How interesting are the minds of your customers? This week Qantas announced a ‘flight to nowhere’. This is a flight taking off and landing at the same airport. Qantas says it took only 10 minutes for the airline to sell out a seven-hour scenic trip flying at low levels over Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef and Sydney Harbour. The flight is both to and from Sydney! Other airlines are also getting in the act. EVA Airways (Taiwan) and ANA (Japan) have also announced special sightseeing flights.
The concept of scenic flights to nowhere is not new. Right now the promotion is mostly about trying to get any extra revenue from some assets otherwise grounded due to the pandemic. More important is the reason why the idea has got any take up at all.
Would you fly to nowhere just to sight see along the route?
Taking up the chance to fly nowhere says something really important about why some people actually fly. Clearly it is not just to get somewhere different. The experience of travel offers something else on top of arriving at a new destination. Cliche as it may be, it must be about the journey. We start to become aware that our life is a journey as teenagers. You may have fond memories of your teenage years. Do you remember the preferred fashion look, your favourite hairstyle, the catch phrases you spoke, the music you listened to? If you are from Gen X like me, you probably remember baggy trousers, thin ties, loud short sleeved shirts with sleeves rolled up. You might have said ‘I’ll be back!’ in your best Austrian accent, or ‘I feel the need… the need for speed!’ before high fiving your friend with a flat top hair cut. And you may remember the iconic song by Talking Heads called (you guessed it) ‘Road to Nowhere’.
The Official Youtube video above is cool for its quirky visuals even if you are not into the song. What is much more interesting is the zeitgeist Talking Heads tapped into and continues to resonate with. Here are some of the comments under the song (emphasis added by author). Some of the comments listed appeared in just the last few weeks. Proof the lyrics still can cut through.
The first time I heard this, I was staying at my aunts house in Pembroke Pines , Florida for three weeks in August ,1985 and her friend had a son whom I befriended. I stayed at John’s house for a couple nights and this particular night, we waited till 1:00 in the morning, rolled his parents car out of the drive not to make noise ( we were sixteen and didn’t have a drivers license ) started the car in the street. We picked up his friend Ed, Tim and John, grabbed some beers and smokes and went looking for this mental hospital to drink the beers because it was way out on the edge of the Glades , I think. We got lost and this song came on and we laughed our asses off. Hooting and hollering along a dark road in the Everglades, it was hot and humid with distant lightening in the middle of Florida. I’ll never forget that night or that three weeks. Enjoy your teen years, kids. It’s gone in a blink.
This is so confusing yet somehow it all makes perfect sense. Like your brain doesn't understand, but your soul does.
Had my first existential crisis to this song at the tender age of 9 before I really understood what one was lol
2019 and I am still on the road to nowhere.
One of the happiest songs about life always leading to death I've ever heard.
This is so true to life. We are all on our own hamster wheels running pushing moving forward but to where? In the end it'll be nowhere because we just go back to the earth and the cycle begins again... The only positive is that we can make a lasting difference in our time that we are here that will pass on to future generations.
It seems something about the idea of the journey matters more than just the destination. Airlines have focused on this just now perhaps because necessity is the mother of invention. This is all the more impressive given air travel is a heavily regulated market where compliance reigns supreme. Before the pandemic almost all the innovations in the vertical were about getting the ticket cost down. Airlines may have just discovered (or rediscovered) they are selling an experience, not just a transit. This is exciting because it opens the door to a different customer strategy and CX. It makes it possible to build customer value propositions where margins can go up. The fact the flight to nowhere sold out in 10 minutes flat tells me the tickets were too cheap!
If the airlines can work out how to sell flights despite all of the current travel restrictions surely your business can do something similar. What are you really selling beyond your core product? Because it’s beyond your core product where most of your profit is…
Robert Dew is a Founding Partner at CapFeather Global with more than 2o years of corporate consulting and university lecturing in Innovation, Customer Strategy and Customer Experience. His PhD related to improving creativity in strong corporate governance environments. He is not ashamed to admit how much he loved Adam and the Ants and Devo in the 1980’s. Right now he is waiting for the day international flights go back to normal.