How Seat Covers Are Showing Product Differences
Airlines are increasing the variety of ways they use pricing and experience differences to segment their passenger demographics, especially within the economy cabin.
With most international airlines now offering a premium
economy product with a separated cabin and different seat type, the stepping
stones across the “comfort canyon” (a useful term coined by Airbus cabin
marketing supremo Ingo Wuggetzer some years ago) between the front cabins and
the seats down the back are increasingly visibly identifiable by passengers.
Indeed, explains Jason Estes, vice president of global sales and marketing, “we are observing many of our airline customers using color, texture, stitching, and cover design to distinguish between different classes of seats.”
This might be a waffle-cut pattern in a seatback, or a contrasting colour piping around a headrest, which helps not only to make the seat look and feel more premium for passengers making their choice but help flight attendants to manage onboard “self-upgrades”. After all, it’s easier to say “the seats with the red headrests are for passengers with our Red Plus tickets, and if your boarding pass is not for one of those seats please see our cabin crew if you would like to upgrade” than to have to explain about, say, the seats in rows 2–6 on the right hand side of the aircraft, and all seats in rows 18–19.
JetBlue was among the first airlines to adopt this with its Even More Space (soon to be rebranded EvenMore) product, and indeed it is certainly popular among low-cost carriers. While a few take it further — with full-sized tray tables in their more upmarket seats and only half-sized cocktail tables down back, or with reclining seats and adjustable headrests — the most visible markers are in many ways the most important.
US startup carrier Breeze, for example, uses traditional leather and technical textiles to differentiate between its basic economy, extra-legroom economy and the forward cabin it now calls Ascent, which is essentially a light US domestic first recliner product. With most narrowbody aircraft using just the front lefthand door for boarding, and most widebodies using L2 for most of the plane, there is a substantial benefit to onboard advertising of more spacious and feature-filled products that passengers can consider — whether for their current flight or for the next.
As the reality of, say, seat 31B starts to sink in to a passenger, the attractiveness of that brightly piped headrest on seat 4A only increases. The trick is, passengers need to know that there’s a pricing difference — plus what to ask for, and how to upgrade.
Look out for more and more airlines going for the onboard
upsell, especially as inflight Internet improves and becomes more widespread.
The frictionless upgrade of a quick swipe of the credit card or a tap of the
Apple Pay wallet is a big bonus. As this continues, more differentiation is
likely as well.
A branded divider, like those some airlines in Europe use between their narrowbody middle-seat-free Eurobusiness classes and economy, perhaps even with an upsell message, might appear above those seats. Ads at the back of bins above premium seats, too, visible on boarding where passengers might be considering upgrading, would also make sense, while pre-departure rolls on inflight entertainment systems could certainly include this information.