Business travel is getting meaner and tighter

Don’t you just hate having to walk through a Qantas domestic business class cabin to the crush in economy?

Well the hate, if that’s how you feel, is going to be over fairly soon.

Far too few business travellers are actually paying business class fares. Many of them are on corporate accounts that Qantas secured by discounting the real business class fare for the bulk value of all those regular inter city flyers.

The ones who are no longer as regular as before, and whose companies have no intention of ever paying anything like a real business class fare ever again when economy is often available for between half and one fifth the price.

Alan Joyce is almost certainly going to do what his predecessor Geoff Dixon seriously contemplated doing more than once, and end domestic business class as we know it.

Does he have any alternative? Not on the current and future outlook. The 30 wide comfortable seats in the forward cabin of a Qantas Cityflyer 767 can easily be replaced by 42 economy class seats, and be combined with the funny little two rows of economy that exist in a sort of closet location just behind business class in those jets today.

If no one is paying anything like full whack for domestic business class it is doomed sooner or later. But much sooner doomed in trading conditions like today’s.

The burden of offering this product becomes even more apparent in the so-called off peak flights, although that is when the smart buyers, those who can be tempted to trade up for a small sum, and are actually paying their own fares, can pick up really good ‘cheap’ business class fares.

Australia is just about the last sanctuary of high quality business class domestic cabins outside the US, where the quality bit is missing anyhow.

The replacement product will be what passes for business class on British Airways, Air France or Lufthansa, which is an economy class seat located forward of a movable divider in which the middle seat is either blocked off (as in Virgin Blue’s premium economy rows) or simply not sold.

As far as I can tell on Lufthansa, the real difference is that the bread roll in business class on short haul flights is soft and fresh, while the ones handed out behind the curtain are dental emergencies looking for a victim.

Of course Tiger and Jetstar maintain that business is embracing their low cost offerings so all this is irrelevant. Business are, but not their business travellers. Unless you are less than about 150 cms tall with shoes on, flying on Jetstar is bone pain territory, while with Tiger you may not get to find out, because you either can’t get the web site to work, or you can’t find anyone to talk to, or the flight doesn’t operate anyhow and any refund (minus service fee) will only be paid to your estate after you die.

Expect to see the revolt of the bean counters, in both the corporate travel managers, and in the airlines, conspire to impact deeply on long haul business class in the near future too.

Qantas is working on slashing the size of business class cabins to offer more premium economy seats, and although Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific have always insisted they won’t offer such a cabin it can be argued they have no option but to think again and very soon.

Long haul premium economy is, by the way, pretty good, and something like economy was back in the golden age of the first jumbos, when there were even economy class lounges in United 747s. It’s just that it will now cost you a lot more than it did in the glory days, and to make sure you want to use it, the airlines will no doubt quickly render standard economy even tighter and meaner than it is today.