Why not?

It’s time airlines began rethinking the concepts of seasonality and charters. Currently, seasonal services rely on predicted or proven demand swells to justify a change in capacity for a fixed period of time – usually on a recurring basis, most commonly up-gauging around holidays. There can be no doubt that this practice makes sense. However, given the cutthroat nature of the current aviation market I am surprised no carrier has taken it a step further and pursued a more aggressive approach where seasons are in fact not even a season long. This would involve one (or two, or three) off services between city pairs designed to aggressively target pockets of new revenue. The haphazard nature of this approach would make it seem almost like a charter service – and in many respects it would be – but with one key difference; airlines would no longer be the suitors, waiting around for clients to pitch them. Rather they would become the aggressors and would take the fight pitch to prospective clients.

Let me offer an example. I am attending the Microsoft TechEd 2010 tradeshow in New Orleans next week. Attendance is rumored to be hovering between 8,000 and 9,000 people. Given that it’s a Microsoft show it will come as no surprise that a large contingent will be making their way down to New Orleans from the Redmond, WA area. While there are countless one-stop possibilities to New Orleans from Seattle (to suit any airline allegiance) there is no direct service. For a sizeable portion of the people making this journey a direct flight would be too good to pass up, frequent flier miles be damned. All it would take is for Alaska Airlines (or any other major player in the northwest) to recognize the needs of their market and react. For this particular example I’m sure a few services straddling the tradeshow’s timeline would sell out in minutes. The same issue exists for Canadian attendees of the show – there is no direct service from New Orleans to anywhere in Canada. Would this not then be the perfect time for a Canadian carrier to offer “seasonal” services around this event to New Orleans from Toronto and Calgary? I’m willing to bet it would work. Inevitably airlines would cannibalize some of their own routes by adopting this approach but it would at the same time attract passengers that would preliminarily favor another carrier.

Pursuing opportunities like this would be straightforward. Route Ops teams at carriers would simply have to contact the largest convention centers around their continent(s) and get their annual schedules. With that information and some research into their attendees and organizers, opportunities like this would light up any airline’s route map like a Christmas tree.