Solution 1: The Westjet story
May 14th, 2009Topic: Best Case Practice, Innovation Tags: Alternative Economy, corporate, design, Environment
Westjet has long been the flight carrier of choice within Canada. The staff is characterized by their friendly, fun and humorous attitudes that is sure to keep your spirits as elevated as you will be physically, in the air. Westjet has demonstrated exemplar service and is a role model business practice in the aviation community, not only in Canada but all over the world. The difference is that Westjet capitalizes on its people, and deriving the shared value of their people, makes it a employee of choice. Given this type of market leadership, I believe the true potential for Westjet to really take off is on the horizon yet.
When an airline decides to lower their prices, the first things to go out the window is usually food quality (or food period), and then service. In Westjet’s case, the first was scenario was true, and now any food on board must be purchased from a third party provider, beverages however remain complimentary. Westjet’s success in maintaining high quality service is really thanks to their core values as an organization. Humour replaces luxurious pampering, and that is seen through their genuine care and growth approach to staff and clients. It goes a long way to describe what individuals value, and it is not being treated like royalty, but treated like important individuals.
So what then could be next on the horizon for Westjet if they plan to stay the course as market leaders in the industry? Well in order to come full circle as an organization committed to triple bottom line results, Westjet must now complete the circle through their conscious impact on the community and environment in which they operate. Based on my observations, I have made three suggestions that could truly go a long way for an organization like Westjet.
1. Strive for zero-waste in flight and in the office.
Why should eating on a place be any different than eating in a restaurant or coffee shop? (other than the obvious lack of a take away option). The waste generated by plastic cups, tissues, wrapping/packaging, and disposable cutler to name a few, is an unnecessary burden to our landfills and recycling plants (that is if they do separate the recyclables). So would it be so difficult to design the services inflight like one would a coffee shop? An idea would be to give everyone a mug to use, and then return it at the end of the flight, echo on the cutlery for food or snacks served as well. I can only imagine long term benefits and savings for the company, the clients, and the environment!
2. Have alternative entertainment options.
I love inflight movies, especially when I have lots to choose from, however, in budget flights, the options are either an additional cost, or you don’t have any choice over the selection. In Westjet’s case, they have satellite TV, which does include movies at an additional cost, however the complimentary option leaves us spending half the journey flipping through uninteresting channels and spending half the time exposed to commercial products – something I do not like. It can be said that sometimes having options doesn’t always give you choice. So, thinking to myself that I must be an anomaly, I decided to walk up and down the aisle seeing what other people were watching. That is when it hit me, well over half the people were either trying to sleep or were reading either a book or a magazine. A fraction of the remaining were watching the inflight movie, and a few drones were flipping through the channels trying to find something suitable to entertain them. So my question is quite an obvious one to me, why not appeal to this demand? By providing a small book library of some classics, and top of the chart books, and variety of magazines, passengers can sign them out at the beginning of the flight, and return them upon landing. Why stop at just reading, why not have small board games that you can challenge your neighbour with, more often than not, people are starving for conversation or interactions yet our society assumes we all want our privacy, so why appeal to one and not the other? Have the option, it wouldn’t be that costly, but the value could be tremendous. I can tell you, one of the most stressful places to be is in a departure gate with 200+ strangers, not a single one saying a word.
3. Provide premium carbon offsetting service.
Like many avid travellers, I get quite disappointed whenever I take a carbon footprint calculation test. Living my life as sustainable minded as possible, I always do great until I get to the question about how many flights/distance do I take in a year – needless to say, my planets needed to support my lifestyle doubles. It is no myth that air travel is the worst producer of green house gases (GHG) for any individual. So why not offer a premium service for the eco-conscious traveller? It would involve a premium price, that would be put toward offsetting your emissions and growing the renewable energy industry. Travellers can then fly in the comfort that somewhere, their money is helping to put up solar panels or wind turbines to replace dirty non-renewable energy supply. This alone will send a strong message to the R&D labs of the airline industry to hurry up with their solar flight research, and to really expand to lead other airlines that will be heading in this direction.
The uncertain future of oil will undoubtedly force a lot of change, and we will likely see the end of cheap air travel in our very near future. Here is an interesting analysis of the state of the airline industry, and their search for oil alternatives. I am sure there are various other opportunities to green the airline industry, and that is why it needs a leader, like Westjet has demonstrated so well for us in the past.
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August 17th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Hey Kurt,
Had some time and decided to poke in your sustainability blog. Some neat articles. The intro to this one reads like a WestJet press release
How much’yu gettin’ paid?
My inner grammar Nazi reminds you that WestJet demonstrates ‘exemplary’ service. Also, I got a good laugh out of the ‘Search Kurt Archer’ feature. Uhh… No thanks.
Believe it or not, WestJet’s VP of Finance (who reports directly to the CFO) is one of the members of the Bragg Creek local water co-op. I’ve met him a few times. No doubt he’d approve of your encomium.
As to your three ’sustainability’ points, allow me to play the voyce of criticism. Healthy criticism.
1. This is a wonderful idea purely from a service standpoint. In terms of a sustainability standpoint, you have to make sure that the energy required in all stages of the ’sustainable’ tableware doesn’t exceed that of recycling the plastic variety.
Remember, this includes the cost of creating the tableware; trucking clean dishes from a ‘cleaning centre’ to the planes, and from the planes to the cleaning centre after each use; the energy required to sanitize the dishes; and of course the energy required to construct and maintain the cleaning centre for the dishes. Depending on the scale of the operation, you might find only marginal (or even negative!) benefit to the ’sustainable’ plan. If you took it to WestJet on this basis, you’d have to do a passable job of quantifying the energy it takes to run the sustainable service and compare that with the energy cost of recycling the plastics.
2. This isn’t a bad idea, either. (I’m not sure how it fits into the notion of sustainability, though.)
It’s difficult (and expensive) to have an up-to-date selection of magazines. As for novels, the public interest would be questionable, given that most novels can’t be read in the space of a single flight and people would be reluctant to start reading something that they couldn’t finish at their leisure.
The sad reality of our society, too, is that people are reading less and less. Just today, Reader’s Digest filed for Chapter 11–I never thought I’d see the day.
Other mainstays like Time, Macleans, the NYT, etc., are also seeing viewership evaporate. Methinks the future is in ‘wired’ airlines, where people are free to browse the conveniences of the Internet, be they movies, books, or whathaveyou.
I’d agree with you, though. Give me a good novel and a four hour flight with which to enjoy it.
3. Solar flight is… ehm… a ways away. I doubt that it will ever be viable commercially, even as the efficiency of photovoltaics makes leaps and bounds. Still, I’ve invested quite heavily in solar due to my belief that it will come out on top of the ‘green energy’ heap. Some of the single-man solar-powered planes are conceptually neat. It remains to be seen whether they’re at all commercializable, or just a scientific pipe dream.
Using ‘greenhouse gas emissions’ as a standard for environmental impact is, IMHO, a _very_ bad idea. If not because it causes industries and governments to ignore more serious environmental problems, then because the means for dealing with carbon emissions (credits, offsets, etc.) are provably ineffective (i.e. can often exacerbate the problems) and enrich the ‘wrong kind of people’ in the meantime.
One of many good articles on the matter can be found at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/government_monosony_distorts_climate_science_says_sppi.html.
A quick ‘anti-greening’ search reveals other articles more financial in nature, mainly due to Europe’s experience with ‘controlling emissions’ (here’s a hint: it didn’t work), and due to the fact that the whole ‘greening’ paradigm is an unprecedented cash cow for some of the barons of finance. As the above article points out, carbon credits will be the single more valuable commodity traded on international markets, without removing even a single gram of CO2 from the atmosphere.
And even _that_ conclusion is based on tenuous ‘anthropogenic’ climate change science, which, despite it’s lavish funding, is still highly questionable by the critical and (truly) scientific mind.
Just be careful what you promote. A lot of these ‘reduce your carbon footprint’ initiatives also tread into far darker policies, including eugenics (called ‘bioethics’ in our Orwellian society), mass abortion (called ‘family planning’), control of food supplies, centralization of government (called ‘internationalism’), censorship of scientific research (called ’scientific consensus’) and other draconian elements.
Still, I’m convinced that you’re one of the good guys who will diligently research these claims, rather than relying on the ‘experts’ to do it for you. Remember, if you hear the claim: “You’re not an expert in the subject.”, research it twice as fast! The old “you’re not an expert” saw is meant to sterilize critical thought.
Good to see that you’re out there promoting your beliefs as well.
Best wishes, and best of luck to you,
Voyce
December 11th, 2009 at 5:56 am
Omg, I must say this is truly owning… Thanks for giving such a nice read, you made my day.