Airlines: Broken System But Great People
We have been poking at the airlines in our posts, sometimes in jest and with humor, and sometimes in a serious way when we defend our end of the air travel business from the attacks of the airlines’ management and their press machines.
As I sit in the terminal in Miami waiting on a three-hour layover for the next flight to get me home to Nashville, I am thinking about the flight I just got off of from San Juan. The flight was smooth, the crew was professional and the service we got in the back of the cabin was as good as first class. The flight attendants who served us were friendly and made the flight go by quicker with genuine smiles and good attitudes. We arrived on time and safely and, as I walked off the aircraft into the jetbridge, one of the crewmembers thanked me for being on the flight.
It reminds me that even in a system of transportation that doesn’t always work too well, there are a lot of hard-working, dedicated people who show up every day and make things happen to the best of their ability. And many of them do it with a smile.
I never want to diminish the value of what the employees of the airlines do every day for this country. They work hard and they take their jobs seriously. They have been unfairly maligned by the traveling public - especially when things go wrong.
Usually you only hear about airline employees when something really bad goes wrong like flying 120 miles past your destination because of playing on the laptop. These situations happen rarely in a system that puts up thousands of flights every day without incident, many times in difficult circumstances including weather and busy airports.
Everytime I fly on the airlines I make an effort to smile and be courteous to every airline employee I meet. At the end of the flight I always compliment the crew if I have the chance. They work long and odd hours and many times the only feedback they get is rude behavior from disgruntled passengers.
I was raised to believe that you get from people what you give. If you treat people with respect and dignity, you will get the same in return. No one deserves rude treatment. Ever.
The next time you fly on the airlines smile and be nice, no matter how late the flight is or how rough the ride is. Those airline employees you come in contact with didn’t cause the delay or the bad weather or the maintenance problem. They are working hard to fix it and deserve the utmost respect.
The people may be great, but unfortunately, when the system is broken, customer service suffers.
In a time when Federal Express and the Federal government can tell you where your package is throughout its delivery status, the airlines can’t tell you where your baggage is if your flight is delayed, your connection is missed or you encounter another problem with your flight. Yes, if you are able to talk to a representative and complain, they will then issue a reference number that enables you to track luggage online…but your bag has to be lost before you can complain. There’s nothing you can do to track a bag en route.
When the weather is bad and flights are delayed, the airlines go into bunker mode. My recent experience on Delta airlines typifies this mentality: My son missed a connecting flight from Atlanta because the plane taxied on arrival on the runway for an hour, causing him to missed his connecting flight to Westchester County Airport. They put him on a standby flight the next day that was oversubscribed, and he bounced around like a ping-pong ball throughout the day with no idea when he might be able to complete his flight. When I inquired on his behalf what he might expect from the day, none of the “great people” could give me an answer. When I asked to speak to a supervisor, I was put on permanent hold.
Delta also couldn’t tell us where his baggage was because no one in baggage would pick up the phone.
On another occasion, traveling with American, the luggage from a missed connection — again caused by the airline — was sitting at the arrival airport but no one there or with American knew it. They routed us to a call center in New Delhi, India. It was only after my 90-year old father drove to Reagan National and physically lifted our bags out of baggage claim — two days after we had left the area — that we were able to retrieve them.
You may think being nice and expecting the best from people is enough. But the airlines have a more cynical attitude: Create enough friction for the consumer so that they give up trying to get decent service. Put people on the front lines that have no control over the system or information about it, and let them take the heat. It’s no wonder people are disgusted.