US Air has boasted ads on seatback tray tables for many months now, but they still have the power to irk some customers, as reader Cameron writes:
I took these photos on my return flight from New Orleans this past Sunday. It appears that, in order to bolster revenues, US Air has turned to placing advertisements on the top surfaces of your seat back tray. Not only that, but they are “self-aware”, sporting beverage spill graphics and touting the safety of Ford SUVs. I was settling into my seat and was going to lower my tray to hold my book and iPod when I was confronted by this – I must say this should be stopped and I’ve already contacted US Air complaint line.
On an aircraft, getting off at the next stop is not an option. Changing seats is not an option. Even putting on your headphones is verboten for large parts of the trip. When you’re strapped in to your breadbox-sized seat your only real guarantee is that nothing will invade your tiny fiefdom – except maybe an elbow or errant drink cart. The tray top ads violate this principle and manage to make your tiny, $300 fiefdom feel even more cheap, tawdry and impersonal than the airlines can already accomplish.The best part of all? They made a credit card sell over the intercom right after announcing the discontinued use of “all portable electronic devices.”
Every morning I ride D.C. Metro rail to work and pay $1.35 to stand inside what is basically a huge moving walkway across the city. Advertising in here – on great big swaths of plastic paneling – doesn’t bother me at all. It subsidizes the cost of my trip and helps make the Metro affordable for everyone. It’s public transportation and so there is no illusion of personal space – yet still there is usually as much room and freedom to move as you could want.
- Cameron
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@The Nature Boy: Nice. So you say something rude and condescending because you think you know better about what bothers people. Why did you have to click the link instead of scrolling by?
@ribex: This is like those U-Haul trucks with the fake open rear door. Seems unwise and safe to have an ad like that on a moving vehicle – drivers behind could panic.
Get over it. It’s sort of clever and you’re being a baby.
@skrom:
I see ads for screws, PVC piping and other construction materials all the time. They are in the construction trade magazines I get. I’m sure there are ads for ping pong balls in sporting good trade magazines too. It’s called advertising to your market. Since most people don’t buy large quantities of these products on a regular basis those manufacturers are targeting their best potential clients. Everybody buys cars, everybody sees car ads.
Wow. Are you really *that* sensitive that this has gotten you as worked up as you seem to be? If you haven’t trained yourself to ignore ads yet, how do you get through daily life?
I can’t believe this is the same site that had so many people rallying against the increasingly strict FCC regulations.
We can’t have it both ways. Either we listen to every soccer mom who wants the word “effing” stricken from television AND to get rid of these “offensive” advertisements, or we tell them to GET OVER BOTH.
Whose side is Consumerist on?
The ad with the spilled drink is a very bad idea on a surface that is supposed to be used for eating and drinking. I’m not a neat freak, but I wouldn’t want my coffee served on that. It would make my stomach roil.
I don’t think these anti-ad people would want to pay the unsubsidized price of certain ad-supported things like newspapers and television.
On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine the expensive, crappy food at the Cheesecake Factory being subsidized by the ads occupying every odd-numbered menu page. Sometimes it’s just for more profit.
@Buran: It’s not like someone at Ford said, “Hey! Let’s advertise on seatback trays!” This is more likely how it went down: advertising sales/placement company comes up with this brilliant idea, and approach the airlines about it. US Airways bites. Now the placement company spreads the word, and whoever is Ford’s ad agency says, “Hey! Let’s get the Taurus name out there,” and agrees to place magazine ads (I’ve seen what looks like these ads in magazines) with the placement company who puts them onto the airplanes.
The photos aren’t so good, but why wouldn’t you think the quality of the ads leaves something to be desired? Quality, not annoyingness factor.
I have to agree that it’s annoying (and I blogged about it early this year, another photo of a different ad):
[blogging.la]
The thing is that there’s no way to ignore it … someone who must have been annoyed tore the ad off of my tray which left the whole thing an adhesive mess.
The agency that sells this adspace specifically refers to people as “captive”.
Honestly, if the experience of flying was BETTER for this added stream of income, I don’t think I’d be as irritated, but it’s not. (Didn’t they use to put ads in the ticket jackets?)
Yes, I could fly a different airline, but USAirways is the only one who flies non-stop to PIT from LAX. (I just booked another trip yesterday.)
NOTLAZYJUSTDONTCARE – actually, you can get television without ads, it’s called cable. Check out HBO and Showtime sometime. All without commercial interruption – and the business model works. Or you can get the broadcast TV programs later on DVD. I do actually pay the premium to not have ads OFTEN in my life. (Arclight movie theater here in LA does not show ads, just trailers before films – I pay a little extra to not see them and have an assigned seat.) Here there isn’t really an option. Except maybe carrying a “trayble cloth” to cover up the ads in the future.
I could handle the tray ads, if it makes my tickets cheaper, but I definitely am against any PA announcement ads, that would get annoying real quick, even if it is only for 30 seconds.
Here is a brief excerpt from a great essay from Harper’s in 1960 about billboard advertising:
“what is the difference between seeing an ad on a billboard and seeing an ad in a magazine? The answer, in a word, is permission-or, in three words, freedom of choice. Through a sequence of voluntary acts you have given the magazine advertisement permission to be seen by you. You bought the magazine of your own volition; you opened it at your own pleasure; you flipped or did not flip through it; you skipped or did not skip the ads; finally, it is possible to close the magazine entirely. You exercise freedom of choice all down the line.
The same is true of advertisements in newspapers. It is also true of radio and television commercials though in a different way, I’ll admit. Arthur C. Clarke, in Holiday, likened TV viewers to “readers who have become reconciled to the fact that the fifth page of every book consists of an advertisement which they are not allowed to skip.” The fact is that Mr. Clarke and you are allowed to skip-to another channel, to Dr. Frank Baxter, or to bed; you can turn it off entirely. Or you can throw the set out the window. You cannot throw U.S. 40 out the window, especially if you are on it. Nor can you flip a billboard over. Or off. Your exposure to television commercials is conditional on their being accompanied by entertainment that is not otherwise available. No such parity or tit-for-tat or fair exchange exists in outdoor advertising.”
I have no problem with seeing ads on “free TV” but when you pay for a product (in this case a flight), do you agree to be sold as a product to Ford? The product in this advertisement is not the Ford Taurus being sold to you. It is your captive eyeballs being sold by US Airways to Ford Motor Co. When you view an ad, you are the product being sold.
That said, if the ad actually lowered the price of the flight (which I doubt it did), then I would have less of a problem with it. Would I go as far as to write to this website to complain about it, probably not, but perhaps if more people were pissed off about the way we are used by those selling ad space, the world be a slightly prettier and less visually jarring place.
To read the entire essay, go here:
[www.stayfreemagazine.org]
The ad likely did not lower the price of the flight. But it may keep the increasingly bankrupt companies in business, which offers us more flying options at affordable rates.
Even if it’s not solely keeping the company in business, it’s making it possible for X number of flights, instead of a few bare-bones flights keeping them aloft (pun intended).
Also, I’d like to point out that the 30-second credit card ads are usually spoken around the time of the safety lecture — when earphones are still permitted to be worn.
@thisaintsweettea: Rubber-stamping your spouse’s forehead with an ad would be pretty clever too. But the cleverness of a behavior has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it’s acceptable.
If USAirways placed the ad on your pillow at home, you’d have a legitimate complaint. You’re on their plane with a ticket you bought (presumably) on your own. Switch carriers, grow a set of (generic) ping pong balls, and get on with your fragile life. Quite possibly the biggest waste of my time wasting today…
@LatherRinseRepeat: The Ford Taurus was replaced with the Ford 500, which didn’t do very well, it was then replaced with the new Ford Taurus, which is basically the 500 with some minor modifications. The Fusion is a smaller car, more of a mid-size, where as the Taurus is a full-size sedan/wagon.
It took less than fifty years for The Space Merchants to go from satire to documentary.
Buy some whole page labels down at Office Depot (or over at the wallymart), print your own (humorous) ad, and replace theirs right before you get off the plane. Just don’t print it on a laser printer so they can trace you with the yellow dots!!
Here’s one – Beer. It’s not just for breakfast anymore.
Wow. I can’t believe that someone would get so worked up over an ad on a nasty, germ infested tray table. I’d be more upset over all the germs on the tray table then an ad. Maybe he needs to buy a first class ticket, oh wait they may have ads for expensive items like jewelry on there tray tables. He can’t put a magazine over it because those things are filled with ads.
I like what the person said above about placing a made up add on the tray table. I wonder how many times the employees take down the tray table to wipe them off? Probably not too many times.
I was driving down I65 today when I saw a huge ad for a car dealership.
I didn’t have the choice of getting off and choosing a different
Interstate to get to my destination, so I was forced to have my view of
the sky and buildings blocked by this advertisement.
Waaaaaaaaaaaa!
What has the consumerist come to? Good ol’ Ben and Cameron finds this more important to consumers than this weekends Businessweek article about Delta, United and almost every other major carrier outsourcing jet repairs to China where the FAA can’t inspect the repairs? And about how parts that are repaired are supposed to be destroyed (in the US it supposedly is, but in some foreign countries, they are used to repair other planes). Wow, ok, not important. Let’s start an entry to rant about movies which get a little extra to have their product placed in a movie and how we are forced to watch it! Or how about those grocery carts which have ads on the sides, front, and child seat! It’s the end of the world! Great job Consumerist!
If they get to blanket all flat surfaces w/ ads that I can’t avoid, I get to scrawl obscenities or counter-ads across them. Or a brief summary of GOP’s elaborate kinky/pedophiliac sexual preferences. BOY I can’t wait!
Outsourcing repairs to China?? OMG, they’re using poisonous pet food instead of insulation!!
I love those folks who come here just to post on how trivial half the stuff on this site is. Too bad there are NO OTHER SITES on the internet.
Even better ‘replacement’ ad would be for Greyhound
I don’t see this as a “whine” at all. I am surprised at the negative comments, and their tone. Cameron feels what Camerons feels, and I personally agree with him. I see it as an obnoxious invasion, and without the consent of a customer who is trapped in their seat. It makes me way less likely to be a customer of US Airways, and also makes me less favorably inclined toward Ford. When a passenger gets out of that plane and can exercise choice once again, and has a choice between an airline that doesn’t force advertising on them vs. US Airways vs. another form of transportation vs. not traveling, US Airways is less likely to be chosen.
US Airways can make a buck short-term from Ford, and lose money long-term from customers who decline to give them repeat business.
US Airways could certainly foist invasive advertising and marketing in any way they can think of. Another airline can be more restrained and more respectful of the customer, and the customer’s space, and not treat as customers as a walking (or strapped in, in this case) marketing target and wallet just waiting to be pilfered. Which airline is going to make more money? It’s an irony, and one that US Airways ignores at their peril.
Am I paranoid if I wonder if the ill-tempered “oh, this is so trivial” commenters might be PR flacks — like the Bank of America-defending commenter a few days ago?
@suburbancowboy: Let’s hear it for a better-looking, less crass, more human, more thoughtful, and smarter world.
@ThinkAboutItPlease:
No, I don’t work for any company related to this but come on. Whining over an ad on your tray is pretty petty. When was the last time someone stopped eating at a diner because they had local businesses on their placemats?
It seems that people just look for anything to complain about now-a-days. When they force me to wear a Chevy shirt just to get on the plane, then I’ll start bitching.
@ThinkAboutItPlease:
These trays are a monster — the good kind!!
When people have nothing else to whine about, they find something…
Why does Consumerist post this crap??? This is a great website… don’t ruin it with this junk.
I can’t believe how many are playing the “quit whining” angle. It’s not whining. It’s legitimate complaining about too agressive marketing everywhere – in bathroom stalls, on airplane trays, in schools. It’s all of a piece people. And captives shouldn’t be marketed to w/o consent – as many have mentioned upthread. It’s one thing to have a choice, but I’m sure no one getting on the US Air flight was notified ahead of time “oh, and sir, there’ll be an ad on your tray table, would you still like to complete the transaction?”
So, why don’t the “quit whiners” quit whining. Marketing us to death is a problem. Being force-fed advertisements in every nook and cranny of our lives is a problem. Perhaps the question you should be asking yourself is “if it’s really no problem for me, is that just because I’ve become a too passive and too willing receptacle; a void just waiting to be filled with an ad?”
Cameron — you know the Taurus isn’t an SUV, right?
@bilsemon: Marketing us to death is only a problem if you pay attention to it, raise more awareness about it (bad press on the Consumerist is still press), then people continue buying the product, which lets advertisers know their in-your-face ads are working.
Don’t you remember how Homer defeated the giant marketing logos chasing after him in the Simpsons?
“To stop those monsters 1-2-3
Here’s a fresh new way that’s trouble free
It’s got Paul Anka’s guarantee…
(Guarantee void in Tennessee)
Just don’t look!
Just don’t look!
Just don’t look!
Just don’t look!”
Really? You couldn’t find a bigger problem than this to post? This is some of the more benign advertising I’ve seen recently. If this pisses you off, you need some yoga…or some pills…maybe both.
This blog is great, but you don’t have to post every complaint someone sends in.
go right ahead and contact them about the ad. They will take your call with a big smile as you are just confirming their ads actually work and get your attention. My advice… just ignore the damn ads.
You’re all missing the point. When drinks or food are served, you see EVERYONE’S tray table screaming at you all around the plane–all with the same tawdry ads. They spend lots of money to create a fairly nice cabin interior, then ruin it.