Inflight association appoints regional committee

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At yesterday's Airline Executive Meeting in Cannes leading figures in the inflight sales business agreed to take part in a forming committee which will explore further the objectives and information gathering of an inflight travel-retail association

Representatives from leading airlines in each region will take the next steps to begin the work of the association in dealing with issues such as security, onboard technology, credit card fraud and other issues.

The airlines involved in this loose framework are Virgin Atlantic for Europe, South African Airways / Tourvest for Africa, United Airlines for the western hemisphere and Cathay Pacific for Asia. "It will be a lot easier if we coordinated within regions and met quarterly as a group," said United's Annette Gudsmiedl.

At the meeting there was agreement that inflight remains the most under-resourced travel-retail channel. Previous meetings had resulted in few positive steps to arrest the relative decline of the inflight business and there was disagreement between concessionaires and airlines, and airlines and suppliers. "We need to remind concessionaires that they work for us," said one airline representative.

Generation Group's Yngve Bia made a presentation which showed how airlines' market share of the global travel-retail business has declined from 8.8% in 1993 to 7.2% in 2001. Average inflight sales per passenger have also decreased from $3.20 in 1998 to $2.55 now. "Market share of airports and the attractiveness of shopping at airports has increased rapidly. There is also a transformation of the business toward low-cost carriers," said Bia. Generation's prognosis of the business this year is for slight growth with positive reports coming from Asian airlines in particular.