Temporary Low Cost Travel Cafe

[attitudetravel]

Herb Kelleher, the man who made Southwest Airlines a monumental success in the USA by developing the point-to-point low cost airline model was cautiously optimistic about the future of low cost aviation in his opening keynote speech at the World Low Cost Airlines Congress 2008 in London on Tuesday morning.

Regarding the price of oil as the biggest hindrance to the growth of the sector, he considered "I think it likely that relatively high fuel prices will tend to persist," later adding: "We must never forget the price of oil is not a free market price - it is a cartel price."

Cognizant of the difficulties that the low fare industry is currently going through and mindful of the collapses this year of low cost standard bearers Skybus, Oasis, Silverjet, Zoom and XL Airways, Kelleher remained cautiously optimistic.

He reflected that legacy carriers such as Alitalia, Iberia and SAS are also going through difficulties right now and considered that by the end of 2008, the overall aviation sector will have shrunk, but low cost carriers will control a larger piece of a "smaller passenger pie".

Towards the end of his speech, Kelleher reminded delegates that: "Success in the low cost airline industry is not a sprint - it's an obstacle course over a long distance."

[attitudetravel]

That was the first time I have seen Kelleher speak in person and he struck me as perceptive and insightful, with both a quiet optimism and sense of fun underlying his general outlook.

Most strikingly he seemed to "get" what low cost aviation means for travellers on low budgets in a way which I see rarely expressed by other low cost carrier executives.

While other CEOs are concerned about bottom lines and growth and balance sheets, Kelleher made several comments suggesting that for him, the real bottom line was enabling people who otherwise could not travel far to go to places which would normally be beyond their reach.

attitude Travel's core philosophy is that independent travel is mind-broadening and life-changing and that low cost aviation opens up opportunities for individuals of limited means (and that's most of us!) to work abroad, maintain relationships, go on adventures and generally enrich our lives in ways which otherwise we wouldn't even be able to consider.

I was really delighted to see that in contrast to those executives are mostly concerned merely with getting planes into the sky and keeping them there through a viable business model, Kelleher really seemed to appreciate the life-changing impact on human communities of the opportunities that low cost travel brings.