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The lack of airlines' willingness to experiment is bizarre to me, considering they have large fleets of planes and could easily A/B test new technologies with m
by jjeaff 7y ago
The lack of airlines' willingness to experiment is bizarre to me, considering they have large fleets of planes and could easily A/B test new technologies with minimal investment and disruption of their regular business.
- notahacker 7y agoIt's not particularly tempting to A/B test seats which will cost you $500k per aircraft to install. Plus you can't conduct real world tests on equipment which doesn't have the relevant certifications.
- indecisive_user 7y agoThey could do focus groups though. Build a few different seating arrangements, pay people to sit in them for a couple hours, and collect their thoughts afterwards.
- ghaff 7y agoI'd be very surprised if airlines didn't already do focus group testing of various sorts.
- topkai22 7y agoPeople also don't like to be surprised by their brand, at least in non-trivial ways. I'd predict constant A/B testing of disruptive ideas (such as new seating arrangements or radically boarding schemes) would end up damaging the brand and customer retention.
- briandear 7y agoWhen an A/B test costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, you might be reticent too.
- jjeaff 7y agoThey used to spend more than that on cherry tomatoes every year. I think a few hundred thousand for trying out different seats would be a drop in the bucket.