When you’re working on the wrong problem, you ARE the problem!

The airline industry wants to lighten your load, but who’s problem does it solve?

I’m shaking my head in utter disbelief at the announcement by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) proposing a new maximum carry-on size it wants member airlines to adopt.  In the spirit of service providers offering more and better service for less money, you would anticipate this new recommendation is for a larger carry-on bag, right?  WRONG! They are proposing a 39% reduction from the current carry-on size limit (article link here).  This might not mean much to you, but for a guy who travels nearly 200K air miles a year for business, this is alarming.  But mostly it’s just ignorant and another glaring example of inside-out thinking, which addresses symptoms rather than root causes.

What problem are we trying to solve?

The current “presenting problem” is that too often there is not enough overhead bin space for all passengers to place their carry-on baggage, which then requires checking those bags that won’t fit.  The process of checking bags during the boarding process is time consuming and creates significant delays, sometimes resulting in late departures.  It’s a lot of extra work at a very bad time in the process of getting airborne.  But this is, in reality, a symptom of the problem, and indeed, not “the problem”.

When did this symptom first appear?

Again, I travel a lot so I can tell you exactly when this started happening with regularity.  This issue was nearly unheard of prior to the airlines charging fees for checked baggage.  When travelers began to be charged a fee at check-in for each checked bag, they quickly learned they could save at least one bag fee by carrying one on.  As each airline started charging checked baggage fees, their customers started carrying on as much of their baggage as they could get away with.  Thereafter, overhead bins were full before the last passenger boarded almost every flight.

Why did the airlines start charging for checked baggage?

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Transportation reported in the prior year there were 4.4 million checked bags lost by the airline industry, at a cost of over $4 billion.   The problem, as perceived by the airline industry, was that they were losing too much money on an activity that was not a profit center.  The rationale was twofold – by charging checked bag fees, airlines experienced immediate relief by discouraging passengers from checking bags and thereby reducing checked bag volume in the short-run. Long-term this made checked baggage a revenue center that could subsequently pay for itself.  Once again, this was not the problem, but merely a symptom.  Do you see a pattern emerging here?

Why does the problem seem to shift instead of resolve?

This is a classic example of an absence of systems thinking, as well as treating symptoms rather than root causes.  Air travel is a complex system.  Any action taken in one area has logical and natural consequences somewhere else in the system.  Any time we treat the symptoms, we may affect relief for that symptom, but it typically results in consequential symptoms elsewhere.

Why won’t this new solution work?

The basis of this new carry-on size recommendation is from a study that calculated the optimal carry-on size (based on the number of passenger seats divided by amount of overhead bin space) in the average aircraft cabin.  On the surface this might appear a logical conclusion, but think again.  One of the problems is that the “average” aircraft cabin may not actually exist in reality. The new dimensions may work for some aircraft and be inefficient in others.  Frankly, the main reason it won’t work is because the aircraft manufacturers are constantly tasked with getting more passengers in their aircraft (more seats in the same fixed area) while bin space stays fairly fixed.  For example, the Wall Street Journal reported last year that aircraft manufacturers are making “skinnier seats” to get more passengers in the same space (article link here).  Just this week it was reported that Boeing is shrinking their lavatories in its 777 to make space for 14 more passenger seats (ABC News article).  The luggage industry must be leaping for joy at the prospect of what could be an annual modification to the approved carry-on size.

So, what is the real problem and a viable solution?

The problem is failure demand created in the checked bag process.  This has always been the problem with numerous root causes as culprits.  The interesting thing is that many of these root causes have been addressed by most of the airlines today.  If the volume of checked bags increased to prior levels, it would not likely experience the failure demand created before.  This is not to say that more work can’t be done to continue to reduce additional failure demand, but the serious issues have been addressed.

How can that help the current symptom of overhead bins that are always too full?

It won’t.  But if the industry were to reverse or at least reduce their ineffectual and unwise countermeasures implemented in 2007, I believe we will see these undesirable side-effects nearly, if not completely, disappear.  Here is what I observe in the boarding area prior to most flights today.  A gate agent announces over the PA system “Our flight today is a full flight and overhead bin space is severely limited. If anyone would like to bring their rollerboard or other carry-on bag to the counter, we will check it for free to your final destination.”  At that time you see a hoard of people taking bags to the counter; HAPPY to have the gate agents take the bag off their hands for free.  I believe many of the passengers would gladly check their carry-on bag if it was free to do so in the first place!  The solution is to make at least the first checked bag free again, if not the first two, as it was in the beginning.  I truly believe making at least the first checked bag free would ease the overhead bin constraint issue in more than 90% of the flights today.  In addition to easing this pain, the first airlines to do this will be heroes and gain scads of new (and old) loyal customers. What a concept!  Make things as simple and easy as possible for customers.  Do the heavy lifting for them without nickel-and-diming them.  I know for my part, I’ll do a lot of business with the first airline who does.

Innovation hint to the luggage industry:  Variable sized carry-on luggage!

This post originally appeared as a blog on the future-smith.com website (blog link).

Image credit: cathrynjakobsonramin.com