After production delays of over two years, an analyst called the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the “delay-liner”. But aren’t production delays part and process of every new aircraft that is designed from scratch? It was the case with the Airbus A380 and even the Boeing 747. I believe it is important to look beyond the hue and cry about the delays and would like share my thoughts about the engineering and design marvel that the Boeing 787 is, and how it can be a brand differentiator for many airlines.

I was fortunate enough to be given a private tour of the Boeing 787 cabin, and I published the photos on SimpliFlying earlier. Now, I’m publishing the exclusive video tour of the cabin, which is housed in a life-sized mock-up of the plane at Boeing’s state-of-the-art Customer Experience Center. I was very impressed with this flying machine, and you’ll know why when you watch the video.

Here are three things I feel that will make the Boeing 787 experience very different for airlines, and passengers.
1. Boeing brings back the charm of flying
Did you know that the windows in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner are much larger than any planes flying today? Did you know …

Image by xrrr via Flickr

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I read one of the most shocking emails I’ve come across in the recent past concerning airline staffs’ adherence to rules. This was a story published on The Consumerist a couple of hours back. In this case, Mike was trying to rush his girlfriend to Portland, Oregon, from San Francisco, on United Airlines, so that she could be at her dying mother’s bedside. But they missed the flight because “it was time for [the ticketing agent] to go on her break.”
Is company policy more important than life?
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I know employees at United Airlines are unionized, and they have strict guidelines as to when they can work and when they need to take a break. But I wonder why this agent couldn’t issue the tickets, which took two minutes, as opposed to arguing with Mike for ten minutes justifying her break.
It’s the brand execution that matters
I’ve written about United Airlines eliminating their only call center, I’ve written …

From the moment I was handed the boarding passes for my journey, there was something special about it all…I just didn’t know what, at that time. It was the first time I was flying with Qatar Airways – which claims to be the Five Star airline. And I was prepared to put it through the test, on what makes a Five Star brand, and whether Qatar Airways is indeed what it claims it is. For a start, the photos below will give you an idea about my experience.

Five star culinary experience
As you can tell from the number of photos in the slide show with a gastronomic feel to them, I had a LOT to eat on board my flight from Singapore to Abu Dhabi (for this conference), via Doha. Not only did I have a multi-course breakfast and dinner on board the Business Class, it was the style in which it was served that impressed me even more. Fresh napkins were spread on my lap …

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Ancillary revenues – money an airline makes from things other than the asirfare – have always proven to be attractive profit centers for airlines. But very often, they tend to be random, with airline executives making their decisions based on how much money the source brings to the airline, rather than anything else. Moreover, ancillary revenue streams are often garnered from outside the cabin, like having special offers on the website or charging a fee for baggage check in.

But as I mentioned in my white paper on airline branding, Brand eXperience is one of the most important factors affecting the brand perception and the time spent in the plane forms the most important part of the eXperience. According to recent research, the most important factor determining the in-flight experience is not service or in-flight entertainment, but the person you’re sitting beside! 80% of passengers feel their seat neighbor’s bahaviour influences their overall flight satisfaction. And there lies the opportunity.
Bring in Satisfly – to optimize your seating in the plane
A friend of mine, Sergio Mello, has started up a company called SATISFLY, which solves …

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For the last couple of days, I’ve been at the Aviation Outlook Middle East, as a keynote speaker (check out my presentation here). You’d expect that the hottest topic might be the recession, or the threat/opportunity for Low Cost Carriers in the Middle East (see my interview on that here). But ironically, during the panel discussions, during the networking breaks and even during cocktails, the hottest topic for discussion was Ryanair charging for the use of toilets in-flight!
Will charging for the loo work for the brand?
From the amount of buzz just one statement from Michael O’Leary has generated, it looks like the move has already worked for Ryanair. Afterall, no PR is bad PR! And the Ryanair CEO is probably one of the best when it comes to getting free PR anyway, just like Richard Branson. The two of them are icons for their respecive brands, like Steve Jobs is for Apple, and it adds an X-Factor to the brand (read more in …

I flew on Indigo Airlines for the first time about three weeks ago. This was a flight from Bangalore to Jaipur, via Ahmedabad, in India. All airline staff seemed to have a spring in their step that morning, from the point of check-in, where I was greeted by a lady smiling ear-to-ear. But the best seemed to be reserved for in-flight.

When the stewardess, Neha Shenoy, came to ask me if I wanted any drinks or sandwiches, she greeted me by name. Yes, you read that right. I was asked, “Mr. Nigam, how’re you doing today? Would you like to have some sandwiches…?” I was bowled over. It was the first time I was being greeted by name, in an Economy Class on a domestic sector in India. Something that’s usually a feature of international Business Class on reputed carriers like Singapore Airlines had somehow made its way to this Indian budget airline. And very simply too. Neha was carrying a copy of the passenger list on her cart, and just read out my name from there. A simple method. But very, very effective. I got a drink from her.

But that was …

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Asking for tips in Business Class
Recently, I met up with a senior airline executive in Bangalore, India. He shared with me a very interesting incident. While flying Business Class from London to Delhi on Air-India recently, he encountered excellent customer service by one of the stewardesses. But in Air-India, service levels are not always of a very high level, so this was an exception. She spoke to him for long, served him extra wine and then emphasized multiple times how flight attendants need to work long hours with little pay these days.

She returned before landing to again sweet-talk him into giving her a tip. He was appalled and didn’t oblige. I was initially surprised too, but thought that this might just turn out to be an interesting way to enhance the brand experience on board the aircraft.
Tipping – a norm in the hospitality industry
A tip is a small amount of money given voluntarily as a token of appreciation for a service rendered. We tip our servers as a way of thanking them for good service. We might also leave a very …

Image via CrunchBase

In December last year, as major retailers in the US worried about “Black Friday” not arriving and cash registers not ringing, Amazon.com announced that it had its best year ever. Here’s the story and here are the numbers: Amazon reported that the buying was strongest on December 15 when they received 6.3 million orders, which according to the Dow Jones translates to a “record 72.9 items a second.†And this is not the first time Amazon has bucked the recessionary trend.
Amazon’s brand matters
The reason for Amazon’s success? It’s the Amazon brand that has done the work here. Had Amazon not established strong brand loyalty in good times, the customers wouldn’t have stood by it in bad times.  More importantly, everything about Amazon is based around customer experience, and everything is marketed to the customer well.

So what can airlines learn from the Amazon brand, to beat the recession? Here are three key lessons.
1. Build a distinct airline brand
If Amazon hadn’t established …

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I’ve had the opportunity in the past few months of interviewing a number of distinguished thought leaders in the aviation and branding industry over the past few months on SimpliFlying. But a recent encounter in New York has left a deep impression on me, since this brand leader’s ideas truly resonated with what I’ve been writing about technology branding for airlines lately.

I’m referring to my conversation with Joe Crump, the VP of Strategy & Planning at Razorfish – the leading digital branding agency. At one point in the interview, he predicts that “any airline that doesn’t go digital pretty damn quick is going to find itself obsoleteâ€. And he has 25 years of experience in branding and technology to back up his foresight.
Airline branding – “genuinely complicatedâ€
In his interview, Joe shared that the fundamental problem of the airline industry is that “of over-promising and then inconsistently deliveringâ€. And this is mainly because of the number of externalities airlines need to deal with – from fluctuating …

Gone are the days when we received some unknown meat topped with a squishy brown liquid and neon green vegetables on board airlines. These days, either we don’t receive anything for free ($2 for water anyone? Think US Airways ), or we receive peanuts (think Southwest) or are over-fed (think Qatar Airways). But which airlines serve the best food?

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This article is inspired from a review SimpliFlying has received, which notes that there is hardly any talk about food quality on board airlines on this blog. Indeed, food quality and serivce forms an integral part of the flight experience – especially for long haul flights. In fact, it can sometimes be crucial to winning the customers hearts, as Malaysia Airlines CEO realized. They had been serving mutton biryani on routes to China, and customers didn’t like it. They switched to chicken rice, and won their hearts. At the same time, they started offering mutton biryani on flights to Delhi, which was well received too.

Personally, …