FREE MEALS BLAMED FOR AIRLINE LOSSES; U.S. MOVE TO CUT THEM

Wanganui Chronicle, 18 February 1949, Page 2

FREE MEALS BLAMED FOR AIRLINE LOSSES; U.S. MOVE TO CUT THEM

(From Ernest Heitmann, Reuter’i Correspondent).

WASHINGTON (By Airmail): Why should the airlines operate the only overland transport system which pro. vide s free meals? That is the ques« tion which many United States operating companies have been asking themselves recently—and at least on« lias not been able to find a satisfactory answer. Western Airline s hai filed a request with the Civil Aeronautics Board (C.A.A.) seeking its permission to eliminate as from January 1, “free" meals on all flights and routes of its system and as a result, reduce its fares by 5 per cent. If this permission is granted, the airline which introduced the custom on May 26, 1928, is likely to be the first to decide that those who eat should pay. In data which the company has submitted to the C.A.A. in support of its application, it is pointed out that the cost of supplying meals is added ta the cost of all passenger tickets sold. But there the uniformity ends. MEALS NOT EATEN About 46 per cent of the passengers carried on tne Western Airline routes are served with meals but about 25 per cent of these people do not eat them. During 1947 domestic airlines in the United States spent more than 10,000,000 dollars on supplying free meals to passengers. In the same year the industry lost approximately twice that amount. Assuming that the airlines would have carried the same number of passengers—and they suspect that the free meal is no inducement to travel by air—the industry’s losses would have been halved. OE course, this assumes also, that the C.A.A. would not have insisted upon a reduction in fares. It is no secret that domestic airline operation In the United States is not a profitable business—and it Is generally accepted that one of the basin reasons for this is that the cost of air transport is still beyond the means ot a large section of the population. Western Airlines—and other operators are known to be thinking along the same lines —believe that the timo is ripe to cut the frills from flying to decide, in effect, whether the main tent or the sideshows are going, to support the circus. One operator summed it up recently: "Today, the frilli in our business have reached such proportions that the qualifications for an airline sales manager demand that he know almost as much about the preparation and serving of filet mignon at 20,000 feet as he does about the flying time between any two cities on the air map.”

Free meals are a relic of the days when the public had to be offered extra inducements to increase passenger volume. As air transport progressed, more and more frills were added, often without much attention being given to the cost factor, until the airlines were offering a luxury service appealing to a class of patronage whose wallet rather than need, determined whether he should use the aeroplane in getting from place to place. Today, it is being argued, air travel must appeal to a market considerably different from that of 20 years ago for the use of air transport has been realised by a sufficient number of people to remove the necessity of offering bonuses to travellers. It is believed that Western Airline’s example will be followed by other operators. Nevertheless, air travellers will not be expected to go hungry. On Western's 4,497 route mile system, the average passenger’s journey lasts only a little more than an hour and a quarter. On longer flights the experiment is being tried of feeding passengers on the ground at airport restaurants while the plane is being loaded, serviced and fuelled. Express flights of several hours will probably maintain facilities for serving meals in the air.

Competitors will be watching with keen interest whether Western succeeds in its attempt to “get out of the restaurant business with all its attending headaches” or whether the testing of its theories will bring it ever more severe budgetary headaches.