more on US Air - the excitement continues...

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Faisal N Jawdat <faisal () faisal com>
Date: August 27, 2006 3:07:51 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] US Air - the excitement continues...

On Aug 27, 2006, at 1:43 PM, David Farber wrote:
> After having worked around FonKompanies for 15 years,
> I would have never believed I'd find a company more
> steadfastly dedicated to torturing its customers,
> but US Air has set a new standard for "User Fiendliness."

Opinion:

Most airlines still think they're in a luxury travel business, and  
set their prices and services accordingly.  You are supposed to dance  
to their tune because you love the opportunity to fly to exotic  
destinations.  How else do you explain searches for lower-priced  
fares that depend entirely on your willingness to be completely  
flexible in travel dates (ruling out just about everyone but those  
planning extended vacations far in advance)?

The lone exception to this is Southwest, that publishes its schedules  
like a flying bus route, and runs its fleet accordingly.  They're the  
only consistently profitable airline in the country. (the world?)

This attitude extends throughout the operations systems of all major  
airlines.  Why do you order something so they can get an electronic  
ticket so you can go to the airport and have a boarding pass  
printed?  Why do so many steps involve manual transfer of information  
that was already in a database?  Why is luggage entered into the  
computer but its progress never tracked until after it goes missing?

From my perspective as a customer, the only major productivity boost  
in the airline business over the last 15 years was getting travel  
agents out of the booking path.  This has two benefits (for the  
airlines):  they don't have to pay the travel agents a cut, and I pay  
more for a ticket unless I'm willing to spend an hour finding the  
exact combination of flights that drops the price by 60%.

...

We flew US Air to a conference two weeks ago, and while we had a  
better experience than Miles Fidelman reported we still had to go  
through several rounds of "where is that last bag".  In theory we are  
now using positive bag-matching for all baggage on flights:  bags  
don't go on a flight unless the bag's owner goes on the flight.  This  
is a good security measure (at least, if you're protecting against  
people who aren't willing to die attacking you), but I am not  
comforted by the (anecdotal) observation that lost bag stories are  
getting more frequent rather than less.

"Applications of this concern to expected levels of airline  
maintenance is left as an exercise to the reader."

-faisal



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