United’s Customer Service in a Free Fall
The drumbeat of complaints regarding United Airline’s deteriorating customer service continues. In the Trade Your Bags For Another $1/Hr post, I mentioned the results of the recent University of Michigan customer satisfaction survey. If the satisfaction index for the airline industry in general plummeted — they’re now just barely ahead of the IRS — then...
Can’t Outsource Responsibility
The Chicago Tribune‘s Sunday Business section featured a 3,600-word in-depth analysis of a United Airlines flight that went terribly wrong. United Flight 1073 was supposed to leave Montego Bay, Jamaica at 1:55pm on Saturday, March 31, 2007. It didn’t leave the ground until the following Monday, April 2. The article is a very good read,...
Flight Delays Worst in 13 Years — Tell Me Something I Don’t Know
The front page of today’s USAToday — the unofficial newspaper of record for the frequent traveler — greeted its readers with an article stating “Flights on U.S. airlines arrived late more often in the first four months of this year than in any other year since the government began tracking the numbers 13 years ago.”...
Bumping on the Rise?
A New York Times article provides an interesting behind-the-scenes view of the balance airlines are trying to strike between maximizing revenue through overbooking, and raising the ire of customers and their front-line employees when passengers get bumped from oversold flights. Interviewing a number of people at US Airways, the article reveals the tensions between the...
Trade Your Bags For Another $1/Hr
We’ve talked many times here about how the act of travel has lost its glamor, is no longer fun for the frequent traveler. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, life isn’t so glamorous on the other side of the travel counter. Airlines used to offer prestigious jobs with good wages and coveted...
What Was She Thinking?
I don’t know what’s going on with the flying public these days. Last month, it’s a woman lighting matches to cover body odor. Last Sunday, it’s a 28-year-old woman getting drunk and then breaking damn close to every rule in the air on a United flight from Boston to San Francisco. According to the article...
The Shoe Carnival Still Alive in Orlando
The shoe carnival — that degrading one-legged dance we do for the entertainment of TSA screeners across the country all because one guy tried (and failed) to light his shoe on fire some six years ago — has survived the introduction of the ShoeScanner in Orlando’s airport. Home of some of the worst TSA lines,...
Local Fare Eases Delays Just A Bit
Sitting in Philadelphia Airport drinking a pint of Hop Hog IPA beer from the Lancaster Brewing Company in nearby Lancaster, PA reminded me of a recent USA Today article about the growth of local food fare in airports. According to the article: “There was a trend toward national brands in the 1990s, but now there’s...