Some Airlines Try To Force Better Profits

The New York Times today has a story about some major airlines considering a cut in their capacity to force higher seat prices:

The miserably full flights of 2007 might seem like a good reason for airlines to roll out a few more planes and ease the crowding.

But passengers should expect just the opposite: some big airlines are planning to reduce domestic capacity in 2008 with the hope of driving fares higher to offset rising fuel costs. Barring a recession that reduces demand for air travel, travelers can expect flying to be more crowded and more expensive than it was in 2007.

If competition and their own operational models are combining with higher fuel prices to cause problems, I'd suggest that trying to improve margins by making customers even more misery is probably the wrong strategy. Why not go the opposite way - raise prices by 15 to 20 percent for a class of flight that restores comfort and pleasure to the experience? It's a lot easier to get more money when people are motivated by their self interest to do business with you. The result would be a true, not artificial, seat shortage.

UPS Goes to the Right, Ever to the Right

The line about going ever to the right comes from a song in the musical 1776. UPS is just bringing a new and more literal meaning to it. According to this story in the New York Times, the company, as much as possible, is trying to eliminate the left hand turn from its trucks' routes. The problem that left hand turns pose is, more often than not, requiring trucks to idle while waiting for an opening. A right hand turn is generally a lot faster (so long as you're in the US and not the UK). So the complex software systems that establish the loading order in the trucks and set the routes are now trying to minimize that waiting, and the assorted wage and fuel expenses. For most companies, this would probably be a waste of time that would do nothing but let management think that it was doing something useful. But UPS is hardly the average company, and is probably as efficient on the road as any:

Last year, according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons.

It might be bluster, but I have a feeling that they are serious, and probably saving money.

Another Company Burned By Faulty Translation

Something I posed on my En Words blog makes sense on the business front as well: a British menswear store sold shirts that, unknown to them, had in Russian a racist ethnic cleansing slogan. This will become one of those classic stories of how companies get burned when they don't take enough care with other languages.