My Last Airline Rant for the Year. I think.

Okay, as you can tell from these last few posts (rants) I am a not best buddy of the airlines right now. Or maybe it’s the FAA. Either way, they’ve clearly taken all the joy out of traveling. It’s almost (almost) easier to take a train, if trains weren’t more expensive and just as prone to delays (I’ll go into my train stories some other day).

Now, I used to love flying. I couldn’t wait for my next trip. I had all my frequent flier accounts in a special little wallet with my passport, and held my airline tickets like they were gold, before my trip. Now all I have is short list of things that really annoy me about airline flights, these days.

1) Delays. It’s not like they haven’t been doing this scheduling thing for several dozen years. And I’m not talking about delays due to weather. I’m talking about delays from poor planning, bad maintenance, and just shoddy customer service. But ‘nuff sad on that.

2) The rule to turn off electronic devices. The language from an in-flight magazine reads thus:

Devices such as electronic games, personal computers, and entertainment players and recorders (audio and /or video, such as iPod®/tape/CD/Minidisc/MP3/DVD players and camcorders) must be used with headsets at all times. These devices, as well as noise-canceling headphones, calculators, shavers, cameras. GPS devices, and aircraft power ports for laptops, may be used only at the gate when the main cabin door is open, or when announced by flight attendants and the aircraft is above 10,000 feet in altitude. These devices must be turned off during taxi, takeoff and landing.

Okay, for safety reasons, you should turn off your laptop and stow it. Likewise, I don’t know enough about phone service, and so could allow that some signals could interfere with the pilot’s ability to communicate with the tower. But why would you have to shut off your thumb-sized iPod shuffle that’s stuffed into a pocket on takeoff? Is there some miraculous new technology that grants the tiny MP3 player electronic control of the plane through the click wheel? I think not. It’s an example of a blanket rule that small minds adhere to, rather than actually creating a device that ensures the devices will not interfere with takeoff. Or that a slow-moving FAA megolithic system of rules that finds it easier to issue a blanket ruling than be real, and create real standards that make things easier for customers.

3) The beverage misers. What’s the deal with needing to stretch one can of soda over three passengers? Why do the stewardesses sometimes give the can with the cup, and sometimes stingily fill the cup with mostly ice to give you barely anything to drink? And on the occasion I feel I want more, if feel like I’m putting the flight attendant out if I ask them to leave the can—like that’s somehow greedy and selfish.

I recently observed a way around this that makes everyone feel better. Request the can only. Accompanied by the self-effacing line “I’m a man of simple needs,” your request for the can only (no cup, no ice) is translated from greed to caring simplicity, a desire not to put anyone to any trouble, and a concern for the environment. I use that like every change I get, now, when I order my in-flight regulars, either apple Juice of tomato Juice, my own struggle to get healthy fruits and veggies in my travel diet. And avoid the devil corn syrup. Best of all, warm apple juice is like tea, and warm tomato juice like soup. Yum.

4) The disconnection of technology. Check-in kiosks that take the place of live attendants, and which all passengers are summarily funneled toward, are not updated with the latest info on flight status. This just seems sloppy to me. If the check-in database can connect to know you are on this or that flight, and your confirmation is this, and another system is aware of the status of the flight in terms of delays, why don’t the systems talk to one another? I believe the answer is because to do so would only directly benefit the customer, not the corporation. Therefore, not a priority. Likewise, the message boards at gates are not updated. I spent half an hour with another family and another lone traveler in Cleveland, OH, waiting for the connection to Boston. It was only 20 minutes before the plane was supposed to leave that I realized there was no plane, and no update on the board above the gate desk, and no attendant. A quick check of the main boar, located quite a ways away, that the gate had been changed from the boarding pass I had been given just two hours ago, at check-in in Austin. No one had been sent to check the gate, and there was no other warning. And if I had missed the flight, how much do you want to bet that would have been my tough luck, and not the fault of the airline?

Look, I realize that airlines are hurting. But where is the underlying logic of customer service that is the cornerstone of any good business plan? Every in flight magazine and pre-flight video goes on about how happy they are to serve, and how grateful the airline is for choosing them. But that is proven to be transparent lip service as long as the actual services are so sub-standard, I can’t be the only one noticing. This lack of actual service is creating a perpetual cycle—people don’t feel like air travel is special or convenient, yet it continues to cost more; they stop flying which hurts the airlines and causes higher prices; those still forced to air travel are treated worse, while paying more, and so fly less, and so on. The slippery slope is just getting steeper.