What do Aer Lingus Economy flyers really value when price is taken out of the equation?

This is a guest and sponsored article by Wesley Jacobsson of EPIC Insights. We last heard from EPIC back in March with “ Who is right? Michael O’Leary or Elon Musk? ”, which investigated in-flight Internet access profitability by analysing real Ryanair passengers. EPIC have been doing more research in the Irish aviation market and I thought that you would like to hear about their results. Even better for Airline Revenue Economics readers, you are the first to see these results and they will be published on EPIC’s Insights Lab shortly. You can visit EPIC’s website here – www.epicinsights.io . Advertisement: The Ryanair study used conjoint analysis, which examines how customers trade off different attributes of products or services. This time the airline in the spotlight is Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus and the analysis is “MaxDiff”, which shows consumers a wide set of options through short trade-off exercises, where they have to choose which option is best and which is worst for them. The output is a preference ranking of those different options. Conjoint on the other hand is often understood as a study of the willingness to pay for those features, and often follows MaxDiff analysis. However conjoint analysis can sometimes go a lot further and answer detailed questions about commercial value, without airlines needing to make risky real-life price changes. There will more conjoint analysis from EPIC covering Aer Lingus in another guest article coming soon. Conjoint and MaxDiff are not widely discussed in aviation, but they should be. Unlike airline Revenue Management, which uses historical data, these consumer studies are more forward looking. They can be used to understand what consumers are prioritising today to help forecast how they might behave tomorrow if airlines change their commercial features or price points. In some cases this may be a better indicator of future trends than historical data alone. They are also a lower risk first step of measuring how markets are likely to respond to new commercial policies than implementing those policies and seeing what happens. There will be another piece from Wesley next week. In the mean time, I will make some comments as we go along. Now, over to Wesley… Core finding: Economy flyers are not asking for more extras. They are asking for the right kind of reassurance: control over the moments that make the journey feel uncertain. Oliver adds: This is a powerful finding. It suggests that many travellers think that the “best” airlines are not those with the most luxurious services or the lowest price, but those which they feel they can rely on. Strategic implication: Ancillary strategy should not be built around adding more options to the shelf. It should be built around matching the right reassurance benefit to the right traveller, at the point in the journey when that anxiety is most salient. What we set out to understand Ask passengers what they want from a flight and the answers come easily: a good seat, smooth boarding, reliable Wi‑Fi, a meal on a long flight. What is much harder to see is how those needs rank when passengers have to make real trade-offs, when wanting one feature means giving up another. That is the question this study was designed to answer. We ran a MaxDiff study with 296 Economy class Aer Lingus flyers, testing 22 ancillary features across multiple choice sets. In each set, respondents selected the feature they found most appealing and the one they found least appealing. Every feature appeared multiple times and in different combinations, forcing genuine prioritization rather than unconstrained wish-listing. Respondents were recruited to reflect the realistic profile of Aer Lingus Economy flyers. Quotas were applied across age, income, travel purpose and route mix, including a deliberate proportion of transatlantic travellers to reflect Aer Lingus’s North American footprint. This helped align our sample with Aer Lingus’s overall Economy flyer base. Importantly, all 22 features were presented as if they cost the same. Removing price from the comparison isolates pure preference. It reveals not just whether flyers like a feature, but how strongly they prioritize it relative to the rest of the ancillary menu. Respondents answered the study with reference to their typical Aer Lingus Economy flight in the past year. The same context was used to capture key segmentation variables, including travel purpose, booking channel, booking lead time, and party composition. This means the segment analysis reflects the traveller context most relevant to their recent Aer Lingus flying behaviour, rather than abstract attitudes toward air travel in general. The study produces a utility score for each feature. These are relative MaxDiff utility scores: higher scores indicate stronger relative appeal within the tested set, while lower scores indicate weaker relative appeal. Scores above zero should be read as stronger-performing features; scores below zero as weaker-performing features relative to the tested set. Direction and distance both matter. A feature at +0.50 carries a much stronger preference signal than one at +0.10; a feature at −0.60 is clearly weaker within the tested set. It is important to note that features scoring below the set average drew lower relative preference within the tested set. MaxDiff is designed to measure relative preference, not absolute sentiment. Lower scores should not be interpreted as indicating that respondents actively dislike or reject these features. Figure 1. Example MaxDiff choice task used in the study. Overall results: what Aer Lingus Economy flyers actually want The 22 concepts tested covered a broad range of airline ancillary ideas, from familiar services to more novel propositions. With price held constant, the resulting preference hierarchy had a consistent shape. It was not the most premium or experiential features that rose to the top. It was certainty. Figure 2. Relative MaxDiff utility scores across all 22 tested ancillary features. When price steps aside, certainty steps forward The clearest structural signal in the data is not just which features perform best, but what kind of benefit they offer. To read the results commercially, we grouped each feature into one of three psychological benefit types. Assurance captures certainty and anxiety reduction: the reassurance that something important to the journey has already been handled. Ease captures reduced friction at a specific journey moment, helping passengers move smoothly through a known pain point. Indulgence captures features that elevate the experience beyond standard Economy, making the passenger feel treated, pampered or more personally looked after. When the scores are viewed through this lens, the pattern is clear. Assurance is the only category with a positive average utility score. This is not a marginal difference. Assurance is the only category in positive (above average) territory, while Ease and Indulgence both average below the full feature set. In other words, when price is removed from the equation, passengers do not primarily reach for extras that make the journey feel more premium. They prioritize the features that make the journey feel more certain. The top of the hierarchy shows what matters most to Aer Lingus Economy flyers when price is removed from the comparison: Standard seat selection (+0.51), Preferred seat selection (+0.43), Flexible flight changes (+0.30), Priority boarding (+0.29), On-board meal (+0.20), and Guaranteed seating together (+0.17) all address clear journey needs. Most are direct reassurance plays. What this means This is not a finding about price sensitivity. It is a finding about what travellers prefer when given free choice. With remarkable consistency, they choose the certainty that the parts of the journey that matter most are already arranged. Oliver adds: For many airline teams, staff travel processes are not always closely aligned with what commercial passengers experience, which can make it hard for airline staff to learn themselves how commercial passengers feel when buying travel and taking flights. Not every anxiety carries the same commercial weight Assurance is not a single uniform preference. The 10 Assurance features split into two groups with sharply different outcomes, and the line between them is commercially instructive. Six Assurance features score above the set average, averaging +0.30. Most address anxieties that are broad, near-certain to be relevant and central to the journey: where you sit, whether plans can change, whether your group stays together and whether you can bring what you need. Four Assurance features score below the set average, averaging −0.18. They still offer certainty, but the anxiety they resolve is narrower, more clearly solved by another feature, more contingent or more marginal. Flexible same-day switch covers a day-of scenario most travellers will never face. Refundable fare resolves a cancellation scenario many prefer not to anticipate at booking. Cabin bag is an expectation most flyers already assume. Dedicated overhead bin space addresses an anxiety that Priority boarding already resolves implicitly: board first, and the space is yours. The sharper lesson Do not simply offer assurance. Offer assurance around the things travellers know with certainty they will need. Where the feature sits in the journey matters, but only up to a point Journey phase provides a useful directional signal. The Airport phase is the most consistently above-average zone, averaging +0.18. Post-Flight is the lowest-preference zone, averaging −0.39. But the relationship between journey phase and performance is more nuanced than a simple hierarchy. Figure 3. Average utility score by journey phase. In-Flight is rounded to +0.00 in the chart; the underlying average is +0.002. The Airport phase stands out because all three of its features score above the set average: Priority boarding (+0.29), Fast track security (+0.14), and Lounge access (+0.12). This makes it the cleanest above-average journey phase in the study. The airport concentrates specific, salient departure anxieties, and the features that resolve those anxieties score accordingly. Post-Flight tells the opposite story. No Post-Flight feature scores above the set average. First-Off Guarantee, at -0.71, is the weakest-performing feature in the entire study. In the flyer’s mind, the journey appears to end at landing. What happens after that point matters substantially less. Trip Management, which includes features that sit around the planning-level decisions of the trip, is internally split. Assurance features cluster between +0.30 and -0.16. But two Indulgence features in the same phase, Home-to-Gate Luggage (-0.61) and Dynamic Upgrade Auctions (-0.65) perform well below average. Planning-level assurance is tolerated. Novel logistical propositions in the same phase draw substantially lower relative preference. Oliver adds: Dynamic Upgrade Auctions generate great presentations at industry events, but risk airlines losing market share if travellers decide to buy Business Class on another airline at the time of purchase for assurance of space, privacy and comfort. It is interesting to see them performing well below average with real consumers, who it seems are not keen on the risk of waiting to bid for an upgrade. The In-Flight phase hides a one-point gap The In-Flight phase averages +0.002 across nine features, effectively zero. But that average conceals more than it reveals. It contains both the highest-scoring feature in the study, Standard seat selection at +0.51, and one of the lowest, Sleep support package at −0.58. That is a span of more than one full utility point within a single journey phase. The split is not driven by the flight phase itself. It is driven by the psychological benefit being offered within that phase. Figure 4. In-Flight average utility by psychological benefit type. The 0.35-point gap between In-Flight Assurance (+0.17) and In-Flight Indulgence (−0.18) is a critical observation for airlines that treat in-flight investment as one coherent category. Assurance in the cabin, knowing where you will sit, knowing your group is together, rewards consistently. In-cabin indulgence enhancements such as personal space, comfort aids and flexible dining, at least for the average Aer Lingus customer, do not. Looking into segments The overall pattern is consistent and directional. Assurance drives preference. The Airport phase is the most productive zone. The In-Flight experience rewards certainty and underperforms on in-cabin indulgence. Post-Flight generates limited overall preference. What the overall read does not tell us is how dramatically the shape shifts when the traveller population is viewed through different commercial lenses: travel purpose, booking channel, booking lead time and party composition. This is where the more actionable story begins. Who wants what: reading the segments The segment analysis is not about demographics for their own sake. It is about identifying the signals airlines already have at the point of purchase and using those signals to tailor ancillary propositions more precisely. Business travellers: the profile that rewrites the rules Business travellers produce a materially different pattern from the average flyer. Across the three psychological benefit categories, they show a substantially elevated Assurance average (+0.27 vs +0.11 overall), the strongest Ease average of the segments examined (+0.11 vs −0.13 overall), and an Indulgence average that is effectively neutral (−0.02 vs −0.29 overall). The uplift happens across all three categories simultaneously. The journey-phase view tells the same story. Business travellers score Airport at +0.35, versus +0.18 overall, and In-Flight at +0.28, versus +0.002 overall. Even Post-Flight, which generates limited preference elsewhere, reaches −0.11, a meaningful improvement on the −0.39 overall score. At feature level, the pattern is equally clear. Standard seat selection reaches +0.96, compared with +0.51 overall. On-board meal reaches +0.77, compared with +0.20. Lounge access rises from +0.12 to +0.32. Wi‑Fi rises from +0.07 to +0.42. Priority bag delivery, which sits at exactly zero overall, reaches +0.27. Even features that score below the set average overall are lifted. Sleep support package moves from −0.58 to −0.27. Private airport transfer moves from −0.46 to −0.11. Oliver adds: Sleep has long been a competitive differentiator in Business Class, hence the popularity of fully-flat seats. It is interesting to see the sleep support package lifting scores when it comes to Economy Class travellers. There are two important exceptions. Preferred seat selection scores +0.36 for business travellers, slightly below the +0.43 overall score, and checked bag sits at exactly zero, below the +0.07 overall score. Both suggest that status or loyalty benefits may already be meeting these needs for frequent business flyers, reducing their salience as incremental purchases. Dynamic Upgrade Auctions remains significantly below average at −0.41. The conventional assumption is that business travellers should have the strongest appetite for cabin upgrades. They may. But the auction mechanic appears to be the problem. Bidding for an upgrade introduces uncertainty, which conflicts directly with the certainty-seeking profile of this traveller. Business flyers want confirmation, not a gamble at check-in. Commercial read Business travellers show the strongest appetite for a fuller-service Economy journey. The investment case for premium meal options, lounge access, comfort add-ons and post-flight convenience is strongest here. Ease also turns above average, driven by Wi‑Fi (+0.42), fast track security (+0.24) and priority bag delivery (+0.27), reflecting the productivity and time-sensitivity of this segment. Families: one label, two very different buyer profiles Party composition is a signal airlines already have at booking. When children are on the booking, the preference profile changes, but how it changes depends entirely on the age of the children. Families with children under 12 and families with teenagers are not the same ancillary buyer. Treating them as one is a strategic mistake. Children under 12: the purest Assurance profile in the data Bookings with children under 12 produce a notably high Assurance average: +0.44 versus +0.11 overall. The individual feature scores behind that average are among the most extreme segment results in the study. Oliver adds: Shortly before the time of publication, Ryanair announced that in response to regulatory pressure they were “reluctantly adjusting” their seating policy so parents and children can sit together for free. Refundable fare, which scores below average in almost every segment in the study, turns meaningfully above average for families with young children at +0.23. The reason is straightforward: plans change, children get sick, and an exit option has genuine value. Indulgence tells the opposite story. The category averages −0.31 for this segment. On-board meal scores −0.07 and lounge access −0.03, both mildly below average and both below their overall scores. A hot meal is an individual seated experience. With a child under 12 on the booking, neither the meal nor the lounge is a felt need. The ancillary budget is consumed by certainty: seat, boarding, bags and group control. Bundle case This is the clearest bundle opportunity in the data: guaranteed seating together, priority boarding, checked bag, seat selection and flexible changes, with refundability and priority bag delivery as strong supporting additions. Children aged 12 to 17: the Airport experience begins to matter Traveling with teenagers produces a sharply different profile. The Airport phase average reaches +0.50, the highest Airport score of the segments examined in this section. Indulgence also becomes less negative, averaging −0.14 versus −0.29 overall, driven almost entirely by meal and lounge. This is a meaningful shift from the under-12 profile, where both features are mildly negative. The commercial contrast is precise. Families with young children want certainty above everything. Families with teenagers are ready for the airport experience to feel like part of the trip. Guaranteed seating together drops to +0.06, compared with +0.67 for under-12s, because a teenager can reasonably sit elsewhere. Signal at checkout Party composition allows airlines to distinguish these profiles before purchase completion. Families with young children warrant an assurance-led offer. Families with teenagers warrant a more airport-experience-led offer. Booking channel: the airport experience, twice over Two booking channels stand out clearly: Aer Lingus Holidays bookers and Travel Agent bookers. The booking routes are different, but the preference profile converges. Both groups show meaningfully higher preference for fuller-service, more experience-led ancillary features. What unites these channels is booking mindset. A flyer who books through Aer Lingus Holidays or a travel agent has already signalled appetite for a more considered, fuller-service journey. The ancillary offer should reflect that signal: priority boarding, lounge, fast track and on-board meal as a coherent airport experience bundle, presented at checkout rather than left for the flyer to assemble themselves. Long-advance bookers: the contrarian finding Across every segment examined in this section, the Airport phase averages positively (above the set average) with one exception: flyers who booked more than one month before travel. For this segment, the Airport average is −0.01 (effectively zero) and the only examined segment where Airport fails to generate above-average preference. The profile is internally coherent. These are flyers who have planned well ahead: a family holiday booked in January, a summer trip arranged in March. Their ancillary appetite is concentrated in the trip-planning phase, not the airport moment. What they value is logistical certainty before they leave home. Guaranteed seating together rises to +0.41 versus +0.17 overall. Checked bag rises to +0.28 versus +0.07 overall. Refundable fare shifts to an above-average score at +0.10 versus −0.07 overall. Standard seat selection is also slightly above the total sample at +0.57 versus +0.51 overall. All of these that rise above the overall score are planning-level assurance features. The features that fall tell the same story from the other direction. Lounge access drops to −0.27 versus +0.12 overall. Priority boarding drops to +0.15 versus +0.29 overall. For long-advance bookers, neither registers strongly. This traveller is not thinking about the airport yet. The trip is months away. The questions on their mind are whether the group will sit together, whether they can bring everything they need and whether they have the flexibility to change plans if something comes up. Indulgence is most poorly performing here, averaging −0.50 versus −0.29 overall. Sleep support (−0.94), on-demand dining (−0.60), and Home-to-Gate Luggage (−0.82) perform dramatically more poorly than in the overall sample, reinforcing that this traveller has limited appetite for experiential add-ons at this stage of the booking journey. Commercial opportunity For long-advance bookers, the right offer is a focused trip assurance bundle: seat selection, guaranteed seating together, checked bag, flexible changes and optionally refundable fare. It is simpler, lower-cost to assemble and better aligned to what this traveller is actively thinking about at the point of purchase. Aer Lingus’ current offer: where the gaps are The segment analysis makes one thing commercially clear: Aer Lingus already holds useful preference signals at the point of purchase. Travel purpose, party composition, booking channel and booking lead time all map onto different ancillary priorities. The next question is how well the current Economy offer gives those passengers a clear path to buy the features they value most. Mapping the highest-preference features from the study against the current Aer Lingus ancillary portfolio gives a direct answer. Covered: feature is available as a standalone add-on and/or within certain Economy fare tiers; Structural gap: feature exists within the Aer Lingus Economy portfolio but is only accessible by upgrading to a higher fare tier, not as a discrete standalone purchase; Route gap: feature exists but is limited by route type or fleet rather than product design; Product gap: feature has no equivalent in the current Economy ancillary offer, or is not available as a pre-flight purchase; Aer Lingus already covers some of the strongest preference signals. Standard seat selection, preferred seat selection and checked bags are available either as standalone add-ons or through selected fare tiers. These are not gaps. They are existing strengths in the ancillary offer, and they align well with the study’s broader finding that passengers value control over the practical details of the journey. The more commercially important issue is where high-preference features are absent, restricted, or harder to buy. Flexible flight changes, fast track security and lounge access are available in certain fare, route or airport contexts, but they are not always offered as simple modular Economy add-ons. These are structural gaps: the benefit exists within the Aer Lingus ecosystem, but the purchase path is limited. The clearest product gaps are priority boarding and guaranteed seating together. Priority boarding scores strongly overall, yet is not available within any standard Economy fare. Guaranteed seating together is especially relevant for families with young children and long-advance bookers, but is not currently offered as a distinct ancillary product. Both features speak directly to the core finding of the study: passengers place real value on reassurance around the uncertain moments of the journey. These are not unfamiliar commercial mechanics in the wider airline market. Ryanair sells priority boarding as a purchasable add-on. United sells Priority Boarding as a separate product for eligible Economy passengers. Wizz Air offers Sitting Together as an add-on that ensures two adults on the same booking can sit next to each other. The implication is not that Aer Lingus needs to create an operationally complex new product. It is that some high-value reassurance benefits could be productized more directly. This creates an important commercial tension. Keeping high-preference benefits inside higher fare tiers may help protect the value of those bundles by encouraging some passengers to trade up. But it may also leave revenue on the table from passengers who would happily pay for one specific reassurance benefit, but are not willing to upgrade to an entire higher-tier package to access it. That trade-off should not be resolved by assumption. It is exactly the type of question conjoint is designed to answer. Aer Lingus could test whether features such as priority boarding, fast track, lounge access or flexible changes perform better as standalone add-ons, as part of fare-tier bundles, or as targeted segment bundles. The objective is not simply to unbundle more features. It is to identify the offer architecture that maximizes uptake, protects premium-tier value and captures demand that may currently be going unmonetized. Conclusion: certainty is the real ancillary opportunity The clearest lesson from this study is that Aer Lingus Economy flyers are not simply asking for more extras. They are asking for the right kind of reassurance. Across the full feature set, the strongest-performing ancillaries are those that reduce uncertainty around the journey: where passengers will sit, whether their group will stay together, whether they can board smoothly, whether plans can change and whether the essentials are handled before they travel. More premium or experiential ideas can still work, but their appeal is more selective. They need the right context, the right traveller and the right moment in the booking journey. Business travellers show broader appetite for full- service-style ancillaries within the Economy journey. Families with young children are focused heavily on certainty and control. Families with teenagers are more open to the airport experience becoming part of the trip. Aer Lingus Holidays and travel agent bookers show stronger appetite for a fuller-service bundle, while long-advance bookers focus on practical trip assurance before they leave home. The gap mapping adds an important commercial layer to that preference story. Some of the features passengers value most are already well served. Others are present but impossible to purchase directly. And two of the most strategically relevant reassurance benefits, priority boarding and guaranteed seating together, are not currently available for Economy passengers at all. That creates a clear next question: not whether these benefits matter, but how they should be packaged, priced and presented. MaxDiff shows which features passengers prioritize when forced to make trade-offs. Conjoint takes the next step. It can test real purchase scenarios, compare standalone and bundled offers, measure willingness to pay by segment, and model the trade-off between protecting higher-tier fare upgrades and capturing incremental revenue from passengers who only want selected reassurance benefits. The preference signal is clear: certainty has value. The next commercial task is to quantify that value, design the right offer architecture, and give passengers a better path to buy the reassurance they already say they want. Appendix: Feature descriptions and utility values You can visit EPIC’s website here – www.epicinsights.io