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Dear Airline Executive:
I heard you had another round of layoffs recently and I viewed the news with mixed emotions. Nothing is worse than leaving people without jobs. I hope that in your infinite wisdom, you were able to layoff the people that you are better off without. I really hope you saw fit to eliminate most of the people that work in your lost baggage departments; it is stressful enough to lose a bag with all my important items, but it is a torture straight out of Dante to then have to deal with rude people who make me feel worse, not better.
Furthermore, I pray you lay off all the rude workers and keep the ones that provide great customer service.
In a way, I am happy you arent doing well and unfortunately for you, I am not alone. Too many of your passengers have been treated so poorly over the years that we wished you would go away and more customer-friendly airlines would replace you.
As I reminisce about our relationship over the years, I recall the time you most recently lost my bag and forced me to track my lost bags by repeatedly calling an automated telephone system until they were found. Dont you think a live human should call me frequently with the status of my lost bag? After all, you lost the bag, why do I need to keep checking? Furthermore, how much luggage do you lose that you need to automate the customer calls?
Perhaps while we are on the subject of communications, we can start to work on better communication between airplanes that land early and gates that are available. Nothing is worse than landing an hour early and waiting half a mile away from the terminal for 58 minutes. Is the terminal really so surprised when the plane lands early? It was my understanding that all the planes were tracked by air traffic control. Perhaps you can try letting us out on the tarmac and we can walk up a few flights of stairs instead?
While on the topic of scheduling, why is it that it is so difficult to find out if a flight is going to be delayed or cancelled in advance? If I buy a ticket for a flight and you cant hold up your end of the bargain, dont I deserve a call far in advance? Every time, not just in select cities?
For years youve had elite lounges costing hundreds of dollars as a privilege to those who could afford such amenities. It may be time to rethink this idea. You see, youve cancelled so many flights that many of us cant figure out how to make use of the extra hours we must wait around on our business trips to accommodate your new schedule. Perhaps if you cared more about your customers in the year 2000 when things were better, you would have come together with other airlines and put AC outlets and WiFi networks throughout all of your airports to enable all of your passengers the convenience of working while they wait for your airplanes to become available.
I used to love all of you, dear airlines, but somewhere along the way, as you grew bigger, you forgot to value the little things in lifelittle things like your passengers; no, not just the passenger that spends $1,495 for a round-trip ticket of 850 miles, but all of your customers.
I understand that you need to make more revenue but I wonder how much sense it makes to do this by penalizing your passengers so severely for changing their plans. I feel that $100 in change fees may be an excessive charge on a $100 ticket. Is there any other industry that can get away with this? No. I doubt these fees will stick in the airline business either.
Yes, we all know that the business traveler is traveling less and shopping for lower fares online and guess what? There is nothing you can do about it. Business travelers dont like the way you work; we dont like to spend a mortgage payment for an airline seat while the person next to us on the same flight paid a weeks lunch money. You arent going to get away with your ridiculous pricing schemes anymore. At some point youll realize that flat pricing will help you get your customers back, as will fire-sale prices until business travelers decide to spend again.
Suggestions For Improving Your Service
I also have some tips for you to consider. Start to care more about your customers the way auto manufacturers do. We all know that your hub-and-spoke system means that every carrier has a virtual monopoly in certain cities and monopolistic companies are usually fat and lazy, but the times they are-a-changin. You see, I can e-mail presentations, Webcast them, have group electronic chats and even videoconference better, cheaper and faster than ever before. You see, many of us are making do without you and still, we feel like we are doing you a favor just spending money to buy a seat on a plane.
U.S. auto manufacturers got their heads handed to them by the Japanese in the 1980s and now they embrace customer satisfaction. Every interaction I have with the auto industry is followed up with some sort of questionnaire asking me to rank my experience. Does the airline industry just assume we are all happy? Unhappy? Do you care? Is anybody listening?
How can you possibly improve your customer service if you dont ask me how satisfied I am after each flight? How do you reward your best workers if there is no way for you to know how well your staff treats your customers?
Lets not leave this on a negative noteI offer you my free consulting services, as even though I am fed up with most of you, I want you all to survive so I can have more choices of flights and destinations. Thanks for reading so far; lets hope you keep reading and indeed implement these ideas so I can write a positive follow-up piece to this article.
It is mind-boggling to me that in these security-minded days where we all know that passenger bags must travel with the passenger that you still lose bags. But you do still lose them and I have accepted lost bags as a certainty of life behind death and taxes. When you lose a bag, take responsibility, be courteous, write a check to cover the inconvenience of your mistake and, of course, send a card that says I am sorry in the mail and electronically. You see, a $1.99 Hallmark card will help ensure that I dont write a negative article about you again in the future and I am sure that other passengers will appreciate this as well...I would think that those of you who are married would have learned the Hallmark lesson by now.
Furthermore, start working with the airports and make them friendly to PDA users and laptop users. We are stuck in airports for hours on end and we would like to be productive while we wait for the next flight. Install some power strips while you are at it so we can recharge everything before we board.
It is inconceivable to me that many thousands of cell phones in the terminal area have no effect on an airplanes communications a quarter mile away yet 50 cell phones onboard will interfere with onboard communications. Call me nave, but I have trouble believing that you are trying to help us business travelers out here. You would make your customers happy if you could find a way to allow us to work electronically while we sit idly on the tarmac for many minutes or even hours.
I have heard you are toying with allowing us Internet access on the plane while in flight. This is the best idea you ever came up with since free upgrades to first class. If your Net access is fast enough, you can easily charge for it and even potentially sell advertising like you do in your in-flight magazines. It amazes me that you are trying to lure the business travelers yet the business traveler is kept from working for hours on your flights. If I may say this politely, Wake up and smell the lost productivity.
Perhaps this comment doesnt belong in this article but why is it harmful to the aircraft to flush anything other than toilet tissue down the drain? Okay, spare me the details but again, in this age of heightened security, should we be tipping off the terrorists that flushing one of the rock-hard dinner rolls you frequently offer us could result in a hull breach?
Look For New Revenue Streams
While we are discussing food, I cant believe how bad airport food can be. Is this so we appreciate the food on the airplane more? If the quality isnt bad enough, paying $3.00 for a 16-ounce bottle of water doesnt endear you to us any more. Sure, there are exceptions, but lets see what we can do to make the airport experience more enjoyable. If they are going to charge us through the nose, lets make sure that restaurants that arent well liked lose their leases or improve their quality.
Now that the food in the terminals is worked out, lets talk about charging for food on the airplane. If youre only going to give me a serving of pretzels that wouldnt satisfy Mini-Me, why not let me buy a Snickers, Power bar, granola bar, etc., for $1 or even $2? Am I to assume that airline corporate executives are so pampered with chauffeured limos and private jets that they never step aboard an Amtrak train where they conveniently sell food through the majority of the train ride? What about selling magazines? CDs? Video games? Who knows, you could even consider rolling out a cart full of products like the duty-free carts they have on international flights. Recently, during a flight to England, you got my wife to spend over $100 on make-up she didnt know she needed. I bet this idea would work wonders for your profit margins.
Here is another idea. Rather than petitioning the government for more subsidies when, lets face it, your service levels are so low they are statistically insignificant, you might ask the government to allow duty-free shopping on domestic flights of 500 miles or greater. My biggest frustration with all of you is that in response to fewer travelers, you inflict greater penalties on those that remain. Didnt any of you ever work at a business that had to cater to its customers? Start coming up with new ideas to generate revenue. At least pretend that you care about increasing your sales through new avenues. The days of the $1,450 ticket are probably numbered and if they arent, they should be. Start thinking outside the box. Get some focus groups together and ask people what you need to do to improve. Ask them what they would pay for and start offering these things before it is too late.
Here are some more ideas. With every passenger possibly buying items from you on your flights, you need to start filling all of those empty seats. Why not institute a buy-one-get-one-free ticket incentive to get people to travel with their spouses and coworkers more often? You can start by offering this to those of us with many frequent flyer points and only on flights that you feel will be empty. If the program is successful, keep rolling it out to more people.
In closing, the system is broken. You are treating us like the domestic auto industry treated us in the early 1980s. The auto industry changed and saved themselves from being eliminated by foreign competition. Who will save you from the newer, more customer friendly airlines if you dont change yourself today?
Sincerely,
Rich Tehrani
Group Publisher,
Group Editor-in-Chief
rtehrani@tmcnet.com
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