Trouble struck at Pobeda Airlines after lunch: food went missing

Comedian Louis C.K. once gave a wonderful monologue about people who can't accept the fact that wi-fi doesn't work well on an airplane at 30,000 feet. As he aptly observes, we live in a time of the most amazing technological advances, benefiting the most ungrateful generation in the history of the earth. How can a person sitting in a chair in the middle of the endless sky and receiving the Internet from space like manna from heaven complain about anything at all? We were not born to fly, but here we are; every second of air travel is a small miracle; When taking part in it, one must be in constant admiration, and not grumble about a faulty connection. Or, for example, a comfortable chair is not enough. Or lackluster food.

When it comes to the Internet, most of us would agree with Louis C.K. To fly like a bird, you can survive a two-hour separation from your Facebook account, but it turns out you can’t part with your duty-free bag or spend some time five meters from your companion, and not on neighboring seats. At least, all discussions of Pobeda Airlines show that this is the case.

Aeroflot's low-cost airline is the main target of mockery, indignation and criticism from all sides. Last summer, the carrier was scolded because employees seated (or rather, refused to seat in adjacent seats) a couple with a small child. They had just come under fire because of a volleyball player two meters and fifteen centimeters tall, who did not fit into his seat and moved without permission, quarreling with the stewards. The airline is suing him. The public—at least most of it, unopposed—feigns indignation. I really want to speak out in defense of the airline, because regardless of what kind of people work there and what guides them when making decisions, its existence is a huge benefit. And airline critics represent the most unpleasant phenomenon of our time - prosperous people standing up for their own privileges, strange characters from Instagram spreading the consumer experience acquired in Michelin-starred restaurants to the Snezhinka cafe in Taganrog.

Low-cost airlines make the world a better place, their demands are completely logical, their staff constantly faces unmotivated aggression, and it’s good that companies protect their employees. Pobeda Airlines should be loved and not scolded for any reason.

A chicken is not a bird

The real miracle of air travel is not even that people learned to fly. What is amazing is not that we walk across the sky on dry land - this is already a fairly long-standing achievement, one could get used to it. What's amazing is how much it costs us. Since 1995, the average airfare has tripled. Many medium-haul flights cost passengers the price of a steak. A modern European can refuse one piece of meat - even a not very outstanding piece of meat - and fly across half the continent. This is a great merit of low-cost airlines. After we pause for a moment and thank fate for the fact that we have low-cost airlines, we can remember with a shudder what they replaced. To do this, just go to the Russian Railways website and try to buy a ticket for a reserved seat car to Yekaterinburg. Even in advance - for example, at the end of April. A ticket for a decent train, which takes only 27 hours, will cost 2,500 - exactly the same as a one-way Pobeda flight. With the difference, of course, that while enjoying the views from the train window, you will miss a day of work. It also costs money: 2,000 rubles with the average salary of not even a Muscovite, but a resident of the region. But even this comparison is incorrect: the joy of life and its monetary value is expressed not only in work. On the train, you will not only miss a day of work, but also trade dinner with friends or breakfast with your girlfriend for a lonely meal of fried chicken wrapped in foil (I know a person who can stuff a fried bird into a three-liter glass jar - it’s impressive). And yes, it will be called a chicken, this is included in the price of a reserved seat.

From whatever point of view you look at it, a train journey from Moscow to Yekaterinburg is comparable to a normal, full-flight flight for 10–12 thousand rubles, but not at all with the price tag of the Pobeda. Of course, not for everyone: if a passenger has four suitcases, a dog and seventeen duty-free bottles, the additional fees will cover the difference. But this is a trivial property not even of the market, but of life - no service suits everyone. And one could agree that poor people who travel light should have the opportunity to move around space cheaply, even if we personally, for some reason, do not like this opportunity. With the advent of Pobeda, the life of an Aeroflot gold card holder has not changed in any way, but the lives of many thousands of other people have become better - this literally means that from any point of view, a world in which there is Pobeda airline is better than a world in which it No.

This is why attacks on low-cost airlines look very unpleasant. When poor people try to fight the benefits of the rich, it is wrong and irrational, but at least it is humanly understandable. When wealthy people defend their privilege and mock the quality of service available to their less fortunate compatriots, it is pure malice, without justification. There are about two billion people in the world who own a washing machine, but only half of them can afford air travel. Statistician Hans Rosling defined the “golden billion” exactly this way - as people who have the opportunity to fly on airplanes. The borders of residence of this golden billion do not coincide with the lines on the political map of the world - you have to be in Russia very rarely not to notice this. I could be wrong, but the volleyball player of the Fakel club from Novy Urengoy receives many, many times more than the average salary even in his extremely prosperous region - with all due respect, the Pobeda airline, expanding the boundaries of the “golden billion,” was not invented for him.

Maybe airlines cause such irritation because they make enormous profits and skimp on basic consumer amenities? This is wrong. The profit margin on the average global airline is 4%, 5% in a good year. All the world's carriers earned a little more money in 2016 than Google alone. Which of them has done more for the coherence of the world is for the reader to judge. According to IATA , the airline industry's return on capital has only exceeded the cost of capital in three of the last twenty-five years , a golden age since oil prices fell in 2014. The cost of tickets has fallen several times over the same 25 years. It turns out that investors who invested money in air transportation were, in fact, engaged in charity - or at least doing a business that was indistinguishable from charity in its consequences.

The most honest business

Airplanes and kerosene are expensive, and airlines have to buy them regardless of how many tickets are sold, and constant effective demand does not exist for all destinations, mainly between major cities. To fill planes and recoup huge fixed costs, companies must use very complex pricing schemes. This leads to results that are striking at first glance - for example, when one seat in a cabin is sold three times more expensive than the next one, and a complex route with a transfer is cheaper than its own segment. The price frenzy allows airlines to keep the world connected; transparent prices would lead to routes that are unpopular with business travelers simply being closed.

Low-cost airlines are trying to remake this business model: instead of complex dynamic pricing, they offer simple pricing and make money by not providing free services. 40% of Pobeda's revenue comes from fees for oversized baggage, seat selection, food on board, and the like. A long price list causes indignation, but it should be exactly the opposite: one can only praise a service that honestly tells you in advance, in black letters on a white background, what the cost of a ticket consists of. Low-cost airlines not only honestly talk about everything that you have to pay for on board, but also make an image strategy out of their money-grubbing. Ryan Air or Pobeda are known for the abundance of payments even to those who never buy tickets from them. If there is an antithesis to the fine print of loan contracts, this is it.

Passengers should be grateful: for little money and according to the most transparent rules, they are sold a service for which there are simply no obvious alternatives. But it turns out the other way around: the very people who paid 2,000 rubles for a ticket and did not read the carrier’s rules are demonstratively violating these rules and demanding exceptions for themselves. Everyone will agree that haggling with the waiter after you've received the bill is a dubious display of civic virtue, but the same behavior at the check-in counter of a low-cost airline is considered completely normal. Airline employees are in the position of hated satraps, despite the fact that they are polite, sympathetic and do not demand anything from passengers that has not been previously agreed upon. Didn’t a man 2 meters 15 centimeters tall realize just yesterday that he doesn’t fit into every airplane seat? But instead of accepting some of the limitations that physical reality imposes on him, he chose to violate the pre-agreed rules of transportation. And if he wins the dispute with the airline, then others will pay for his victory: the cost of tickets will rise, they will again become unaffordable for someone, and again he will have to sit in a reserved seat car for 27 hours.

In almost any conflict between a low-cost airline and a passenger, you want to take the side of the carrier. Both because airlines insist on fair compliance with the rules, and because they make the world a better place. What could be better than a transparent, honest and profitable business that gives people previously deprived of the most amazing achievement of progress the opportunity to benefit from it? Pobeda Airlines deserves admiration, not criticism.