China Southern Airlines has developed a new cost cutting strategy, asking passengers to “spend their pennies before boarding the aircraft”, according to a Xinhua report. The airline calculates it takes a litre of fuel to flush the toilet at 30,000 feet and is urging passengers to use the bathroom before they board.
So, lets do a bit of calculation. A A340 carrying 250 passengers would spend 250litre of fuel on flushing toilet, considering each passenger went to toilet at least once. Now that is some saving.
But, are there other measures available which can save more fuel and can be something that can be openly adverstised. How about bare metal aircraft? Recently, airlines like AC have tried stripping down their plane off the paint. The result was ghastly to eyes, but the idea was to reduce weight and save fuel.
JetBlue, the American no-frills single-class carrier using A-320s, has some sort of yield benefit calculations which proved that it was more profitable for them by placing 156 seats in a 32" (front seats) to 34" (rear seats) pitch on an A-320 capable of taking 180-189 in typical single class configurations.
They also brought the baggage allowance to 2-pieces, figuring that most pax travelled light anyways and for the few who were over, it cost them too much to go around weighing things.
In addition, their seats are lightweight, and the ticketing is skewed in favour of Internet based. (Buying tickets at counter or over telephone reduces your FF benefits . . .).
Their IFE showed the free-to-air news channel, real time from satellite, which is far better and cheaper than paying for entertainment.
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Starboard Side emergency reclining window please, thank you, and the lounge card, if you don't mind?