Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
What travelers want
Travel & Transportation | Consumer
July 22, 2025 – Many fliers are open to spending more for features they care about, but some airline retail models haven’t captured the full value of customer preferences, Senior Partner Alex Cosmas and coauthors explain. While price is the most important attribute in an airline ticket bundle, customers are willing to pay the most to upgrade for baggage allowances, followed by seat selection and flexibility, according to a McKinsey survey. Travelers are not as interested in upgrade eligibility and lounge access.
To read the article, see “The eight myths of airline retailing,” May 22, 2025.
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Visual form
Stacked Bar / Stacked Column and Bar Chart: airline bundle-attribute importance and willingness-to-pay comparison.
Layout / body structure
The left side is a vertical stacked column of attribute-importance shares. The right side aligns horizontal bars to the same attributes to show maximum willingness to pay for each upgrade.
What is being compared
It compares airline ticket-bundle attributes by two measures: how much each attribute matters in traveler choice and how many dollars travelers are willing to pay for that feature.
Measurement system
The stacked column uses percent relative importance. The horizontal bars use average maximum willingness to pay in dollars, with consistent colors tying each attribute across the two panels.
Visible structure inside the graphic
Price is the largest segment in the importance column, while baggage is the longest dollar bar on the right. The paired design makes the mismatch between selection importance and payment willingness easy to see.
Main takeaway from the visual
The chart shows that price is the biggest factor in bundle choice, but baggage creates the clearest paid-upgrade opportunity because travelers assign it the highest dollar value.
Key standout values or extremes
Price accounts for 34 percent of relative importance, followed by baggage at 16 percent and seat selection at 10 percent. Baggage leads willingness to pay at $112, ahead of seat selection at $57 and flexibility at $54; upgrade eligibility is lowest at $12.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
This is a fixed two-panel bar chart; there are no in-chart controls to operate.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the airline bundle-attribute chart is the visual on this page.