Steven Frischling, aka: Fish, is a globe hopping airline emerging media consultant, one of our favorite bloggers, and a trusted advisor.  He has an uncanny ability to identify relevant trends with equal ability for compiling supporting data into useful forms.  In his recent post, Steve compiled a list for the percentage of twitter communications from airlines that contained the word “sorry” (or the equivalent in the language of the airline).

See the original post for details on how he compiled the following list:

So who is the most apologetic airline?  Its not about how many times they say they are sorry, it is the percent of times they say they are sorry.

@British_Airways - 3,766 in 20,757 tweets, 18.14%

@QantasAirways - 2,185 in 14,595 tweets, 14.97%

@AmericanAir - 2,232 in 15,432 tweets, 14.46%

@SingaporeAir - 43 in 385 tweets, 11.16%

@SAS – 238 (in Norwegian 88) in 3,457 tweets, 9.43%

@SouthwestAir – 711 in 8,092 tweets, 8.78%

@Delta – 299 in 4,211 tweets, 7.10%

@AirCanada - 167 in 3,356 tweets, 4.97%

@USAirways – 80 in 2,149 tweets, 3.72%

@United - 66 in 1,897 tweets, 3.47%

@KLM – 826 in 30,563 tweets, 2.7%

@MAS – 69 in 3,740 tweets, 1.84%

@GulfAir – 32 in 1,918 tweets, 1.66%

@AirBaltic - 52 in 3,172 tweets, 1.63%

@RoyalBruneiAir – 17 in 1,348 tweets, 1.26%

Sorry by Surprise

In a recent conversation with Steve, he mentioned that airlines called him up to find out HOW he was able to compile this information.  More important in our minds is, how can the airlines not know how to compile this information?

Apologies are very important because people do respond to a personal touch, so kudos to the airlines that have strong satisfaction outreach programs.  On the other hand, apologies are an opportunity for a company to improve and management should take an opportunity to review “sorry” data.

The “insurance” approach.

Insurance is something that pays out after the failure occured.  For example, AirBnB (a home sharing service) offers an insurance payout if your home is trashed by a renter from their network. Insurance utterly fails to compensate the victim for personal, physical, and emotional losses.  Airlines most often compensate a traveler with a free ticket and nothing else – they should be looking for route cause or they may find their selves on one of Steve’s lists.

Social Flights responds with a very simple solution; our ride sharing service and community air service program.

By eliminating many of the breakdown points of the complex and overloaded hub and spoke system, Social flights can reduce the number of situations where an apology may be required. When a community can literally operate their own airline to their own schedule from their own airport, they eliminate delays due to traffic, parking, long lines, delays, connections, service fees, congestion, overnights, and a host of traveller harassment.

Go ahead and forgive, but don’t forget that there are options…

Airlines rake in $4.3B in fees; Delta tops list 

My dad sent me this story to me this week, no doubt, because of the amount of time I spent complaining about having to collect fees and the abuse I took doing it. 

During my time at the ticket counter, passengers were allowed three free pieces of baggage.  They could carry one and check two, carry two and check one or check all three.  No bag could weigh over 70 pounds.  Passengers were charged $45 for each additional, oversized or overweight bag.  Changing a non-refundable ticket cost you anywhere from $25 to $150 at various times – that policy changed often.  Pets carried in the cabin were $45.  There were a bazillion other fees, but I’ve blocked those from my memory and I don’t want to delve too deeply, negating the effects of all that electroconvulsive therapy.

I watch these stories and commericals discussing baggage fees with conflicted opinion.  On the one hand, standing behind the counter having to collect fees of any type can be a tense situation, particularly when the passenger is unhappy at The Man, but takes it out on the unfortunate target who happens to be standing there – you.  On the other hand, every passenger knows that they must pay for every bag on certain carriers.  So, no more: 1. “they didn’t charge me in Honolulu,” 2. “it’s just a little bag, can’t I carry it,”  or 3. “nobody told me that.”  Because 1. waiving a fee once does not give you a free pass forever, 2. it still has mass and counts as a piece of luggage, and 3. it’s all spelled out in the conditions of carriage included in your ticket.  Still, it seems a little deceptive to unbundle all of those fees.  It’s like a hamburger joint charging you extra for the container.  Technically, you don’t need it, but it sure makes eating the burger a lot less messy.  Baggage fees now have the feel of a toll – you don’t pay the toll if you don’t use the road; but, do the airlines really want to reinforce highway and bus comparisons?

Now, here’s a good question (and if you know the answer, please share it with me) do airlines pay taxes on these fees?  Not when I worked there and according to Carl Unger at SmarterTravel.com, they still don’t.  So, that’s $4.3B in untaxed income.  (Try getting away with that, Small Business Owner.)  Unbundling the fees saved carriers in the United States some $322M in taxes.  Now realistically, the carriers wouldn’t have paid those taxes, the consumer would have.  Even so, I think the carriers have found a clever way to help out their bottom lines without the bad publicity of raising ticket prices.  They effectively did raise the prices, they just called it something else.

I know that operating aircraft isn’t cheap and, even with what I do  know, I don’t know the half of it.  I just wish that carriers had some kind of truth in advertising policy.  If you’re going to charge me $500, then tell me that.  Don’t tell me that you’re going to give me a great deal at $300, then charge me another $200 in baggage, handling and food fees.  Even if the totals are the same, in the first case, I feel like I’ve been dealt with in an up-front and honest way.  In the second case, I feel like I’ve been bamboozled.

And, I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being bamboozled.

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It takes a day like yesterday to remind me why we are in the business of business aviation.

The day started with a 4:00 am departure from the house to make it to the Nashville Airport by 5:15 am for a 6:15 am departure.  Leon Custers and I were taking a Delta flight to White Plains, NY to meet up with business partners in Danbury, CT.

Delta had the best price / schedule to get us to White Plains by noon with a 45 minute drive to Danbury.  The main benefit of White Plains (HPN) was avoiding one of the big NYC airports such as La Guardia (LGA), which are off schedule more than they are on.

Yesterday was a big snow storm day for the Midwest, and Nashville even had an inch or two on the ground, but the roads were fine.  We made it though check in and security fine and boarded the aircraft set for an on time departure. This was an originating flight so the odds for an on time departure were good. After the aircraft was loaded, we sat for 30 minutes waiting on fuel, and then a ramp worker to push the aircraft off the gate. In our world this happens rarely, and when it does, it is a major event to not make an on time departure due to line service issues.  This was not a good sign for the day.

We arrived in to Detroit for the connecting flight and it looked like the trip was going to settle back down. We were sitting at the gate with 30 minutes to spare and an on time departure status on the board for HPN.  About 30 minutes past scheduled departure the announcement was made that the flight had been canceled. Everyone was to rebook to HPN on later flights. The computer system at DTW was down so flights that had canceled were still showing as on time departures. This made it very difficult for travelers trying to rebook flights and figure out where their new departures were.  

 Here is where the problems starts for most travelers in the airline system.

Airlines have reduced their capacity (inventory of available seats). Load factors are up, providing more pricing strength and higher revenue per flight, which is good for the airlines profit margins.

It is not so good for the traveler when flights cancel. The next flight for us was not later in the day, because the next three flights were all sold out. It was the next day.

Needing to get to our destination in the same day, like most business travelers, we resorted to looking for alternatives within the system and settled on La Guardia (LGA) which is an extra hour drive to Danbury. So, after trying to avoid LGA we ended up there anyway, only 5 hours later.

While waiting on the flight to LGA we got to witness the DTW police deal with a lady who decided to go back down the jet bridge after getting off the aircraft. She ignored the warnings of the gate agent and created a whole crisis, most likely over nothing other than she panicked trying to go back after her bag.

Another lady traveling with husband and baby had a melt down because she left a bag on her previous flight and they could not find it. I know that feeling when you have just lost your lap top with your whole life on it. I felt sorry for her. The gate agent was overwhelmed with issues and could not provide much help other than to tell her to file a claim. 

Departing DTW for LGA our flight was further delayed because the catering did not get loaded on the aircraft on time.  The arriving flight aircraft could not off load passengers because the Jet bridge was broken,  and TSA decided to pull a random gate security check.  All of those issues caused a one hour delay.

On the taxi into the LGA terminal I overheard another business traveler on his cell phone recounting his day that sounded much like ours.  He had started at 4.30am, was on his third flight segment and still had not arrived at his destination. His comment – ‘this is another one of those travel Mondays”.  Another lady in front of us missed her planned dinner.

Fortunately the weather was good at LGA, so we did finally get there, but our bags did not.  A lady in the lost bags line was very upset.  She was on the last day of military leave and her stuff was lost.

We made it to Danbury and were able to make dinner with our business associates, although late.

So this morning it was the trip to Wal-Mart, when they opened at 7.00 am, for emergency clothes and a tooth brush to survive until the bags show up.  As I write this, I feel sure that this story could be told millions of times over by the road warriors who travel in the system every week.  

As we waited to board the flight in DTW to LGA, you could look at the countenance of the men and women business travelers, and see a look of exhaustion, defeat and frustration.

The purpose of air travel is to save time. Somehow the airline system is not gaining in productivity in its mission. It is slipping.  And what about the stress of the travel?  Not knowing for sure when you are going to arrive, dealing with missed meeting times, lost bags, rerouted destinations….

Enroute time from Murfreesboro, TN to Danbury, CT: 15 Hours

Average Speed door to door: 65 miles per hour

There has to be a better way, and business aviation should keep seeking to provide the solution in ways that more travelers can afford. I can tell you that everyone of the people I rode with yesterday would take another solution if they could.  

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In an article in The Street online magazine titled “Why US Airlines pay more to finance jets” an interesting issue is raised about how the US Export Import Bank might be giving unfair advantage to the strongest of competitors to the US major air carriers.

I am a proponent of the US Export Import Bank (Ex-Im) as it promotes US exports through the financing of major capital purchases manufactured in the US. The assumption, or at least my assumption, is that this financing would be offered to companies in other countries who might not be able to obtain financing in their own country and thus not be able to make the purchase.

Under this assumption US industry wins with more jobs and import dollars.  

ExIm has been used to facilitate sales for the US aircraft manufacturing industry and especially Boeing. What would happen if Ex-Im did not exist to serve this purpose? I am not sure anyone could answer that question and I would bet that Boeing does not want to test the theory of no Ex-Im bank help. 

What is surprising about this article, and the information is conveys, is that the US is offering favorable terms to airlines who would have access to capital from their own financial markets.

These same foreign airlines are also competing heavily with the US mainline carriers like Delta on international routes. Delta and the ATA are crying foul ball.  

With a lower capital cost structure we are indeed giving the carriers like Emirates Airline a competitive advantage.

I don’t think this was the original intent of Ex-Im, which seems to have twisted the original purpose to help out Boeing.

Boeing needs to sell aircraft in a world market and by doing so they create a lot of high paying jobs and import dollars to the US economy.

Delta and other large US carriers need to compete in the international airline market with as level a playing field as possible.

This issue pits Boeing against the major US air carriers, some of their best customers.

Quoting from the article:

“The airline beneficiaries from the financing include nine of the ten most profitable airlines based outside of the U.S., France, Germany and the United Kingdom, May said. Among them: Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines and WestJet. They all “compete with U.S. airlines for U.S. passenger traffic,” May said. WestJet, founded in 1996, has received nearly $1.7 billion in Ex-Im Bank financing since fiscal 2002 — and has been able to take traffic from U.S. airlines as a result, he said. ”  

I wonder if Boeing’s major competitor EADS Airbus is able to offer similar government  backed financing terms as Boeing can offer through Ex-Im.

If so, then Boeing would be put to a disadvantage in selling its product to the world’s airlines without Ex-Im.

In a global economy working through these issues is complicated. Boeing and EADS Airbus are multinational companies with the makeup of their aircraft coming from worldwide suppliers, but at the end of the day Boeing is still made in America and Airbus is made in Europe.

The issue becomes political with the “Aircraft Sector Understanding” which codifies aircraft financing standards between the 33 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  What is your take on this?

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Based on reports in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, Delta plans to park a big majority of the 50 seat regional jet fleet, operated by its subsidiary Comair, for economic reasons.

Other regional airlines have already parked, or they are soon to park many of their 50 seat or less aircraft. Michael Boyd of Boyd Group International is quoted in an Arkansas Online article saying that by 2015 US airlines will only be operating 200 regional jets with 50 or fewer seats, down from about 1200 at an all time high.  The 50 seat regional jet does not work in a cost driven airline world, especially when fuel prices are high.

There are two outcomes of these decisions that are interesting to me.

1)      As the airlines park these aircraft, service will be cut to some number of smaller markets. They are not parking all of these aircraft to put larger aircraft on the routes. In an unregulated airline system the airlines are not going to fly where they can’t make money and that is bad news for smaller markets.

2)      There will be a big group of Canadair CRJ 100/200 and Embraer ERJ 135/145 regional jets sitting  stored in the Arizona desert, possibly numbering in the hundreds. Some percentage of these aircraft still have good time left on their airframes.

As I hear from people in the leasing industry, the market for regional airline turboprops  is strong worldwide because the used fleet can be leased or purchased very cheaply compared to new prices. The operating costs of turboprops are much lower than the regional jet, especially on short haul routes that are common in developing economies.

So what do you do with a few hundred regional jets that are parked? At what price point do they become economically viable? Where are the new missions that would bring value and a new life for these aircraft?

Back in the early part of the last decade this same problem existed with the regional airline turboprop fleet as they were parked in favor of the new regional jets. Airlines going to an all jet fleet parked their Saab 340’s, Jetstream32’s and 41’s, Embraer 120’s and Beech 1900’s and the desert was full of stored aircraft. Ten years later you don’t see many sitting around. Most are deployed outside the US meeting the mission requirements of small airlines and government special use operations.  

Eventually the market will figure out how to redeploy these regional jets. It is all about economics. The combination of capital costs (lease or financing) and operating costs have to meet a point where it makes sense in a new use. Lower capital costs allow for lower utilization operations such as air cargo and on demand charter.

It seems that a big opportunity exists for charter operators to use these aircraft for contract flying, corporate shuttles and on demand point to point charter. There is a service gap that continues to grow as airlines focus on high density domestic markets. Could these regional jets help fill the gap?  

What do you think?

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Delta is in the Social Media Game

You can now book a flight on Facebook on Delta Airlines Facebook  page and tell your friends about it without ever leaving Facebook.

When you are on Delta Airlines Facebook page you click the “Book a Flight” Button, then click the get started button. Immediately Delta asks for permission to access your information on your Facebook page including your Friends, user ID, networks, gender, and profile picture. If you don’t allow it the process stops as far as I can tell.

I guess the assumption is that you must give up your data if you want to play the booking game through Facebook. So to figure this out, I let them have my information.

From there it is a fairly easy process and not much different than booking on their main site. You have the option to share the flight with your friends. I have not booked a flight on Facebook to see what happens next. If anyone reading this has used this application I would like to hear your thoughts.

I can see this being used for personal travel but not so much for business. I am not totally sure what the real value proposition to booking through Facebook is at this point, with the exception of the ‘Sharing” of my flight information, and maybe for the Faceobook junkies who cant leave the site it does something?

I wonder what Delta does with my information they now have access to? Will they use it to help me solve travel problems or use it to target me for advertising messages?  

Delta at the time of this posting has about 38,500 Fans on their page. Lots of comments:  some positive and and a lot of negative about service issues.

It is hard to tell if Delta uses Facebook to actually communicate to the market.

Delta has also gotten more active in the use of Twitter and now has a staff to respond to Tweets. When I go to their Twitter acccount  they have 78.000 followers, they follow 730 people and it looks like they don’t respond daily as there are lapses in their tweets on their corporate account.  They do have a Twitter account “deltaassist‘  that focuses on resolving customer issues. This account has 2300 followers.

The airlines are waking up to the use Social Media tools. What will be interesting to watch is how they use the technology. Will they enhance the customer experience, listen and react to the market of travelers needs, or will it just be another way to get more money from the traveler with no value added?  

Could Business Aviation and the Air Charter Industry use these same tools to reach the market in a postive and social way?

An Article  titled Six Ways the Travel Industry can use Social Media is a good read if you have the time.

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On September 11, 2001, about 20 men changed the rules.  A little later in the day, several passengers changed them again.  This holiday, sadly, another extremist tried to change them back.  That passenger on Delta flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit tried to detonate an explosive when the aircraft was over the city of Detroit.  From the reports I’ve read, he had the explosive liquids strapped to his legs somehow and was in the process of trying to mix them when at least one other passenger stopped him.

It’s been nearly 20 years since I’ve flown through the Amsterdam airport.  When I was there last, I stayed in international concourse but went through security twice between my JFK and Frankfurt flights.  Subsequent visits to the airport were similar.  The place was amazingly secure and, still, this man was able to board his Delta flight with these dangerous substances on his person.  I’m pretty astounded, I have to tell you.

We, as the traveling public, are partly responsible for weapons that end up on airplanes.  Before you get too torqued up, I really wish that I could take you back to airport security checkpoints on September 10, 2001, where you would see the abuse people like you and me heaped upon the heads of the screeners, who were making barely over minimum wage and were subjected to consistent rude behavior.  People joked about “the bomb in my bag.”  People demanded that they be allowed to bring some banned item through with them.  People demanded exceptions.

The rules were clear and, yet, I caught passengers several times in my career trying to board the aircraft with banned items.  Once, man approached the aircraft with what appeared to be an artist’s box.  When the man handed it to me gate check, I detected the strong, particular odor of turpentine.  I asked the man about it and he said that, yes, he did have turpentine in the box.  He was an artist and that box contained the tools of his trade and he would not allow them to go through the baggage system.  He had adamantly insisted to the people in security that he must carry the box on the aircraft with him.  And they let him.  They allowed him to board the aircraft with all the makings of a Molotov cocktail because he had, basically, yelled loudly enough.  To be honest, it never even occurred to him that his box was a bomb with pretty colors.

Another man approached the gate holding a driver.  I asked how it was that he came to have that golf club inside security.  He told me that it was a $200 driver and that there was no way he was putting it through the baggage system to be mangled.  As politely as I could, I countered that there was no way he was boarding my aircraft with it.  It was a weapon, had he never seen Parry Mason?

We, as the traveling public, too often had this mentality – the rules applied to everyone but us.  We wanted to carry our stuff with us; so, we made scenes at security.  After hundreds of these scenes a month, security screeners got worn down.  Hey, they’re human.  They got tired of the abuse; so, they stopped fighting back.  They let us win and look what happened.

Total aircraft security means body scans, Tyveck suits, no carry-on or checked luggage.  It means that we give up everything, trying to guarantee safety on air mass-transit.  Can you imagine?  Planes full of people who look like Oompa Loompas (minus the green hair and orange skin)?  Can you see this working at all?  I can’t.

As the stakes get higher and security necessarily a bigger hassle, what I can see is more people investigating air charter options.  The TSA still defines allowable items; but, people know who they’re traveling with, both in terms of other passengers and even flight crews.

So, what do you want – greater security when you fly?  What are you willing to put up with to get it -Tyvek suits or a little bigger price tag for a private option?

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