Malaysia Airlines look again at A380 and A330 product. The customer wins.

A refreshing piece of news from Malaysia is that, ahead of its first A380 delivery next year, MAS is to look again at its onboard product particularly on its new flagship and on its A330s. The aim, says Air Transport, is simply to ensure that it is "the best in class".

From this we can assume that MAS will seek to maximise the attraction particularly of their A380s in line with the approach taken from the outset by its neighbour Singapore Airlines and the Gulf airlines led by Emirates. They have redesigned particularly the premium class hard and soft offerings from cabin layout and design of furnishings to catering style and routines. Thereby they have offered the customers something new, refreshingly different and very stylish.

Qantas, Air France and Lufthansa have taken an alternative tack. Although their cabins are also pleasant and service and catering reasonable, they are not spectacular but more traditional and don't move the game on at all. Their First cabins in particular are much more open and less compartmentalised than those of the eastern group and their catering is generally less interesting. IFE systems are state of the art amongst all the A380 operators. Perhaps the traditional group rely more on IFE and frequent flyer programmes rather than service and cabin environmemt "wow" factors to keep the customers loyal? If so it's a missed opportunity and once again demonstrates the more progressive and customer focused thinking of the Asian and Middle Eastern airlines compared to their older legacy" competitors. It leads on to the question as to whether the power of the major frequent flyer programmes is now really in the customers interests or whether in fact these schemes seriously distort and reduce rather than sharpen competition. We will return to this one on another occasion.