Airline Consortium Brief: Make Flying Feel Enjoyable on a One-Million-Dollar Budget
Company: Stripe
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
A consortium of airlines has hired you and handed you a budget of \$1 million. Your brief is to change the common perception that flying is not an enjoyable way to travel. What would you do with the money, and how would you know whether the perception actually changed?
```hint Size the budget against the brief
\$1 million is small next to what airlines spend on marketing. Decide whose perception and which moments of the trip the money can realistically shift, and what the consortium could do afterward with what you learn.
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### Clarifying Questions
- Whose perception matters most to the consortium: occasional leisure travelers, families, business travelers, or people who currently drive or take the train instead of flying?
- Does the budget have to go to communication and marketing, or can it also fund changes to the travel experience, such as pilots at airports or on flights?
- What time frame does the consortium expect, and which countries or markets are in scope?
- Which parts of the trip can member airlines actually change, given that security screening and much of the airport are run by others?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A diagnosis of why flying feels unpleasant, by stage of the trip and by traveler segment, separating what airlines control from what they do not.
- A focused strategy that respects how small the budget is, rather than a broad advertising campaign or a list of disconnected ideas.
- A concrete allocation of the budget across activities, with the reasoning behind each share.
- A way to measure a change in perception against a baseline and a comparison group, plus behavioral signals.
- Risks specific to competing airlines working together, and to promising an experience that does not actually change.
### Follow-up Questions
- Halfway through, a major disruption at one member airline dominates the news. What do you change?
- Member airlines disagree about funding the program beyond your initial budget. How do you get them to a decision?
- If you could fix only one moment of the trip, which would it be and why?
Overview: A product strategy question in which an airline consortium offers a one-million-dollar budget to change the belief that flying is not enjoyable. It tests diagnosing pain across the trip, choosing whose perception to shift, focusing and allocating a small budget, and measuring a change in perception against a baseline.