So long, US Airways.
Now that the nation’s seventh-largest carrier has filed for bankruptcy protection a second time in as many years, many industry-watchers give it only a few months before it liquidates. Even David Bronner recently predicted it wouldn’t be saved from Chapter 11, and he ought to know. He’s the airline’s chairman. But while most of the pundits are fixated on the reasons for US Airways’ likely demise, one question has gone largely unasked: Who is going to pay for this failure?
If there is anything worse than being hit by a hurricane, then it must be waiting to get hit by a hurricane. And if you live in Florida, you’ve been doing a lot of waiting lately. It started in late July with Hurricane Alex, which appeared just north of Jacksonville and then barreled up the eastern seaboard of the United States before disintegrating in the cool waters of the North Atlantic.
True, its executives are incompetent. Its service is inadequate. But grant our failing airline business this: it certainly is inventive. I admit, I doubted America’s worst-run industry had any creativity left in it. Despite generous government loans and subsidies, at least one major airline, Delta Air Lines, is on the brink of bankruptcy. Another, US Airways, is reportedly close to insolvency. But I was wrong, so very wrong.
Travel is still thought of as a service industry. But someone must have forgotten to tell Craig Kobayashi, the Hawaiian Airlines pilot who recently refused to fly his plane from Honolulu to San Francisco with Joshua Gotbaum on board. Kobayashi said he was “uncomfortable” having Gotbaum on his plane, even though he posed no security risk to the flight. It turns out the passenger, a court-appointed trustee overseeing the carrier’s bankruptcy reorganization, had tried to make changes to the pilots’ pension plan. Gotbaum ended up taking another flight.
When it comes to travel, the entertainment industry has never really bothered separating fact from fiction. Turn on your TV if you don’t believe me. Or catch a summer movie. See the film ‘The Terminal,’ for instance, and you might wonder if getting stuck at the airport is such a dreadful thing. (In fact, most experienced travelers would do anything to avoid spending even a few hours in a terminal).
For most Americans, this summer is the first opportunity for a long-overdue vacation. With worries of war, SARS and terrorism fading into memory and the economy on the rebound, more travelers are expected to be out and about than in any other summer since 2001. But for the American travel industry, this summer represents an opportunity of a different kind: a chance to make us pay for the many mistakes and missteps it’s made during the last three years.
Rob Pait admits he’s not always the friendliest traveler. “Yes, I’m sometimes short with travel employees,” says the director for a Scotts Valley, Calif., computer hardware manufacturer. “But only with employees who are impolite, unwilling to help or just plain rude themselves.” In years past, the travel industry all but denied people like Pait existed. After all, the customer was always right, and if guests were snippy it was because the hotel clerks, gate agents or customer service representatives weren’t doing their jobs.
Here’s an election-year issue that hasn’t gotten anywhere near the attention it deserves: the sad, scandalous decline of air travel. The way we fly has changed more in the last four years than in the last four decades, and largely for the worse. Airlines have cut back on services and amenities, airports are guarded by a new federal agency, the humorless Transportation Security Administration, and passengers are rowdier and ruder than ever. Many once-robust mainline carriers are on the verge of bankruptcy or liquidation. The list of troubled airlines includes American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, which is already in bankruptcy. US Airways isn’t expected to survive the year.
Never underestimate the ignorance of the traveling public. That’s the painful, but inevitable, conclusion I’ve arrived at after more than a decade of solving other people’s travel problems. Simply put, there are more clueless people on the road, at the airport, and staying in our hotels, than ever. Call it the dumbing down of the American traveler.
By almost any measure, traveling should be a pleasure these days. Air fares, hotel room rates and cruises haven’t been this affordable in years. Complaints against domestic air carriers are at an all-time low. And the travel industry, badly hurt by a double-whammy of a recession and war, is finally recovering. So what’s with all the anger? Why are passengers hurtling insults at their cabin crew with greater frequency? Why are they driving their SUVs into airport ticket counters and setting them on fire, as one man recently did in Maui?
When US Airways senior vice president B. Ben Baldanza questioned the loyalty of frequent fliers who booked cheap tickets in a recent newspaper interview, he inadvertently spawned a grassroots organization called the Cockroaches. But this secretive group of frequent travelers did more than retaliate by criticizing the carrier in public forums; eventually, the vociferous bugs became so influential that US Airways turned to them for advice. Robert Johnson, the Mystic Island, NJ, corporate sales trainer who leads the Roaches, explained the spread of the organization from just a few fliers being on the receiving end of what he calls “bug spray” to a swarm, several hundred strong, which now has the ear of the airline’s management.
When I was a summer intern in Chicago, I opened an account with the power company for an apartment I wanted to rent. But when my plans fell through, I forgot to tell Commonwealth Edison, leaving less than $1 on my bill. Not long after that I applied for a credit card and was rejected. Turns out the utility company had sent my invoice to a collection agency and had shared my delinquent status with every credit reporting company. On paper, I looked like a deadbeat. As soon as I discovered the error, I paid up and cleared my name.
Xanax-popping co-workers. Overbearing managers who fire employees for not being aggressive enough. Ignorant customers. That was life behind the car-rental counter for Ute Hodges, a customer service agent for Alamo and Budget at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers, Fla. “I had a friend who worked for a rental car company and she made good money,” says Hodges. “So I wanted to try it.” What she learned about the business serves as a cautionary tale for anyone renting a vehicle today.
It isn’t the machine-gun toting National Guardsmen posted at the airport or the code-orange terrorism warnings that unnerve air travelers like Mort Herman. Instead, it’s a sense that all the precautions are little more than posturing, and that if a sequel to 9/11 were to actually happen, they’d be completely useless. What exactly worries him? Security screeners rarely ask him about the sharp hypodermic needles he carries on board as a diabetic, which could be used as weapons. But it’s the government’s fallback plan that he finds truly frightening. “What’s the purpose of those fighter jets that accompany some of our airlines?” asks the New York writer. “The only answer is that if terrorists were to take over an aircraft, they can shoot it down. Now that’s comforting.” Many Americans quietly concur.
If you’re confused about the new code-orange security precautions at the airport, you’re in good company. Air travelers have wondered about the delays, cancellations and what it means to their next trip. I asked Mark Hatfield, director of communications for the Transportation Security Administration, to help sort things out.
Ed Barrett is tired of airline employees who act “as if they are doing you a favor by acknowledging my existence.” But the software technician from Pratt, Kan., is equally exasperated by inconsiderate passengers. “They’re rude to flight attendants,” he says. “They act as if all the post-Sept. 11 inconveniences are their fault.” A new poll by the nonpartisan opinion organization Public Agenda suggests his weariness is widespread. The research, released just as the final leg of the stressful holiday travel season gets underway, finds that nearly one third of passengers believe rudeness is a serious problem. More than half of all travel employees say passenger impoliteness is the top source of on-the-job tension. Have travelers lost their manners?
On their return trip from a conference, Timothy Johnston, his wife and two students traveling with them tried to connect in St. Louis to their scheduled flight back to Paducah, Ky. They couldn’t. “We were told there was only one seat left on the 16-passenger plane,” the Murray State University professor recalled. It was the last flight of the day, and they were eager to get home. No problem, a gate agent said, and promptly issued each passenger $100 in cash compensation for the inconvenience. They ended up renting a car and driving home to Paducah. Later, Johnston’s carrier even refunded $418 for the unused portion of their tickets. Good customer service? Yes. Good business practice? Maybe.
At a time when the airline industry still is struggling to pull out of a tailspin induced by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a soft economy and poor management, do we really need a new carrier? You could almost hear a collective groan from the airline industry’s talking heads when former travel executives Edward Beauvais and Travis Tanner last month unveiled Project Roam, a yet-unnamed discount airline based in Pittsburgh. This is hardly the time to start a new airline, some said.
Why do business travelers feel betrayed by recent changes in airline loyalty programs? Ask frequent fliers, and they will tell you that the airlines’ revisions make it difficult – and more often, impossible – to reach those coveted elite levels. The only way to qualify for the most sought-after flier perks, such as seating upgrades and complimentary lounge access, is to buy pricier tickets.
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Get me a room
April 10, 2006
Room service, get me a room! It hasn’t quite come to that, but with record-high occupancy rates predicted for summer, vacationers need to get busy and book. The luxury hotels below are a good bet, but even they’re filling up.
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