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Airline’s New Drink Serving Costs as Much as the Flight

SharonKurheg
a group of bottles of liquor

There was a time, way back when, that if you flew somewhere, the flight included a meal. The “meal on planes” experience began in the late 1930s, but by the 1950s, with more people flying, they already started making cuts in the menus because they were otherwise too expensive (sound familiar?). And it only got worse from there.

The Pan Am Experience (which has been on pause since the pandemic, but they announced not long ago that they’re relocating), when it was open, served a meal that was similar to what was offered in the 1970s. Joe and I went a couple of years before Covid, and had a BLAST!

Airlines generally stopped offering free meals in coach in the very late 20th to very early 21st century, and only offered snacks. Sometime during that time frame, some airlines realized they could give out cheap snacks (if you were lucky), and charge for food and drink. Ultra low cost carrier Peoples Express famously sold cans of soda along with Rachel’s Brownies (I’ve mentioned it before but OMG, did I LOVE Rachel’s Brownies!), and Ryanair, in business since the 1980s, has also sold food and drink since day one.

However, just like on land, booze makes much more of a profit than cans of soda. In fact, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) suggests that as of January 2019, alcoholic beverages were the eighth most profitable sector (measured by the ratio of net income to sales). Soft drinks were #40.

So…airlines started selling alcohol right around the same time they stopped offering it for free as part of that free meal they used to get. What a coincidence, huh? 😉 It was discussed extensively on Airliners.net, back in early 2005 or so. Back then, beers were apparently about $5 or so…and alcohol prices have only increased since.

Nowadays, most airlines offer a variety of spirits, cocktails, beer/hard seltzers and wines. Here are some typical prices:

Delta (Legacy carrier)

JetBlue (low cost carrier)

Frontier (ultra low cost carrier)

Frontier doesn’t offer prices on their website. These prices are courtesy of Thrifty Traveler, as of August, 2023:


But there’s one airline that’s doing some major experimenting to see how much its passengers are willing to pay for alcohol. The funny thing is, it’s a low-cost airline, Allegiant.

Their beers and hard seltzer prices seem to be on par with everyone else, at about $9 each.

But after that, Allegiant’s prices seem to be juuuuust a little higher than everyone else’s. Their cocktails range from $11 to $15:

Their cheap wines are pretty typical prices, at $9 to $11. But then all of a sudden they have a “Premium” wine that’s $19.99. Granted, it serves two.

And then we get to the liquors.

Most of them are pretty typical – well-known brands that run from $8 to $11. Fair enough. And then they have these premium offerings:

Wait, WHAT? 35 bucks for a mini bottle of blended scotch, when the price of your flight may have only been $38 to begin with?

The Johnny Walker Blue is only sold on Las Vegas flights – so I guess they’re going for the big spenders. The liquor reportedly can go for $300 a liter at airport duty-free shops and can be more than $80 a shot in restaurants and nightclubs.

Allegiant is apparently counting on people wanting to go on the cheap for their flight, but then be willing to splurge a little for everything else.

“There’s this whole premiumization of consumer demand going on, especially when it comes to spirits,” Scott DeAngelo, Allegiant’s chief marketing officer, told the Wall Street Journal.

Apparently so.

I’m not a huge fan of most liquors, so I won’t be buying a $35 mini bottle of Johnny Walker Blue any time soon (then again, I won’t be flying Allegiant to Las Vegas any time soon, either LOL). But according to DeAngelo, the experiment, which has been running since June, has been working very favorably for them.

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