It’s often a powerful reminder to look at some failures rather than simply try and emulate hero brands. Australia has a recent example of what not to do. Ozjet – A recently launched business class only airline.
Ozjet came in November 2006 and disappeared in March 2007, in an industry plagued by price cutting, discount players and crumbling customer service and satisfaction. It stands to reason that the market was ripe for the opposite of what’s currently available. So what happened? Where did they go wrong?
Here’s the start up blog assessment:
Launch timing: Launched pre christmas aiming at business markets! Who all went on leave for 6 weeks…empty planes can really hurt cashflow.
Schedule: Only had a few flights available each day. Business travelers need flexibility of schedules. Insufficient frequency – 4 planes simply wasn’t enough to provide the regularity of flights required to keep business travelers happy. Why would I pay a premium for my ticket to wait at the airport for 5 hours for the next flight back to Sydney?
Product: 30 year old Boeing 737’s 200’s. Not exactly a premium offering. Yes, regular flyers notice what plane they’re flying in.
Branding: Look at the photo of their plane and logo. Not exactly premium. Looks more like a discount airline, as does the name ‘Ozjet’.
Advertising & positioning: Skywriting? How many business executives, wealthy individuals are looking up on an idle Saturday, thinking, I really must book a flight on Ozjet? They also had a launch TVC with Murray Walker screaming “Ozjet is GO, go go, go go…”
Again this misses the mark and does not espouse ‘premium service’.
Loyalty Schemes: No frequent flyer programme. No club lounge (a must for business travel, especially with 5 hour waits for flights!), no alliances with international carriers.
Terminal Access: If you like pretending you’re the beatles, then I guess it’s OK to have to walk on the tarmac to get to your flight – not if you’ve paid a premium. You want to directly from the business lounge, to the flight.
I’m all for bootstrapping and improving as you go. But in an established market with certain benchmark demands, it just doesn’t cut it. Where your point of difference is your offer, rather than innovation, you need to have the total package upfront. One that’ll make a consumer switch worthwhile. Air travel isn’t an industry where a half baked offer can survive, capital requirements and overheads will kill anyone who gets it wrong by the slightest of margins. It’s graveyard is littered with failures.
Put simply, the Ozjet business class offering couldn’t even compete with Qantas domestic economy, and that isn’t saying much.
Jetcraft has also bitten the dust, it is purly running as a name only in Adelaide, and will so go under in a few more places
fail·ure Audio Help /ˈfeɪlyər/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[feyl-yer] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful; lack of success:
Ozjet is still operating. It hasn’t failed. Perhaps you should think about a title change to, “Why Ozjet failed as a business class carrier”.
You made good points but failed to mention the company is now bigger. English is a confusing language but even an idiot would see the error here.
Dear Details Missing,
Thanks for the English lesson & the idiot referece.
– but it seems the you need the lesson: Ozjet failed as a business class airline in Australia. It did by your definition ‘prove unsuccessful’ & ‘had a lack of success.’
Ozjet – lacked success in their foray to compete on mainstream domestic routes in Australia (Syd – melb) and closed operations. They “failed”. Ozjet today exists as a totally different business and proposition. A charter airline is not the same as a domestic all buisness class carrier.
By the way we can only judge success against set objectives. The clear original objective of Ozjet to become a national buisness class carrier or even a selected route carrier – was not achieved. Hence they failed. This set objective has been well documented in multiple media forums.
Readers feel free to add your view. No comments will be moderated.
Steve.
Congratulations to the guy who alluded to Mr Sammartino being an idiot for not recognising that Ozjet was still operating as a charter airline. I say congratulations for not revealing his name and further embarrassing himself. If he wants to play lets play.
How did Steve miss the point in his article?
Is Ozjet still operating as an all Business Class airline as per it’s original mission?
Has Ozjet joined the scrapheap from 2 years ago of other rushed and failed Business Class airlines around the world such as Silverjet, MaxJet and Eos?
Is there a possibility that had Ozjet gone about its launch with any, if not all of the above recommendations that it may have survived and not wasted the $40million to get off the ground – let alone the millions it lost post launch to prop up running empty planes with almost 80%+ excess capacity?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then I think we know who the real idiot is. The purpose of the article was to post analyse Ozjet’s failed launch in its original capacity. It’s completely irrelevant as to whether they are still in business now in another form – bigger or otherwise than they were.
The only relevant point made by Mr Anonymous was that English is a confusing language – I’d say he’s clearly speaking from experience. I suggest learning the English phrase ‘article interpretation’ before calling other people idiots.