# New Services > A tongue-in-cheek look at aviation after the CrowdStrike outage: how airlines might recoup their losses, from pay-to-use toilets to auctions for reclining seats. - Canonical page: https://shorin.me/en/blog/2024/07/flight-services/ - Page language: English - Published: 2024-07-29 - Tags: Humour, ПятничноеНастроение, Vacation - Russian version: https://shorin.me/blog/2024/07/flight-services/index.md Making someone happy is simple – take something away from them, then give it back. © I expect everyone has heard about the recent CrowdStrike outage. Many flights around the world were cancelled. Airlines suffered losses, which they will naturally want to recoup. Quite by chance, I learnt that in 2013 Ryanair had seriously considered introducing a paid service: using the toilet during a flight. That set me wondering what else airlines might do to offset their losses. But instead of producing a mundane list, I came up with a small taxonomy of paid onboard services. 1. The most obvious approach is to charge for things that are currently free. For example: - The aforementioned visit to the toilet; - Control of the fresh-air vent; - Control of the window blind. 2. Insurance guaranteeing the availability of personal safety equipment. Airlines carry a great deal of equipment back and forth, much of which is rarely used. Taking a cue from overbooking, they could save money by carrying enough equipment for only some passengers rather than everyone. Anyone who wants to be guaranteed an oxygen mask in the event of cabin depressurisation, or a life jacket in the event of a water landing, could pay for something akin to insurance. If an incident occurs and the equipment happens not to be available, the airline will refund the passenger’s premium – provided, of course, there is still someone to refund it to. The airline could issue the refund in loyalty-programme miles rather than money, incidentally. 3. Auctions between passengers. Using the in-flight entertainment system, a passenger bids the amount they are willing to pay for the right to recline their seat. The person behind them places a competing bid to keep the seat in front upright. Anyone who is neither in the first nor the last row takes part in two auctions at once: with the person in front, to keep that seat upright, and with the person behind, to recline their own. The same idea could be applied to people sitting next to each other: one bids to switch on their reading light, while the other bids to switch off their neighbour’s light so that it does not shine in their eyes and disturb their sleep. 4. Auctions between groups of passengers. The cabin could be divided into several sections. Passengers place bids, and the totals for each section appear on shared screens. For a set period, people can raise their bids to move their section up the overall ranking. The cabin crew then serve food and drinks according to that ranking – passengers in the winning section are guaranteed a choice of chicken or fish, while everyone else gets whatever proves less popular. Although it is not Friday today, it is the holiday season, so I invite you to suggest in the comments a few more ways for airlines to shore up their finances ;)) ## Media ## Original posts - LinkedIn: