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In the recent past, the airline industry has witnessed various measures to reduce cost and increase ancillary revenue, including GoAir's move to hire only female flight attendants (to reduce fuel cost), and Samoa Air's decision to charge passengers by weight.
UK-based design company Seymourpowell has developed an economy seating concept called 'Morph' allowing passengers to pay-by-space. Yes, pay only for the seat space a passenger occupies.
Morph uses smart architecture to adjust both the width of the seat, and individually controlled seat pan height and seat pan depth to suit varying sizes of passenger.
By default, every seat is 18" wide (standard). Users can either increase it or decrease it to as low as a 10" seat.
This creates a scalable value offer for airlines, allows them to arrange the economy cabin by people’s wish and blurs the boundaries between various classes.
For example, a family of three will be able to book large, medium and small seats in the plane for the dad, mom and kid respectively.
Seymourpowell's head of transport, Jeremy White says:
“A passenger’s size is only one factor; Morph takes into account how people feel along with their emotional needs. The young female traveling alone, a mother nursing a child, an elderly or less abled passenger, or a family traveling together, all have specific needs; some desire more privacy or security, some are more vulnerable and require greater assistance, whilst others only need entertainment.
"These needs change too, depending on the time of day, the length of the flight and the reason behind the journey. On the way out, the passenger may need to work, whilst on the way home they may want to relax or sleep. Yet we are all shoe-horned into the exact same format, one that has remained unchanged for years.”
This concept has scope to increase ancillary revenue for an airline, and also boost customer experience.
Airlines ancillary revenues have increased from 4.8% of global revenue (or $474 billion) in 2010 to a 5.4% share of global revenue (or $667 billion) in 2012.
According to a study by IdeaWorks and CarTrawler, the total global revenue from ancillary revenues will come in at $42.6 billion, or a 6% share of total revenues for 2013.