PCSTEL, we agree on greed and the most common manifestation, the greedy grab for money. Greed is the root of all evil, not money. Greedy airlines will let their greed over-rule their brains and they'll [like Globalstar initially] try to overcharge their 'captive' customers. Customers of course are NOT captive. They can travel on a variety of airlines or cars, trains, buses, boats or stay home and travel in cyberspace. Or just stay home and play golf.
Airlines which are competitive, will entice customers onto more customer-friendly airlines. Of which I'm not sure there is such a thing, but there probably are some which are a little less customer-unfriendly than others.
The best way of enticing people is to give them low-cost, high-value benefits; the cheapest thing which customers really like, especially if the customers can be charged a big heap for the low cost benefit.
A with-it airline could say "You can use your cellphone on our planes!" It costs the airline nothing, but there will be more and more people who will want to do that. Greedy and stupid "$8 a minute for the rotten phone in the back of the seat" airlines will NOT get many customers who will go on the 'you can use your phone' airline. It might be cheaper and more profitable for the airline to just let people use their phone and get the extra business, than goof around spending money installing equipment and trying to make them use that [perhaps to find they don't use it at all].
It's all about competition. Since WWeb access will be so important to people in a couple of years [it is already very important to a lot of people] any airlines which are not offering service will be in trouble.
Same with car manufacturers. Hence Wingcast.
Yes, the airlines will be slower than other businesses to be creative, but they'll get there. Or their competitors will.
I think we agree on all of this. I'm not holding my breath.
Mqurice |
