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T H E T E R R Y R E P O R T
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“WHY I HATE THE AIRLINES, an open letter to the airlines first published at away.com
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Civil Aviation Incivility
By Rob Sangster
This is an open letter to some old friends of mine. They've changed so much over the years that I hardly recognize them—but I hope they listen to these words anyway.
Dear old friends:
I love to explore our world and that means spending a lot of time in airplanes. Until recently, those flights were a highlight of my trips. I've always loved panoramic views of our beautiful planet.
Well, the beauty of the planet hasn't changed but the nature of air travel certainly has. That's why my words are directed to my old friends, the airlines, who are transforming themselves from good Dr. Jekyll into evil Mr. Hyde.
With a few notable exceptions, airlines have turned a fine experience into an ordeal. Do you have any idea how many travelers you've alienated? Here's what I mean.
When a Hub is a Dud
Years ago, being chosen as an airline hub made a city feel important. Apparently no one foresaw that when the hub gave an airline a near monopoly it would soon mean higher ticket prices. Travelers departing from hub cities are "skyjacked" before they ever leave the ground.
The hub concept has also undermined all those wonderful non-stop direct flights. Dallas, Atlanta, and Minneapolis are fine cities but I'd rather visit them only when I want to. Instead, travelers waste hours bouncing from hub to hub like balls in a geographic pinball machine.
Last week, returning from San Francisco, the plane I was on flew directly over my destination at 30,000 feet—on the way to its Atlanta hub stop. I wasted hours waiting for a flight that doubled back to my destination.
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Your ticket prices have a lot in common with jumping beans. They hop around every few seconds. A flight quoted at $400 in the morning may be $800 at lunchtime. That uncertainty annoys the heck out of your own staff, travel agents, and most of all, your customers. Are you listening, my old friends?
From Travel Agents to the Internet
You've begun to treat travel agents almost as adversaries, sharply reducing commissions you pay them to assist travelers. As a result, either their services diminish or their charges to us increase.
Dealing with airlines on the phone means enduring rounds of computer-generated instructions, followed by a frustrating wait on "hold" listening to elevator music and your cheerful excuse of "unexpectedly high call volume."
Talking with one airline after another to compare options and prices can take hours. For those with access, buying a ticket on the Internet is the best solution. Let's see how you fare in a marketplace in which out-in-the-open competition rules.
E-tickets are not for E-veryone
Airlines love e-tickets but how do they benefit us? Well, we can't misplace an e-ticket. But there are more than a few drawbacks.
* First, an e-ticket exists only in your computer's brain—which just may forget it. When that happens, we're forced to buy a replacement ticket at a last-minute price.
* Second, the curbside attendant has to look up our e-ticket in your computer before he'll check in our bags. That delay leaves other anxious passengers squirming in line, counting precious seconds ticking away.
* Third, when you cancel a flight, we have to battle the crowd of frustrated would-be passengers to get a paper ticket from you. That's because your e-ticket won't be accepted by any other airline.
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As you head toward e-everything, what about giving your customers e-break? Why aren't frequent flyers your best friends?
Each airline would like travelers to love it alone, forsaking all others. But rather than providing what we really want, you decided to rent our loyalty through use of frequent flyer programs. Millions of us signed up. Then, guess what? You keep changing the rules—and never in our favor. Is that fair?
Becoming eligible for a frequent flyer ticket is easy. Overcoming the ensuing obstacle of course is not. Try to cash in that mileage and we may find ourselves on a 6 a.m. flight via Buffalo—or hear the dreaded word, "Blackout."
Even at that, frequent flyers are often better off than business travelers who have to travel on short notice. Instead of pampering good customers, you really stick it to them on price.
In self defense, businesses now send one person to a meeting instead of the three they used to send. Or they use teleconferences and send no one.
You've cut seat and leg room so much you should issue shoehorns to your flight attendants. Sitting in a center seat is like being in a straightjacket. You've made the word "legroom" an oxymoron.
At this rate, passengers of the future will stand in rows, clinging to straps as if on a subway. Gosh, I hope I haven't just given you an idea.
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Many travelers love to watch the landscape drift past far below. That's why the agents at your check-in counters who assign seats should know the layout of the aircraft, including which window seats have a "view" only of the wing or an engine. And should you really call it a window seat when it has no window at all?
To please those of us who have an ongoing love affair with our beautiful planet, how about asking co-pilots to identify those mountains and lakes and cities as we pass over?
Destruction Derby
The famous first flight of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk forecast the future in more ways than one. It lasted only 12 seconds and covered little more than 100 feet—and the luggage never showed up.
Far too many of today's travelers have experienced that feeling. We wish you would use good management and technology to return our bags to us at our destination—every time. Instead, you lobby Congress to sharply limit our liability when you route our bags to the point of no return in some mysterious hub in the sky.
Besides, how can you compensate a traveler who had to spend a week in the Galapagos Islands without a change of clothes because her bag disappeared in transit?
We tried to improve our odds by storing bags in the overhead bins. Your response? You tighten carry-on limits, which forces us to entrust more of our luggage to the not-so-gentle mercy of your baggage handlers. Have you ever watched that spectacle of baggage handlers hurling our bags onto the conveyor belt? We do.
Unfortunately, relief at seeing our bag arrive on the moving belt is too often followed by the shocking discovery that it's been opened and looted. You owe it to us to protect our belongings from the quick finders of a few on your staff.
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Standing in line at a check-in counter in Atlanta, I heard the passenger ahead of me express surprise that no meal would be served. The agent snapped that, "Food served on-board is a privilege not an obligation of the airline." He sure put that passenger in his place, didn't he?
Given the low quality of airline meals, I can hardly imagine the training it must take to persuade an agent to use the words "food" and "privilege" in the same sentence.
As it turned out, a "snack" was provided on board—peanuts drenched in oil and salt. On the next flight, the pretzels must have been made of either pressed cardboard or sawdust.
Last week, after everyone had wedged themselves into their seats for a transcontinental flight, the passenger next to me was informed that the vegetarian meal she'd ordered ahead of time was not on board. As a substitute, she was handed a cold lunchmeat sandwich, served without apology.
Goodbye to Oscar
Those free movies you used to show were a nice perk. Now more often than not you provide a dark screen or an invitation to pay $5.
Passenger "rage" is indefensible but it's worth trying to understand. Could some of it stem from growing frustration at the deteriorating relationship between airline and traveler? In a context of being totally ignored by flight attendants or being held captive for long periods of time on a sweltering tarmac, passengers seem to lose their cool more quickly than when the relationship was more friendly.
The many professional, caring, attentive men and women on your in-flight staffs suffer from the behavior of those who fail to respond to passengers' needs.
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The annual Airline Quality Rating published in April, 2000 (compiled by professors at University of Nebraska and Wayne State University) reported that complaints about airlines have more than doubled over the previous year. Summing it up, one of the authors said, "Consumers are just fed up, fed up with poor service."
Undaunted, airlines impose a series of new anti-consumer rules, including raising the fee to change a ticket, tightening limits on carry-on bags and, especially inhumane, banning carry-on food.
To prevent passage of the Airline Passengers Bill of Right now being considered by Congress, airlines have "voluntarily" proposed their own consumer "rights." Ironically, they mainly consist of promises to be more honest with travelers about fares and flight delays. That's like taking credit because you stopped kicking a dog.
CEOs of airlines that decide to continue business as usual can expect more letters from angry passengers. Complaints will escalate to the editors of newspapers, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Congress.
I hope my old friends, the airlines, are listening. Businesses that succeed are those whose management puts the customer first. Success doesn't depend on spending a lot of money. Invest in customer convenience and comfort, better training and supervision, and a change in attitude (who knows, maybe your own personnel will come to like you again).
Return civility to civil aviation. Let's be friends again.
Well, that's it from your Traveler's Tool Kit. Remember: The world is waiting. See it for yourself!
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