G. Ziemelis: How Your Heavy Coat Can Cut Profit

Business aviation is an expensive pleasure. In order not to lose their space in the market by constantly increasing ticket prices, airlines reduce operational costs to increase their profit.

Probably the best known example of incredible savings achieved by the smallest change is the story of an olive: In the 1980s, American Airlines removed just one olive from the salads served in-flight and saved $40,000 in the course of a single year. This olive choice was not only a way to decrease the in-flight food costs, but also to save on fuel costs. While a single olive might not weigh much, a year worth of these "single olives" add up.

Similar to the olive case:

• Northwest Airlines saved $500,000 a year, by slicing the limes that were to be served in soft drinks into 16 slices instead of 10.
• American carrier United began printing its in-flight magazine on lighter paper, saving 28 grams per copy. It might not sound like much, but they calculated that it saves the company 643,000 liters of fuel and $300,000 a year.
• In 2017 United stopped on-board sales of duty-free items - such as perfumes, chocolates and liquor - cutting 5.2 million liters of fuel a year and saving a staggering $2.3 million.
• Virgin Atlantic tackled the issue by making its glassware thinner and removing some of its heavy, slate plates from the upper class. According to the airline's estimates, losing a pound (0.45kg) in weight from every plane in its fleet would save 53,000 liters of fuel a year.
• The Thomas Cook airline decided to stop printing receipts for in-flight purchases and by doing that saving it the need to carry 420,000 till rolls across its fleets. The company has also reduced the number of spare pillows and blankets it carries from four down to two.

And while the above mentioned means of saving don't sound bad, some airlines take a slightly different approach:

• In 2009, the Japanese airline All Nippon Airways asked passengers to visit the lavatory before boarding in hopes that the weight saved would lead to a five-ton reduction in carbon emissions - and a small cost saving.
• In 2013, Samoa Air introduced a "fat tax," where passengers would be charged a fare according to their weight. At the time the CEO of the airline explained that they were not selling seats, but selling weight.
• If such craze to reduce weight to save costs continues, we might soon be asked to leave even our phones at home. Researchers at MIT have estimated that each passenger carrying a phone on Southwest Airlines cost it $1.2million a year in weight-related fuel expenses. The cost jumps to $21.6 million if the phones were swapped for laptops.

Clearly, airlines cannot reduce everything to save their profits, but they sure try to.