Monday, December 14, 2009

Incentives Matter - Airline Bathroom Edition

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair, discusses some "mad ideas" he has for improving his airline's performance. One of them is installing pay toilets on planes.
Now we're looking at charging for toilets on board—not because we want revenue from toilet fees. We'd happily give the money away to some incontinent charity. What it means is, if by charging for toilets on board, more people would use the toilets in the terminals before or after flights, I could take out maybe two of the three toilets on board, add six extra seats and reduce fares across the aircraft by another three or four percent.

So, there's always new ways of lowering costs, but you have to come at it with some imagination and some passion.
Nice to see that someone has passion for toilets.

1 comment:

  1. I actually like this idea. I fly a lot, and for most of my flights, I do not use the bathroom. There are exceptions to all rules, but I feel that most people do not use the bathroom. For those who have motion sickness, or other issues that require use of the bathroom, this idea isn’t a good one. I feel that this idea would be better received if the airline company would show they give the money away and reduce the fees for flying. This could help, but the airlines would have to look at the ramifications of requiring people to pay for the use of the bathroom. If someone needs to fly, and has a medical condition that requires the use of the bathroom during the flight, they should be able to pay more up front and get a code to use the bathroom free on the flight.

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