There is something inherently wrong with the trends that have permeated the airline industry in recent years. Melanie and I just completed a cross-country tour from Portland to Minneapolis to Detroit to Pittsburgh over the New Year weekend, finishing our odyssey with a rental-car jaunt to the Pennsylvania burgh of Indiana for the wedding of one of Melanie's high-school chums. And while I have long been a fan of air travel, the courses that the industry has chosen to pursue are puzzling and, indeed, often shameful and inexcusable.
I believe that this whole trend of the cattle-car, herd-em-in-and-out, minimalist approach to the multi-billion-dollar industry of air travel was borne from two events. First, the birth of competitive, low-fare airlines such as Southwest and JetBlue have led many customers to lower their standards in what to expect when they purchase a plane ticket. Second, a plan by American Airlines in 1987 wherein, by removing one olive from each in-flight salad they saved $40,000 annually, have caused other airlines to slowly pare back services to a minimum.
The problem with this second trend is that, realizing the potential gain to be made, airlines followed American Airline's suit in cutting back on meal options. The trend went further when the bargain airlines decided not to offer frills such as a morsel to munch. Soon, all airlines were finding that, if one fewer olive on each salad could net tens of thousands, then NO SALAD would net TENS OF MILLIONS! It was then just a logical leap to think: If I don't give the rubes anything to eat on my flight, then I might just save HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS EACH YEAR!
Instead, they will even charge you for the privilege of eating on their flights. The Northwest flights taken over this past weekend offered trail mix or single-serving canisters of Pringles for two dollars a pop. Not content with gouging the customer of their money on airfare, they are now also taking advantage of hungry stomachs caught without time in the airport because of tight connecting-flight schedules by fleecing them at two-hundred-percent markup.
But even before we were able to board the plane, the security checkpoint reared the first ugly indication of events to come further down the line. As I set my various carry-on articles on the conveyor to get their gamma-ray treatment and incendiaries sweep, the guard peering over the entire operation barked at me to get my hands out of the X-ray machine. And, to think, I had just touched one of the rollers on the conveyor with a bare finger. You would have thought I was hatching a plot to steal this man's weapons and stage a firefight right then.
Our first flight arrived in the Twin Cities without a flaw, touching down with ease after a delay from the control tower. We made it to our connecting flight to Detroit without complication. And this is where the card castle collapsed...
As the plane hit the pavement of Detroit International Airport, we were treated to a case of ineptitude that paid its price. Already having to deal with surly stewardesses and sleep deprivation, the maddening delay to get to our gate was compounded when another plane up and died right in front of our gate. With no place to unload its cargo, the giant steel bird idled much more patiently than its charges. I was a torrent of rage, watching each second tick away as the reality of Detroit's air-prison sunk deeper. We would have to cross through an eighty-gate concourse, turn heel, and run back down another tunnel-like concourse to our connecting gate.
The stewardesses, recognizing the communal anxiety of the cabin, stated that there would be a Northwest representative outside our breezeway to direct everyone toward waiting connecting flights. But, on our entry into the concourse from the plane, Melanie and I were greeted only by masses of humanity and a sinking feeling of paranoia...
If only the crew at Northwest had taken their problem a little more seriously, we might have been directed to the high-speed tram that would zip us straight to our gate. But, instead, with no guidance in an airport I had visited only once in my life and Melanie a rookie in this city, we traipsed off through the terminal in a mad dash against the clock. We lost. Then, after we decided to express our indignation and later apologized to the attendant at the gate, she had the audacity to state to us, "Oh, it is not really okay that you get irate..."
WHAT?! I just got screwed into sitting three more hours in airports (and an airport I hated on first sight at twelve and have no reason to change my opinion now, to boot) and she wants to present Melanie and I with a morality lesson. I was duped into thinking the airline wanted to at least help its passengers and CLIENTS resolve a situation exacerbated by their own incompetence and lack of punctual problem-solving. Instead, we were greeted with chaos and a big slap in the face at the end of our efforts.
Consequently, I have come to realize that pretty much EVERY MAJOR AIRLINE has no clue as to the definition of the word client, or customer. These are two words, methink, that are too oft forgot in the lexicon of the airline industry - because, after all, the passengers are CLIENTS first and foremost, not simply wares to be ferried. In an industry where the government will REPEATEDLY bail companies out that dig themselves into the ground, there is absolutely no need to keep customers happy. Because, even as they are alienated and an airline sinks deeper into the red with lost revenue streams, Uncle Sam will always be there at the end of the day with a startlingly socialist gesture of the handout. But, then again, where Soviet Russia gave handouts to the workers, capitalist America instead gives the handouts to the corporations as they pluck the money for the handout out of the workers' pockets.
Until airlines are held accountable (and the dinosaurs - United, Delta, American, Northwest, etc. - are allowed to live and die on their own JUST LIKE ANY OTHER CAPITALIST ENTERPRISE) for their actions by customers and the government, they will continue to step on the little man, the CUSTOMER. The people will always lose out...even with a mass protest and boycott of the airlines. Because, a lost $400 round-trip ticket revenue feels a lot less painful to these air monopolies once it is realized that Congress is sitting by with a $400 million check to "eke out" the lean times...