UAL – Wonder why they are in bankruptcy?

Airlines are a mess today. United is in bankruptcy; many of the others are losing money at a rate that is beyond most of us being able to comprehend. I realize there are major problems with the economics, but there are also things airlines can do to make things better.

1) Fix their websites! UAL just took about an hour of pressing refresh / retry on a tab in the background to finally pull up my reservation so I could print out my boarding pass. I click on the “print” button and it crashes my browser with all my open tabs. Come on! A well functioning website means that I don't have to tie up a gate agent. I am trying to save you money; and it seems like they are trying to annoy me in response.

2) Tell us the truth. Recently, I spent long hours at O'Hare waiting for the weather to lift to get a flight out. I felt bad for the gate agents because they had long lines of people that wanted to complain. But it as United's fault! If they would have used communication transparency and built trust, the lines would have gone away. Just tell me what you know and what you don't know and be honest! The average traveler is willing to work with the airlines IF they feel the airlines is being honest with them. If it feels like the airline is not telling them stuff, then rumor and frustration builds into long lines of people wanting to complain. Even when the airline does its best, people hate it. And it kills the morale of the associates that have to deal with all the frustrated customers. It is never a good plan to tick-off your customer in a way that they take it out on your employees AND will never be satisfied, even when you do great work to overcome a problem that is not under your control.

3) Shift staff to deal with the reality of the landscape. During the storm I discuss in #2 above, lots of flights were canceled. Stranded passengers were referred to the “customer service” desk. These desks had lines that looked to be about two-hour wait time. At the same time; there were dozens of personal either standing around or answering questions about why no planes were loading. Once they fix the communication problem (see above), they need to take this extra staff and man the customer service desk. No one is happy about getting a flight canceled, but if the airline is at least making an effort to take care of its customers, its customers will give them some slack. Two hours of waiting in line means that the airline deserves the scorn it gets.

4) Again, transparency in communications. Why send me to a customer service desk. Give me a packet that explains when the next flight is, and what my options are. We all know the routine; when you get bumped from a flight; some agents will give you all kinds of vouchers for food, etc.; others will not give you anything or at least the bare minimum. Just set and publish a fair guidelines of what you can and cannot do. Then hand out the information and ask for questions. Here is the hint; it is a lot cheaper to buy my understanding at the original gate by apologizing, given me the reason why, and giving me a clear understanding of what you are going to do and what my options are. After I have waited in line for two hours, my frustration is going to cost you a lot more to make me happy!

5) Do the small things that don't cost much. I recently had a flight from Chicago to Raleigh. I had been in Chicago for a conference with an associate. His flight left about 2 hours before mine, but we caught a cab to the airport together and I just sat around and read. I get to Raleigh and my luggage is not on the carousel. I wait in line for 30 minutes (at 12:45am), only to be told that my luggage came in on the earlier flight and they have it in the back room. UAL knew when I left Chicago that my luggage was already in Raleigh; they knew at the gate when I landed. One employee telling me where my luggage was would have saved me an extra hour at the airport when I really needed sleep! Instead, I got to wait and as I waited, I got mad at UAL . Someone meeting me at the gate telling me where my luggage was would have cost them about $0.50 but would have made my experience one I would have wrote about in a blog post that did not include “stupid” and “United Air Lines” in the same sentence more than 15 times!