Don’t micromanage LCCs

▲ Tigerair Taiwan’s inaugural flight (Photo / Provided by Tigerair Taiwan)

By Wu Xueming

Not long after Tigerair Taiwan began operations, it faced passenger complaints. The issue arose when some passengers failed to select pre-booked options on the Tigerair Taiwan website, and upon arriving at the airport for check-in, were asked to pay baggage fees. Dissatisfied, the passengers filed complaints with consumer protection officials. However, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications stated that it would send a letter to Tigerair Taiwan to “guide” the airline to remove the pre-selected options during ticket purchases.

This is an interesting case worth discussing. First of all, who doesn’t know that Tigerair Taiwan is an LCC? Its tickets are sold so cheaply — but are there no other restrictions? Passengers don’t check and assume they’ve gotten a great deal on a cheap ticket, then show up at the airport with their luggage, only to find out that baggage fees apply. This shows that Tigerair Taiwan really hasn’t done enough to inform customers. It focuses solely on promoting how cheap its tickets are, but neglects to tell passengers that while the ticket gets you on the plane, your luggage and in-flight meals come at an extra cost.

Secondly, the CAA’s handling of this case is also quite peculiar. When passengers complained, the officials’ immediate reaction was to ask Tigerair Taiwan to remove the pre-selected purchase options — in other words, to stop the airline from selling add-ons on board. But doesn’t everyone know that...Tigerair Taiwan is an LCC, and it earns money through the model of selling cheap tickets and charging extra for additional services. Asking Tigerair Taiwan to remove these pre-selected options is essentially asking it to revert to the traditional airline model of all-inclusive pricing. Then, can it still be called an LCC? Can it continue to sell cheap tickets? And was there even a need to promote it as “Taiwan’s first LCC”?

▲ Tigerair Taiwan is an LCC (low-cost carrier), so meals, drinks, and snacks on board all come at an additional cost. (Photo / Taken by reporter Tsai Wen-jun)

LCCs are inherently a product of the “trade-off between the desirable and the essential.” They adhere to the user-pays principle, where you only pay for what you use and skip what you don’t. That’s why LCCs have pre-selected options for things like baggage, in-flight meals, seat selection, and more. But in their marketing, LCCs hardly ever explain these rules — they just highlight the extremely low ticket prices to attract customers.

And passengers who fly with LCCs often assume it will be just like the traditional airlines they’ve flown with before, where everything is taken care of. But when they check in and board the plane, only to find that almost everything comes with a fee, they naturally feel duped.

We can’t blame the LCCs, because they need to survive. Nor can we harshly criticize the passengers, because they don’t understand (or perhaps haven’t fully grasped) the model. What we should blame is Taiwanese society — we hadn’t yet cultivated an LCC culture, yet we already had LCCs taking off. Accepting LCCs will take some time and effort to learn.

During this learning period, we hope that relevant government departments will refrain from micromanaging LCCs or even forcefully pushing them back toward the traditional airline model. Doing so would defeat the purpose of establishing LCCs as part of our domestic aviation industry.

This article is reprinted fromTTN Travel News. The author, Wu Xueming, is a veteran travel journalist and currently serves as the editor-in-chief of TTN Travel News.