Airlines Keep Treating Us Like Cattle

Aug. 27, 2008 — -- I vaguely recall a rule of thumb from my Marketing 101 class that said never refer to your best customers in terms associated with a herd of bovid -- in other words, don't call them "cattle."

One would think this would be a mantra for airlines; but strangely enough, in their zeal to squeeze out every last cent from their best customers -- business travelers -- they are referring to these folks as herd animals. Maybe they don't use the precise term "cattle," but when they talk about road warriors, believe me, they're envisioning the stockyards.

Case in point: Airline executives have been crowing to financial analysts lately about yielding more revenue by erecting fences around business travelers so they can't stampede and escape to purchase cheaper seats intended for leisure travelers who typically pay three to four times less. What's this all about?

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Well, first of all, simple economics has already been thinning the herd of air travelers this year. A toxic combination of energy prices, a weak dollar and a faltering economy has forced airlines to dramatically cut back seats in order to keep planes packed with higher paying passengers.

Airlines, in their quest for more revenue to offset fuel costs, have recently begun to rope in a few savvy business travelers who have been shopping early and scoring cheaper seats. Enter the fences.

I guess we really ought to call them barbed-wire fences. You see, the fence is one of the 20-plus rule restrictions of a roundtrip fare -- in this case, the minimum-stay rule -- that requires passengers to stay a certain number of days at their destination, or overnight on a particular day (typically a Saturday) to get the cheapest fare.This works to the airlines' advantage because they know the typical business traveler doesn't want to stay multiple nights or give up his or her weekends at home. So these business travelers -- or their companies -- pay more to skip the minimum stay requirement.