WestJet's LOPA Mistake
The airline made a reasonable bet that passengers would accept very tight seat pitch in exchange for more lower-priced tickets. It failed. Its CEO told me why.
Dear readers,
When WestJet unveiled its new LOPA last year for some Boeing narrowbodies, I thought the airline made a reasonable decision to shrink legroom in some seats to Wizz Air levels. Even though some passengers would have limited (or perhaps no?) knee room, I considered it a rational solution to an old problem – how to compete with ULCCs that pack seats on airplanes and undercut other carriers on price.
U.S. airlines have had great success with their basic economy products by adding pre-flight restrictions — including limits on flight changes, baggage, and seat selection — while leaving the in-flight experience untouched. All coach passengers receive complimentary drinks and snacks, access to TV and movies, seats with reasonable legroom, and (sometimes) free internet. Why fly Spirit (RIP) if the Big 5 could give them a better experience at the same price?
But WestJet thought that might not be the best approach for its customers.
Last year, as it redesigned the cabins on some previously all-economy aircraft to add premium seats, WestJet decided to slice and dice the coach cabin, effectively ensuring that many basic economy travelers would have a worse onboard experience than others. These airplanes had four versions of coach seats: extra-legroom economy, along with three types of economy class seats, at 30, 29, and 28 inches of pitch (with the tightest room at the back of the aircraft).1
If passengers wanted the old WestJet economy class standard of 30 inches, they’d have to pay extra for it.
“It’s all about segmentation,” WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech told me last month in an interview in Miami at the World Aviation Festival. “We increased the number of premium seats in front, and we also thought that we need to deliver a product that is primarily servicing price-sensitive people so we introduced a product that is pretty standard at many other airlines, just in the back part of the plane.”
It looked like a possible a win-win. The airline could add more premium seats, while maintaining excellent unit costs. Passengers (at least in an ideal world) could benefit too; the theory was that WestJet could offer more cheap inventory to compete with discounters. “It was generally to allow for very affordable ticket prices for people who just want a seat,” von Hoensbroech said.
Passengers did not see it that way. Many grumbled quietly, but not Amanda Schmidt, who posted a video on TikTok in January showing her 6’3” father (barely) wedged into the seat on a nearly four-hour flight from Edmonton to Toronto. In the original TikTok, Schmidt jokes: if you wanted to put two legs under the seat in front of you, you’d have to pay for the second leg. Global media soon poked at the airline, including the New York Post, which headlined a story: “Infuriated WestJet passenger shows sardine-can seating in new planes”.
Initially, WestJet punched back on social media, saying “these pitches are in line with what you’ll find across North American airlines.” But 10 days later, WestJet aborted its plan; it removed one row to ensure all standard economy seats would have roughly the same (more generous) legroom.
“It’s not just because of the public noise that it created — that’s usually not what drives us — but we also looked at the data,” von Hoensbroech. “We saw that people who were traveling were less likely to buy new tickets, and we thought: that’s not good.”
In hindsight, WestJet’s executives may not have properly weighed how far it flies these aircraft compared to the European low-cost carriers with similar seat pitch.
“We ride those 737s really long, especially during winter,” von Hoensbroech said. “We fly to the Caribbean. We fly four-, five-, six-, seven-, sometimes even eight-hour flights on a 737. That’s tough on the 28-inch seat pitch, and we got the feedback right away. We always knew it was risky. But if you never try, you never find out.”
“I always say: ‘if you never revert a decision, you're not pushing hard enough.’”
Here’s some other news von Hoensbroech and I talked about.