reference to their typical Aer Lingus Economy flight in the past year. The same context was used to capture key segmentation variables, including travel purpose, booking channel, booking lead time, and party composition. This means the segment analysis reflects the traveller context most relevant to their recent Aer Lingus flying behaviour, rather than abstract attitudes toward air travel in general.

The study produces a utility score for each feature. These are relative MaxDiff utility scores: higher scores indicate stronger relative appeal within the tested set, while lower scores indicate weaker relative appeal. Scores above zero should be read as stronger-performing features; scores below zero as weaker-performing features relative to the tested set. Direction and distance both matter.

A feature at +0.50 carries a much stronger preference signal than one at +0.10; a feature at −0.60 is clearly weaker within the tested set. It is important to note that features scoring below the set average drew lower relative preference within the tested set. MaxDiff is designed to measure relative preference, not absolute sentiment. Lower scores should not be interpreted as indicating that respondents actively dislike or reject these features.

Figure 1. Example MaxDiff choice task used in the study.

Overall results: what Aer Lingus Economy flyers actually want

The 22 concepts tested covered a broad range of airline ancillary ideas, from familiar services to more novel propositions. With price held constant, the resulting preference hierarchy had a consistent shape. It was not the most premium or experiential features that rose to the top. It was certainty.

Figure 2. Relative MaxDiff utility scores across all 22 tested ancillary features.

When price steps aside, certainty steps forward

The clearest structural signal in the data is not just which features perform best, but what kind of benefit they offer. To read the results commercially, we grouped each feature into one of three psychological benefit types.

Assurance captures certainty and anxiety reduction: the reassurance that something important to the journey has already been handled. Ease captures reduced friction at a specific journey moment, helping passengers move smoothly through a known pain point. Indulgence captures features that elevate the experience beyond standard Economy, making the passenger feel treated, pampered or more personally looked after.

When the scores are viewed through this lens, the pattern is clear. Assurance is the only category with a positive average utility score.

This is not a marginal difference. Assurance is the only category in positive (above average) territory, while Ease and Indulgence both average below the full feature set. In other words, when price is removed from the equation, passengers do not primarily reach for extras that make the journey feel more premium. They prioritize the features that make the journey feel more certain.

The top of the hierarchy shows what matters most to Aer Lingus Economy flyers when price is removed from the comparison: Standard seat selection (+0.51), Preferred seat selection (+0.43), Flexible flight changes (+0.30), Priority boarding (+0.29), On-board meal (+0.20), and Guaranteed seating together (+0.17) all address clear journey needs. Most are direct reassurance plays.

What this means

This is not a finding about price sensitivity. It is a finding about what travellers prefer when given free choice. With remarkable consistency, they choose the certainty that the parts of the journey that matter most are already arranged.

Oliver adds: For many airline teams, staff travel processes are not always closely aligned with what commercial passengers experience, which can make it hard for airline staff to learn themselves how commercial passengers feel when buying travel and taking flights.

Not every anxiety carries the same commercial weight

Assurance is not a single uniform preference. The 10 Assurance features split into two groups with sharply different outcomes, and the line between them is commercially instructive.

Six Assurance features score above the set average, averaging +0.30. Most address anxieties that are broad, near-certain to be relevant and central to the journey: where you sit, whether plans can change, whether your group stays together and whether you can bring what you need.

Four Assurance features score below the set average, averaging −0.18. They still offer certainty, but the anxiety they resolve is narrower, more clearly solved by another feature, more contingent or more marginal. Flexible same-day switch covers a day-of scenario most travellers will never face. Refundable fare resolves a cancellation scenario many prefer not to anticipate at booking. Cabin bag is an expectation most flyers already assume.

Dedicated overhead bin space addresses an anxiety that Priority boarding already resolves implicitly: board first, and the space is yours.

The sharper lesson

Do not simply offer assurance. Offer assurance around the things travellers know with certainty they will need.

Where the feature sits in the journey matters, but only up to a point

Journey phase provides a useful directional signal. The Airport phase is the most consistently above-average zone, averaging +0.18. Post-Flight is the lowest-preference zone, averaging −0.39. But the relationship between journey phase and performance is more nuanced than a simple hierarchy.

Figure 3. Average utility score by journey phase. In-Flight is rounded to +0.00 in the chart; the underlying average is +0.002.

The Airport phase stands out because all three of its features score above the set average: Priority boarding (+0.29), Fast track security (+0.14), and Lounge access (+0.12). This makes it the cleanest above-average journey phase in the study.

The airport concentrates specific, salient departure anxieties, and the features that resolve those anxieties score accordingly.

Post-Flight tells the opposite story. No Post-Flight feature scores above the set average. First-Off Guarantee, at -0.71, is the weakest-performing feature in the entire study. In the flyer’s mind, the journey appears to end at landing. What happens after that point matters substantially less.

Trip Management, which includes features that sit around the planning-level decisions of the trip, is internally split. Assurance features cluster between +0.30 and -0.16. But two Indulgence features in the same phase, Home-to-Gate Luggage (-0.61) and Dynamic Upgrade Auctions (-0.65) perform well below average. Planning-level assurance is tolerated. Novel logistical propositions in the same phase draw substantially lower relative preference.

Oliver adds: Dynamic Upgrade Auctions generate great presentations at industry events, but risk airlines losing market share if travellers decide to buy Business Class on another airline at the time of purchase for assurance of space, privacy and comfort. It is interesting to see them performing well below average with real consumers, who it seems are not keen on the risk of waiting to bid for an upgrade.

The In-Flight phase hides a one-point gap

The In-Flight phase averages +0.002 across nine features, effectively zero. But that average conceals more than it reveals. It contains both the highest-scoring feature in the study, Standard seat selection at +0.51, and one of the lowest, Sleep support package at −0.58. That is a span of more than one full utility point within a single journey phase.

The split is not driven by the flight phase itself. It is driven by the psychological benefit being offered within that phase.

Figure 4. In-Flight average utility by psychological benefit type.

The 0.35-point gap between In-Flight Assurance (+0.17) and In-Flight Indulgence (−0.18) is a critical observation for airlines that treat in-flight investment as one coherent category. Assurance in the cabin, knowing where you will sit, knowing your group is together, rewards consistently.

In-cabin indulgence enhancements such as personal space, comfort aids and flexible dining, at least for the average Aer Lingus customer, do not.

Looking into segments

The overall pattern is consistent and directional. Assurance drives preference. The Airport phase is the most productive zone. The In-Flight experience rewards certainty and underperforms on in-cabin indulgence. Post-Flight generates limited overall preference.

What the overall read does not tell us is how dramatically the shape shifts when the traveller population is viewed through different commercial lenses: travel purpose, booking channel, booking lead time and party composition. This is where the more actionable story begins.

Who wants what: reading the segments

The segment analysis is not about demographics for their own sake. It is about identifying the signals airlines already have at the point of purchase and using those signals to tailor ancillary propositions more precisely.

Business travellers: the profile that rewrites the rules

Business travellers produce a materially different pattern from the average flyer. Across the three psychological benefit categories, they show a substantially elevated Assurance average (+0.27 vs +0.11 overall), the strongest Ease average of the segments examined (+0.11 vs −0.13 overall), and an Indulgence average that is effectively neutral (−0.02 vs −0.29 overall). The uplift happens across all three categories simultaneously.

The journey-phase view tells the same story. Business travellers score Airport at +0.35, versus +0.18 overall, and In-Flight at +0.28, versus +0.002 overall. Even Post-Flight, which generates limited preference elsewhere, reaches −0.11, a meaningful improvement on the −0.39 overall score.

At feature level, the pattern is equally clear. Standard seat selection reaches +0.96, compared with +0.51 overall. On-board meal reaches +0.77, compared with +0.20. Lounge access rises from +0.12 to +0.32. Wi‑Fi rises from +0.07 to +0.42. Priority bag delivery, which sits at exactly zero overall, reaches +0.27.

Even features that score below the set average overall are lifted. Sleep support package moves from −0.58 to −0.27. Private airport transfer moves from −0.46 to −0.11.

Oliver adds: Sleep has long been a competitive differentiator in Business Class, hence the popularity of fully-flat seats. It is interesting to see the sleep support package lifting scores when it comes to Economy Class travellers.

There are two important exceptions. Preferred seat selection scores +0.36 for business travellers, slightly below the +0.43 overall score, and checked bag sits at exactly zero, below the +0.07 overall score. Both suggest that status or loyalty benefits may already be meeting these needs for frequent business flyers, reducing their salience as incremental purchases.

Dynamic Upgrade Auctions remains significantly below average at −0.41. The conventional assumption is that business travellers should have the strongest appetite for cabin upgrades. They may. But the auction mechanic appears to be the problem. Bidding for an upgrade introduces uncertainty, which conflicts directly with the certainty-seeking profile of this traveller. Business flyers want confirmation, not a gamble at check-in.

Commercial read

Business travellers show the strongest appetite for a fuller-service Economy journey. The investment case for premium meal options, lounge access, comfort add-ons and post-flight convenience is strongest here. Ease also turns above average, driven by Wi‑Fi (+0.42), fast track security (+0.24) and priority bag delivery (+0.27), reflecting the productivity and time-sensitivity of this segment.

Families: one label, two very different buyer profiles

Party composition is a signal airlines already have at booking. When children are on the booking, the preference profile changes, but how it changes depends entirely on the age of the children. Families with children under 12 and families with teenagers are not the same ancillary buyer. Treating them as one is a strategic mistake.

Children under 12: the purest Assurance profile in the data

Bookings with children under 12 produce a notably high Assurance average: +0.44 versus +0.11 overall. The individual feature scores behind that average are among the most extreme segment results in the study.

Oliver adds: Shortly before the time of publication, Ryanair announced that in response to regulatory pressure they were “reluctantly adjusting” their seating policy so parents and children can sit together for free.

Refundable fare, which scores below average in almost every segment in the study, turns meaningfully above average for families with young children at +0.23. The reason is straightforward: plans change, children get sick, and an exit option has genuine value.

Indulgence tells the opposite story. The category averages −0.31 for this segment. On-board meal scores −0.07 and lounge access −0.03, both mildly below average and both below their overall scores. A hot meal is an individual seated experience.

With a child under 12 on the booking, neither the meal nor the lounge is a felt need. The ancillary budget is consumed by certainty: seat, boarding, bags and group control.

Bundle case

This is the clearest bundle opportunity in the data: guaranteed seating together, priority boarding, checked bag, seat selection and flexible changes, with refundability and priority bag delivery as strong supporting additions.

Children aged 12 to 17: the Airport experience begins to matter

Traveling with teenagers produces a sharply different profile. The Airport phase average reaches +0.50, the highest Airport score of the segments examined in this section.

Indulgence also becomes less negative, averaging −0.14 versus −0.29 overall, driven almost entirely by meal and lounge. This is a meaningful shift from the under-12 profile, where both features are mildly negative.

The commercial contrast is precise. Families with young children want certainty above everything. Families with teenagers are ready for the airport experience to feel like part of the trip. Guaranteed seating together drops to +0.06, compared with +0.67 for under-12s, because a teenager can reasonably sit elsewhere.

Signal at checkout

Party composition allows airlines to distinguish these profiles before purchase completion. Families with young children warrant an assurance-led offer. Families with teenagers warrant a more airport-experience-led offer.

Booking channel: the airport experience, twice over

Two booking channels stand out clearly: Aer Lingus Holidays bookers and Travel Agent bookers. The booking routes are different, but the preference profile converges. Both groups show meaningfully higher preference for fuller-service, more experience-led ancillary features.

What unites these channels is booking mindset. A flyer who books through Aer Lingus Holidays or a travel agent has already signalled appetite for a more considered, fuller-service journey. The ancillary offer should reflect that signal: priority boarding, lounge, fast track and on-board meal as a coherent airport experience bundle, presented at checkout rather than left for the flyer to assemble themselves.

Long-advance bookers: the contrarian finding

Across every segment examined in this section, the Airport phase averages positively (above the set average) with one exception: flyers who booked more than one month before travel. For this segment, the Airport average is −0.01 (effectively zero) and the only examined segment where Airport fails to generate above-average preference.

The profile is internally coherent. These are flyers who have planned well ahead: a family holiday booked in January, a summer trip arranged in March. Their ancillary appetite is concentrated in the trip-planning phase, not the airport moment.

What they value is logistical certainty before they leave home. Guaranteed seating together rises to +0.41 versus +0.17 overall.

Checked bag rises to +0.28 versus +0.07 overall. Refundable fare shifts to an above-average score at +0.10 versus −0.07 overall. Standard seat selection is also slightly above the total sample at +0.57 versus +0.51 overall. All of these that rise above the overall score are planning-level assurance features.

The features that fall tell the same story from the other direction. Lounge access drops to −0.27 versus +0.12 overall. Priority boarding drops to +0.15 versus +0.29 overall. For long-advance bookers, neither registers strongly. This traveller is not thinking about the airport yet. The trip is months away. The questions on their mind are whether the group will sit together, whether they can bring everything they need and whether they have the flexibility to change plans if something comes up.

Indulgence is most poorly performing here, averaging −0.50 versus −0.29 overall. Sleep support (−0.94), on-demand dining (−0.60), and Home-to-Gate Luggage (−0.82) perform dramatically more poorly than in the overall sample, reinforcing that this traveller has limited appetite for experiential add-ons at this stage of the booking journey.

Commercial opportunity

For long-advance bookers, the right offer is a focused trip assurance bundle: seat selection, guaranteed seating together, checked bag, flexible changes and optionally refundable fare. It is simpler, lower-cost to assemble and better aligned to what this traveller is actively thinking about at the point of purchase.

Aer Lingus’ current offer: where the gaps are

The segment analysis makes one thing commercially clear: Aer Lingus already holds useful preference signals at the point of purchase. Travel purpose, party composition, booking channel and booking lead time all map onto different ancillary priorities. The next question is how well the current Economy offer gives those passengers a clear path to buy the features they value most. Mapping the highest-preference features from the study against the current Aer Lingus ancillary portfolio gives a direct answer.

Covered: feature is available as a standalone add-on and/or within certain Economy fare tiers;

Structural gap: feature exists within the Aer Lingus Economy portfolio but is only accessible by upgrading to a higher fare tier, not as a discrete standalone purchase;

Route gap: feature exists but is limited by route type or fleet rather than product design;

Product gap: feature has no equivalent in the current Economy ancillary offer, or is not available as a pre-flight purchase;

Aer Lingus already covers some of the strongest preference signals. Standard seat selection, preferred seat selection and checked bags are available either as standalone add-ons or through selected fare tiers. These are not gaps. They are existing strengths in the ancillary offer, and they align well with the study’s broader finding that passengers value control over the practical details of the journey.

The more commercially important issue is where high-preference features are absent, restricted, or harder to buy. Flexible flight changes, fast track security and lounge access are available in certain fare, route or airport contexts, but they are not always offered as simple modular Economy add-ons. These are structural gaps: the benefit exists within the Aer Lingus ecosystem, but the purchase path is limited.

The clearest product gaps are priority boarding and guaranteed seating together. Priority boarding scores strongly overall, yet is not available within any standard Economy fare. Guaranteed seating together is especially relevant for families with young children and long-advance bookers, but is not currently offered as a distinct ancillary product. Both features speak directly to the core finding of the study: passengers place real value on reassurance around the uncertain moments of the journey. These are not unfamiliar commercial mechanics in the wider airline market. Ryanair sells priority boarding as a purchasable add-on.

United sells Priority Boarding as a separate product for eligible Economy passengers. Wizz Air offers Sitting Together as an add-on that ensures two adults on the same booking can sit next to each other.

The implication is not that Aer Lingus needs to create an operationally complex new product. It is that some high-value reassurance benefits could be productized more directly.

This creates an important commercial tension. Keeping high-preference benefits inside higher fare tiers may help protect the value of those bundles by encouraging some passengers to trade up. But it may also leave revenue on the table from passengers who would happily pay for one specific reassurance benefit, but are not willing to upgrade to an entire higher-tier package to access it.

That trade-off should not be resolved by assumption. It is exactly the type of question conjoint is designed to answer. Aer Lingus could test whether features such as priority boarding, fast track, lounge access or flexible changes perform better as standalone add-ons, as part of fare-tier bundles, or as targeted segment bundles. The objective is not simply to unbundle more features. It is to identify the offer architecture that maximizes uptake, protects premium-tier value and captures demand that may currently be going unmonetized.

Conclusion: certainty is the real ancillary opportunity

The clearest lesson from this study is that Aer Lingus Economy flyers are not simply asking for more extras. They are asking for the right kind of reassurance.

Across the full feature set, the strongest-performing ancillaries are those that reduce uncertainty around the journey: where passengers will sit, whether their group will stay together, whether they can board smoothly, whether plans can change and whether the essentials are handled before they travel.

More premium or experiential ideas can still work, but their appeal is more selective. They need the right context, the right traveller and the right moment in the booking journey. Business travellers show broader appetite for full- service-style ancillaries within the Economy journey. Families with young children are focused heavily on certainty and control.

Families with teenagers are more open to the airport experience becoming part of the trip. Aer Lingus Holidays and travel agent bookers show stronger appetite for a fuller-service bundle, while long-advance bookers focus on practical trip assurance before they leave home.

The gap mapping adds an important commercial layer to that preference story. Some of the features passengers value most are already well served. Others are present but impossible to purchase directly. And two of the most strategically relevant reassurance benefits, priority boarding and guaranteed seating together, are not currently available for Economy passengers at all.

That creates a clear next question: not whether these benefits matter, but how they should be packaged, priced and presented. MaxDiff shows which features passengers prioritize when forced to make trade-offs. Conjoint takes the next step. It can test real purchase scenarios, compare standalone and bundled offers, measure willingness to pay by segment, and model the trade-off between protecting higher-tier fare upgrades and capturing incremental revenue from passengers who only want selected reassurance benefits.

The preference signal is clear: certainty has value. The next commercial task is to quantify that value, design the right offer architecture, and give passengers a better path to buy the reassurance they already say they want.

Appendix: Feature descriptions and utility values

You can visit EPIC’s website here – www.epicinsights.io

Captain James Cook and the crew of HMS Endeavour took 612 days to reach Botany Bay from England. Thanks to Airbus, Qantas and everyone else behind Project Sunrise, you will soon be able to make the same journey in a little under a day.

The modern miracle of joining a Boeing 787-9 on British soil and stepping off down-under has been possible since March 2018. Qantas launched the service as a trial before committing to Project Sunrise a few years later.

Thanks to a recent Qantas announcement, we now know that Project Sunrise tickets will be available for sale from February 2027, with flights launching in October 2027, presumably for the Australian summer and Northern summer season.

Flight numbers and departure/arrivals times are currently unknown. I thought it would be interesting to consider the options and make a guess about what they will actually go for in this article.

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Flight paths

The shortest distance from Sydney to London is shown by the blue line on the map below. It passes close to Hong Kong and is unlikely to be possible due to Russian airspace restrictions. The Aussie flag carrier’s current A380 service to London via Singapore is shown in red.

Used with permission. Click here to play with this map on the excellent Great Circle Mapper.

Flights between Australia and the UK via the eastern hemisphere are known colloquially as the Kangaroo Route. The idea is that the aircraft “hops” from one airport to another.

Back in the day there were stops in places like Rome, Beirut, Kuwait, Muscat, Karachi, Rangoon, Singapore and elsewhere before the aircraft even entered Australian airspace.

Reaching Australia by the so-called Southern Cross route is also possible, passing through the western hemisphere. Air New Zealand used to operate across both hemispheres, via both Hong Kong and Los Angeles. The Southern Cross is also shown in red on the map.

Reports in the Australian press suggest that Project Sunrise flights will head slightly west, heading north from Sydney to Alaska and crossing the Arctic before proceeding south to London.

The map below shows this route:

Used with permission. Click here to play with this map on the excellent Great Circle Mapper.

For this map, I have had the aircraft “turn the corner” at two degrees south of Barrow in Alaska, which should avoid out of bounds Russian airspace. According to the Great Circle Mapper this route is 11,608 statute miles (10,087 nautical miles).

This is 1,035 miles longer than the great circle distance and 936 miles further than the Singapore stopover route. It is also 660 miles further than travelling via Doha, but 1,336 miles shorter than the Southern Cross route via Los Angeles.

Flight length

The flight is apparently expected to take around 22 hours. If the aircraft always heads north after take-off, I would expect that it will be affected equally by the winds in each direction. Quite how variable this is would need to be the subject of an Airbus or Qantas study.

Departure and arrival times of current Qantas services

The direct flight from Perth to London and back requires access to Gulf airspace to make it work. So the non-stop service is currently unavailable. It is however still in the winter schedule if you look far ahead enough:

QF9 leaves Perth at 7.15pm and arrives in London 17 hours and 50 minutes later at 5.05am

QF10 leaves London at 11.50am and arrives in Perth 16 hours and 40 minutes later at 12.30pm

For the flights via Singapore:

QF1 leaves Sydney at 4.15pm and arrives in Singapore at 9.35pm

QF1 then leaves Singapore at 11.35pm and arrives in London at 6.15am, for a total journey time of 25 hours

QF2 leaves London at 8.10pm and arrives in Singapore at 5.40pm

QF2 then leaves Singapore at 7.40pm and arrives in Sydney at 6.35am, for a total journey time of 23 hours and 25 minutes

Observant readers will note that after a two hour stopover each way there are only 23 block hours into London and 21 block hours 25 minutes from London. A 22 block hour non-stop is still plausible because the flight via Alaska is nearly 1,000 miles further than flying via Singapore.

QF10 to Perth takes 16 hours and 40 minutes to fly 9,009 miles, roughly 2,500 miles shorter than Sydney to London over Alaskan airspace. The A350-1000 is unlikely to cover 2,500 miles in only four hours or so.

It will be interesting to see if 22 hours as announced by Qantas really is what is published in the schedule.

So, we have:

Perth to London = evening departure and early morning arrival

London to Perth = lunchtime departure and lunchtime arrival

Sydney to London = afternoon departure and early morning arrival

London to Sydney = evening departure and early morning arrival

Let’s have a look at the options for Project Sunrise. The charts below show the departure and arrival times across the summer and winter schedules in both directions.

The horizontal axis shows the departure time in Sydney (left hand chart) and London (right hand chart). The vertical axis shows the arrival time at the other end of the route.

The blue boxes show, roughly, curfew hours when flights are unlikely to be allowed. Qantas will schedule to avoid these times. They might choose to position an aircraft at their extreme points.

In the northern winter/Australian summer:

Flights must leave Sydney before 11.30am or after 6.15pm

Flights must leave London before 1.30pm or after 8.00pm

In the northern summer/Australian winter:

Flights must leave Sydney before 9.45am or after 4.00pm

Flights must leave London before 3.45pm or after 10.00pm

We can probably assume that Qantas will want to maximise aircraft utilisation. That means not leaving the aircraft overnight in London before a return.

The QF9/10 pair has a six hour 45 minute turnaround, which is longer than strictly required to clean and cater.

Qantas will likely want the aircraft at Heathrow before 8.00pm. So in practice there are probably three options and any could work. With such a long time on the plane, it is not yet clear whether premium departures banks for other flights will also be in demand for Project Sunrise flights.

Option 1, the “long day” from Australia & the “long night” to Australia:

9.30am (Aus summer) or 7.30am (Aus winter) departure from Sydney for 8.00pm arrival in London

10.00pm departure from London for 7.00am (Aus summer) or 5.00am (Aus winter) arrival in Sydney

This option is best for business travellers expected to spend a day in the office in Sydney, or cost-conscious leisure passengers prepared to wait for their Sydney hotel. It is not great for London-bound travellers as the arrival is too late for dinner or the theatre.

Option 2, the “long night + supper” from Australia & the “long day” to Australia:

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