Kiwi Airlines Makes A Dent In Corporate Market

<H1>Kiwi Airlines Makes A Dent In Corporate Market</H1><H2>Kiwi Airlines: Some corporates like its service as well as its low fares</H2><H3>By Jay Campbell</H3><I>Newark</I> - Low-cost carrier Kiwi International Airlines has become a player in the corporate market, managing to snare key corporate accounts over the past few years.

AT&T, Bell South, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Georgia Pacific and RJR Nabisco are some of the biggest companies using Kiwi as their preferred supplier.

Although the four-year-old airline is not even one of the 20 largest airlines in the nation, Kiwi's frequency in key business city pairs traditionally known for hefty fares has grown steadily.

The airline offers six daily non-stops between Atlanta and Newark, five between Chicago's Midway Airport and Newark and five between Midway and Atlanta.

Kiwi passenger surveys indicate that 75 percent of the airline's traffic on these routes is business travel, largely due to the efforts of Kiwi's sales staff and one natural selling point: low fares. Kiwi offers unrestricted, one-way, walk-up coach fares that are between 25 and 70 percent less than those offered by the majors on these routes-and in exchange for a shift in market share, they can be even lower.

"We had a meeting with one company which, if they signed on with us, could have saved $4 million systemwide in a year-$1 million on just one route," said Paul Clements, Kiwi's regional manager of sales in Chicago. Clements based that figure on a review of 100,000 of the company's segments in 1995, comparing what the company spent with what it would have spent on Kiwi.

For companies that can't show a significant market shift, Kiwi offers another type of corporate discount in the "Commuter Book," soon to be renamed "Rip-A-Trip." Three months ago, the airline restructured the program, in which one prepurchases nine segments and gets one free, so that the tickets can be transferred among individuals. "Now a company can buy it and just write out tickets for any of its travelers," said Clements.

Although one might expect that lower fares means poor service, corporate travel managers interviewed by <I>BTN</I> said that is not the case. "Although they have no first-class service, no frequent flyer program, etc., Kiwi offers a better coach product," said Bill Hagel, manager of business travel for AT&T, which has worked with Kiwi since 1994. "They have food, more leg room and they pay more attention to the travelers."

Other travel managers concurred, although they preferred not to see their names in print. "The service they have is better than other airlines," said one Atlanta-based travel manager. "I took a recent trip to Chicago and they had very nice meal service."

Another Atlanta-based travel manager said his company was using them much more in the past six months: "They've had excellent service at a reasonable price going for them from the beginning."

Despite the higher level of service, travel managers said frequent flyer programs and stigmas about low-fare airlines still pull many travelers away from Kiwi when they have a choice. "Our traveler feedback is mixed," said one source. "But I honestly feel that it's not an issue about Kiwi; people just want their Delta frequent flyer miles."

Kiwi concedes that it still has a lot of work ahead. "Corporations tend to feel we're not big enough for them," said Clements. "But depending on their type of traffic, we often have a product that will fit their needs."

Clements said he also has to fight the override-rebate relationship between the corporation and the travel agency, where travel management companies would prefer to send traffic to major airlines.