The Wal-Mart of Airlines

[BallHawk]

Article is about new airline Skybus who will take you from Point A to Point B for a damn good price, but without any concern for customer service.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=694400

[BallHawk]

Skybus launches no-frills service at Milwaukee airport

Columbus, Ohio - Here is the basic story: Skybus will take you from Mitchell International Airport to Columbus, Ohio, nonstop, in about an hour on a new A319 jet. There is one class of service, and seating is cramped, with legroom equal to that on most regional jets and charter flights.

The more complicated story began in Wisconsin on Wednesday, when the discount carrier began serving Milwaukee with one flight a day. While that is not enough to shake up the local airline market, Skybus is being closely watched because its business plan is radically different from every other U.S. carrier.

The Columbus-based airline aspires to be the Wal-Mart of the air. It is aggressively cost conscious and delivers low-cost, no-frills service.

Of the 144 to 156 seats available on each flight, 10 are sold for $10, including the one I bought to fly to Columbus on Wednesday.

Tickets are sold only online at www.skybus.com. They cannot be bought at the airport or on the phone, and Skybus flights also do not show up on common Internet airfare search engines such as kayak.com.

The carrier does have a desk at Mitchell, but only to accept luggage - at $5 a bag for the first two, more thereafter.

Boarding passes can be printed out on a home computer, although Skybus also maintains kiosks to do so near its counter.
Cheese chunk meal

Food is available on the plane for about what it costs in an airport - $2 for a Pepsi, for example. It is of airport quality. The "cheese plate" I purchased on the Wednesday flight to Ohio contained a limp piece of parsley, three grapes, two packets of saltines, two packets of sesame crackers and three types of cheese, cut into chunks.

The young woman who sold it to me was wearing a black, long-sleeve T-shirt with "Skybus Flight Attendant" stenciled on the back.

Of the $8 I paid for the plate, she earned 80 cents as a commission, in addition to her $9-an-hour salary. She also takes tips.

Food is not all that the attendants earn commissions selling. During flight, they move up and down the aisles hawking everything from beef jerky to jewelry.

Passengers who did not bring their own entertainment had to pay attention. The airline provides no audio or video service, and there is only a shopping catalog at each seat.
Flight sponsored by . . .

When my flight to Columbus ended, the attendant informed me it was "sponsored by Canal Winchester," a Columbus suburb.

Plans also are afoot to sell advertising space in the overhead bins and seat backs, President Ken Gile said.

While my ticket bought me a seat on the flight, it did not buy me an exact seat. Instead, passengers select one when boarding. For $10, they can pay to be in the first group to go aboard, and about 15% to 18% do, Gile said. All the planes have three-by-three seating.

Because tickets are so cheap, no-shows are about 10%, said Robert Milbourne, former president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee who is now chief executive officer of the Columbus Partnership, a similar organization in Ohio. Milbourne sits on the board of Skybus and was influential in getting it capitalized.
No connecting tickets

Those like me who are too cheap to buy early boarding privileges are randomly put into either boarding group two or three when their pass is issued. For my flights to and from Columbus, that made no difference. I was able to find an empty row every time. Here is a tip: when you board in Milwaukee, sitting in the back of the plane is not a problem. In Columbus, and in most of the airports Skybus serves, passengers enter and exit through ramps at both the front and back of the plane, are deposited on the tarmac and must walk into the terminal.

Milwaukee uses only the front entrance and a jetway because of how Mitchell is set up.

The airline also does not sell connecting tickets. Passengers who want to go on to the other airports Skybus serves must get off in Columbus, claim their baggage and check in again. The airline does not recommend it.

"If they try this and miss their connection, they have effectively lost their second ticket, since Skybus tickets are non-refundable," spokesman Bob Tenenbaum said in an e-mail. "Skybus has no obligation to put them on another flight, give them any compensation for lodging or food, or any other compensation."

That did not bother Mike Groth, a 45-year-old mason who has a business in Jackson but was flying Wednesday to his home in Punta Gorda, Fla., an airport Skybus also began to serve on Wednesday.

His connection "worked out," he said Friday morning by telephone from Florida. He did not have checked baggage.
Serving the underserved

Besides Punta Gorda, Skybus flies to a number of obscure airports, following a deliberate policy of looking for underserved routes.

Skybus has competition on only two routes: those between its hub in Columbus and Milwaukee and Kansas City. Midwest Connect, a subsidiary of Oak Creek's Midwest Air Group Inc., flies both using small regional jets.

Midwest emphasizes service, calling itself "the best care in the air" and pushing baked-on-board chocolate-chip cookies. Its fares are considerably different from Skybus fares. Friday morning, Midwest's Web site quoted a price of $658 to fly to Columbus on Monday and return on Tuesday, while Skybus offered its bare-bones tickets for $190 round trip. All the $10 tickets were gone.

Gile said he believes that the market is big enough for both carriers.

Michael Brophy, a spokesman for Midwest, e-mailed, "as a rule, we don't comment on competitive issues related to other airlines."
Complaint? Tough luck

Christopher Elliott, ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler, who has been critical of the lack of ability to contact Skybus to complain, is less reticent.

"It's clear that Skybus doesn't want to hear from the cargo in the back of the plane," he said in an e-mail. "The only thing that Skybus and Midwest have in common, for the moment, is that they are both airlines."

[Partial]

Good. I am all for cheap air fair and am more than willing to put up with an hour of discomfort to save 50 bucks or even more. Maybe its just me but I enjoy flying and really don't find all the service, soda, cookies, etc necessary. The leg room has never been an issue either.

[Freak Out]

I like comfortable seats but can live without everything else....except for a bathroom of course. I'll bring my own food/water/booze thank you.

[Scott Campbell]

The best thing about the cheap carriers is that they keep the other guys honest in their pricing.

[digitaldean]

I could deal with this, it'd be worth it for the money you save.