Ok, Ok – A lot of loyal FMV readers have emailed asking us when we'll post our CASMA recap. But, the fact of the matter is that we’ve been lazy to post it because …. Well… there just wasn’t a lot to report.
Yes, there were a lot of panels and workshops, but we bet that you’ve already heard it all. We’re serious. It’s a slow distribution news year – and so there’s basically only one thing everyone talked about at CASMA: “Merchandising”
With the very closely-related popular brother… (Wait for it)… “Ancillary Revenue”
And the 2nd cousin that everyone admires from afar - “Fare Families”.
- Yes, Paypal had yet another lunch keynote speech. And Yes, there were the federally mandated panels about E-Ticketing (Hey – isn’t that IATA Deadline coming up?), Alternative Payment Methods (Credit cards suck), and Agency Booking Habits (Drat them!). These are CASMA staples.
- The Panels this year were seemed LONNNGGGG (90 minutes?! Uggg).. And the major panels were about…. (Wait for it)….. Ancillary revenue! The punch-line of this was that the panel was “moderated” by Maruice Coleman – who seemed to have only two main points. 1) Hey - Did you know he used to work at Aer Lingus (he mentioned this no less than 11 times) and 2) Ryan Air is the BEST AIRLINE EVAH !! (mentioned Ryan Air no less than 28 times).
- The other major panel seemed to be Technology Providers talking about…. (Wait for it)…. Ancillary revenue. The panel can be summed up like this:
Sabre: "Hey - Did I tell you we're great?!... well, we are great!".
Amade-oose: "Industry Buzz Word #1, Industry Buzz Word #2, [Insert a remark about Altea]"
WorldTravelSpanPort: Most Reasonable of the bunch - "We can't expect airlines to be standardized"
ATPCo: "umm - don't know why we're up here"
ITA Software: "This stuff is hard, we'd love to hear what the airlines are looking for"
So there you go readers. Sorry for the letdown – but it can’t be all breaktaking news all the time. We’ll save that for the next Airline that charges for an aisle seat...
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