[IP] more on US Air - the excitement continues...
Begin forwarded message:
From: Faisal N Jawdat <faisal@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: August 27, 2006 3:07:51 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
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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