Count us among those who applauded when Northwest Airlines began offering passengers the opportunity to reserve a select number of aisle or exit row seats in the economy cabin for an additional fee of $15. Whether or not the program is successful over the long termand early returns are encouragingNorthwest has taken an important step down the road toward product differentiation. All coach seats are not the same, so why behave as if they are? Moreover, it has put the consumer in charge of the purchase decision. If you don't care where you sit, or you don't think a seat on the aisle is worth the extra cash, you don't have to buy it. We'll bet there are plenty of Southwest Airlines loyalists who nevertheless would happily pay for the ability to pre-select a seat.

Putting the customer in charge is really what the revolution in distribution was all about. Control of pricing knowledge was transferred from perhaps 200,000 industry insiders to hundreds of millions of potential buyers. Although more people are traveling than ever before, fewer and fewer are buying their tickets via the traditional GDS/agency channel, as Michele McDonald notes in her article on the changing distribution landscape (p. 24).

True, the pricing transparency that the Internet fostered had a devastating impact on legacy carrier revenue structures that were predicated on erecting Chinese Walls between business and leisure fares. Cyberspace respects few boundaries. But the savings to airlines from the combination of e-booking and e-ticketing make it difficult to argue in favor of the status quo.

Furthermore, it is an open question whether absent e-distribution, carriers could have sustained the investment in new call centers and reservations staff necessary to address traffic growth. Some US airlines have tried to meet this challenge by outsourcing some or all of their reservations activities. This has a mixed record, however, and may have the additional downside of actually taking control away from customers if they confront language and cultural barriers while trying to buy a ticket, as Jerome Chandler learned in his article beginning on p. 40.

That's not the case at most major airports, where the empowerment movement is in full swing. Carriers are driving out waste and inefficiency by pouring huge amounts of money into self-service check-in kiosks. As with reservations, passengers are doing for themselves tasks that once required the attention of a paid professional.

The savings, as John Croft points out (p. 30), are compelling, adding up to 85% and more compared to the conventional check-in process. Numbers like these are impossible to ignore, particularly at a time of $2.00 jet fuel. In addition, experience to date shows that a significant number of passengers don't object to using the Internet or an airport kiosk to print out a boarding cardin much the same way that they embraced automated teller machines that put them in charge of their own money. Furthermore, there is simply no way that growth in air travel can be accommodated without investing in increasing levels of automation. Airports cannot continue to add ticket counters in limited real estate nor can airlines afford to keep hiring counter staff.

At the same time, perhaps airlines need to slow down the "push" and increase the "pull," or to put it more bluntly, more carrot, less stick. British Airways, for example, is making self-check mandatory for flights inside the UK. But after BA has removed many of its check-in staff, will it be able to manage passengers through the inevitable schedule disruptions and irregular operations?

This is a question that needs to be asked by other carriers as well. Airlines and IT suppliers regularly claim to have deployed sophisticated workflow management tools aimed at matching staff numbers to traffic levels, yet on too many occasions they are caught short by a mass of travelers who somehow have escaped detection inside their booking systems only to appear on the day of their departing flights. Let's make sure the technology is robust and able to handle the expected i.e., delays, missed connections and rebooking before the safety nets are removed. Because once customers are given the power, they must not be afraid to use it.