When it comes to cutting costs, taking out a single olive might not seem like the most effective way to go. But for American Airlines in 2001, it worked out quite well. Following 9/11, airlines were having some difficulty. There were numerous other factors involved, but the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon had left people a little uneasy about airplane travel, in the same way that movie ticket sales have been down following the recent shooting in Colorado.
To show an example, American Airlines’ then rival, United Airlines, was doing so poorly that they would have needed to fill 103% of their seats just to break even. So Bob Crandall, the former chief of AA, made many cost cutting decisions- including removing one olive from each salad.
While one olive might not seem like much cost saving, all the olives taken out made up a $40,000 drop in in-flight meal costs per year.
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