Last week, I delivered four speeches, sat on four panel discussions and ran two MasterClasses. It’s been quite an exhilarating experience speaking to multiple groups of senior aviation executives. And more than ever, just being a sponge and soaking up knowledge from the other speakers has been very rewarding as well.

One of my best received speeches this week was the one I delivered at the Low Cost Airlines World Asia Pacific at Singapore last week. Previously, we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about the changing face of loyalty as social media takes root in the minds of customers. Late last year, we even did a three-part special series (download pdf) on LCCs and loyalty. The first part offered five compelling reasons to start thinking about loyalty. The second part provided three easy ways to track loyal customers. And the final part offered five nearly no-cost solutions to drive loyalty.

In this presentation, I presented a culmination of our thoughts on this issue and presented the thesis that light-weight loyalty programs based on social advocacy bear immense opportunities for low-cost carriers. Since many of …

US based Southwest Airlines and Canada’s WestJet Airlines paved the way for a strong relationship by announcing codeshares starting 2009. Not only will the relationship give customers access to a much larger number of destinations across North America and the Carribean, but the customers of both the airlines would appreciate the seamless brand experience across borders.

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Both Southwest and WestJet are the leading budget carriers in their respective markets and the alliance has the potential to enhance the brand value of both the airlines due to some key factors. Here are some of these factors.

Greater choice – Just like global alliances of full-service airlines allow passengers access to routes not flown by a specific airline, but a partner carrier, this partnership will give customers of budget airlines in North America the same conveniences for the first time. Furthermore, like Tiger Airways in Asia and Air Berlin in Europe, this alliance will allow passengers to take multi-leg budget flights too.
One size fits all – Both Southwest and WestJet fly only Boeing 737s, which will ensure a consistent experience for passengers in either airline. Moreover, sometime in the future, as both these airlines operate from each others’ hubs, maintainability would be much easier too.

Despite a number of US based airlines going bust in the past few months, and all the talk of consolidation and more bankruptcies in Europe, the budget airlines in Asia seem to be doing rather well.

Tiger Airways, based out of Singapore, is expanding into Australia rapidly and there are talks of starting a Korean hub. Air Asia is doing better than ever on regional routes, and now starting long haul budget travel as well. Even though the growth of Indian budget carriers has slowed, they are still doing well, given the state of the industry in the rest of the world. The fact that ever more Asian airports are coming up with budget terminals is testimony to the fact that demand will increase in the near future. So what is it that other airlines can learn from the Asian budget carriers to be more successful?