‘Green’ Airlines Tickets and Customer Perception

 Of late, you would have seen that the airlines are beginning to offer a totally new set of fares, called the ‘Green’ fares. These fares are the outcome of the efforts made by the airline companies towards moving to green fuels and helping support projects working for zero CO2 emissions. It is common knowledge that aviation industry is responsible for pollution of the environment since it makes use of the aviation grade kerosene for propulsion. With the development of the alternative sustainable fuel options, called SAF in short, this issue is sought to be addressed. However, due to the level of technological development and extent of infrastructure developed, which has kept price of air tickets at high level, the airlines have not yet moved to 100% usage of this fuel in all the flights. Airlines, however, started collecting funds from its customers, as a part of the air ticket price, to fund the projects that are working for achieving zero carbon foot print in their processes.

Where are airlines or agencies showing this option on their website and why it matters?

Airlines or agencies are showing this option for charging a higher sum to the customers either at the fare search listing page, where all the flight options are listed for a particular search done by the passenger, or at the time of final check-out.

If the airline is able to provide separate ‘green’ fares for the customers, then the most obvious placement choice is the flight search result page where the visitors have the option of looking at these fares. However, since it is shown along with the regular fares, which are cheaper, there is very less chance of booking being received.

To quote an example of why the placement of offers is important, Lufthansa airlines has been providing this carbon offsetting option on the check-out page which was being availed by only 0.1 percent of the visitors. However, in a test experiment of offering these fares as separate class of fares conducted in Scandinavia, the response was of the order of 2 percent. With this successful run, the airline looks confident to offer these fares across the economy and business class cabins. It launched its Eco-lite ticket at 85% higher fare than normal economy fare. The business class flight tickets are similarly priced at a much higher fare. While placement matters, it is still an uphill task to get customers to buy these fares.

The airlines and agencies are hard put to sell these fares to the customers simply because of the higher fares. These have started clubbing these with some other offers, such as higher baggage allowances and free rebooking.  

Even when it is clearly mentioned that some part of the burden for the ‘green’ fares is borne by the airline and the customers have to bear only some part of it, even then it is not easy to convince all into purchasing these fares. Only those who are very considerate about the environment buy these.