This announcement that Frontier Airlines will begin charging for soft drinks?
It’s just a ruse, to get people talking — mostly about why Frontier is charging $1.99 for the can and not $2.00 — in order to disguise the airline’s real goal, which is to get passengers to fly the planes themselves.
Operating on the understandable premise that they’d like to make all the money without having to do any of the work, the Denver-based airline has announced, along with the news about soft drinks, that beginning July 1st it will charge a carry-on fee of up to $100 to anyone who does not purchase their ticket through the Frontier website, thus putting pressure on them to abandon third-party sites such as expedia.com.
“With this change, we are ensuring that our most valuable customers, those who know that when it comes to air travel we’ve pretty much got them over a barrel, will once again fork out for a fee not even we first thought they’d go along with,” said Frontier spokesperson Bob Payne.
But the concern among industry watchers is that the fee, designed to see just how much of the work of running an airline the passengers are willing to do themselves, is the first of a series of steps that will lead directly to the cockpit.
“After all, flying is not like driving, where somebody actually has to be behind the wheel,” said airline-passenger advocate Bob Payne (no relation).
Commercial aircraft have been flying themselves for a long time, Payne said, with the cabin crew now there just in case the flight attendants have to reference an authority figure.
“If the airlines can buy enough lobbyists, you’ll see pilots being eliminated altogether,” said Payne. “And it’s only a step from there to charging passengers to sit in the cockpit, and only another step beyond that to charging them if they chose not to wear a captain’s hat.”
Informally polled about the announced actions, the biggest concern most Frontier passengers seemed to have was about that extra penny. “How often do you think they are going to tell us they don’t have change for the $2.00?” questioned one passenger, Bob Payne (no relation).
When not serving as the airline correspondent for BobCarriesOn.com, Bob Payne is a non-attorney spokesperson for the soft-drink industry.
