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© St. Petersburg Times, published March 4, 2003
A new airline called Song takes off next month in the highly competitive skies between Florida and the Northeast. Its president is promising that Tampa International Airport will play a big role in its plans.
The subsidiary of Delta Air Lines plans to offer state-of-the-art electronic entertainment systems, name brand food, above-average leg room -- and fares cheap enough to take on growing low-fare carriers Southwest, JetBlue and AirTran.
Song replaces Delta's first venture into the bargain basement market, Delta Express. All-coach Song is designed to give customers a more upscale product while keeping its costs low. The key: getting more productivity out of planes, employees and airport facilities.
Airline veteran John Selvaggio was tapped by Delta to run the new carrier last year. He was in the Tampa Bay area last week and talked with the St. Petersburg Times. Here are excerpts.
Q. Do all the bells and whistles on Song mean that you think JetBlue has the right idea about low-fare airlines as opposed to Southwest's bare-bones approach?
A: A lot of people -- especially JetBlue -- want to say we're modeling after them. But it's an evolution in the low-cost business. People have a pretty low image of airlines.
A lot of that is because of the low-cost image of the cattle car: Pack them in like sardines. And there are no choices for people. We tell you when the flight's going to leave and make you stand in a line at the counter. We tell you when to put the seat belt on, when you can eat, if you can eat. What movie you're going to watch, if you get a movie.
So you have very little choice. And we think people want some element of control. We wanted to give people some kind of choices, even if it's just whether you watch TV or watch a movie or sleep.
Q. Why not brand it with the Delta name?
A: Well-established companies are more successful when they create a new brand that they manage (instead of) another version -- sort of a less-than version -- of the main brand. Coca-Cola decided to be in the water business, so they created Dasani. It wasn't "Water By Coke."
For this product, the focal point will be leisure travelers, where Delta and every other mainline airline have a business model that seeks to attract business customers. We'll only have five or six fares with a range of $79 at the low end to $299 at the high end.
A lot of what we're trying at Song is something we'll study at Delta and may adopt. But we didn't want to confuse people. We're not going to have first-class cabins, it'll be all one cabin. There won't be first-class upgrades; that's something Delta customers have become accustomed to. So we decided to have a completely different name to eliminate confusion.
Q. Song starts flying from Tampa International Airport to New York's Kennedy International in May. What can travelers here expect?
A: You're going to get a lot more seats, certainly. Hartford will still have one trip a day, but it's going to have 11 percent more seats. For Boston, we'll have 25 percent more seats than today. For (Kennedy International), we'll have 67 percent more seats.
And we're definitely looking at flying West from Tampa. We haven't announced those, but there aren't too many (large) cities in the West where we would go.
Tampa is a market that we like because it's got a very strong leisure base and probably the best business base of the Florida cities we're serving.
Q. What did you learn from the one-week test selling food on New York-Fort Lauderdale flights?
A: What's come out of that is that people don't value very much things you give them for free. If there's no brand recognition, it doesn't have much value. People want the brands they trust and are willing to pay for it.
The tests were completely unannounced. Slightly less than 50 percent of people purchased something, and we think more would have if they'd known (earlier) it was available. No one minded paying for them -- $2 to like $7, all reasonable prices. Flight attendants all enjoyed doing it. One flight attendant summed it up and said, "We'd rather sell than serve."
Q. Competitors and analysts have all taken shots at the name. Why did Delta pick Song?
A: We wanted to get a buzz going.
Song really represents that everyone has a song they love or a song that puts a smile on their face. It really represents independent choice. It's easy to spell. it's easy to remember. It's really more of a light-hearted notion. It doesn't take itself so seriously.