Airline Customer Service: The Impossible Destination

A former editor of mine used to sum up airline customer service this way: They hate their passengers.

It was, he argued, the only logical conclusion to draw given the way most of our commercial carriers treat us, especially when things go wrong.

I thought of his comments as I read a petition drafted recently by a group of aggrieved travelers who are calling for Congress to enact a passenger bill of rights.

This particular group had plenty to be aggrieved about. Traveling from San Francisco to Dallas on Dec. 29, their American Airlines flight was diverted to Austin because of heavy thunderstorms.

At Austin, the full plane sat on the runway for nine hours. The passengers weren't allowed to leave. In fact, the plane didn't even pull to a gate. There was no water. Food was a few snack bags of pretzels. The toilets stopped working and eventually overflowed.

Some of the passengers were young children, some were elderly. One passenger told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram the experience was "subhuman."

Because it was a "weather delay," federal regulations don't require the airline offer passengers remuneration.

American did offer the passengers an apology and the industry's make-nice currency of choice, travel vouchers.

The logical question, of course, is why didn't the plane taxi to an empty gate and allow passengers to wait in the terminal where, presumably, toilets weren't overflowing.

That would have meant canceling the flight, leaving passengers with few prospects for rebooking during the busy post-holiday travel season, airline spokesman Tim Wagner told the Star-Telegram.

"People would have been stranded in Austin for two or three days, maybe in a hotel room or maybe there at the airport, waiting for a flight," he said. "That's what we were trying to avoid."

Hmm. Two days in Austin versus nine hours in a fetid tin can. Passengers weren't given the choice.

Passengers as parcels

Commercial aviation has its roots in mail delivery, and at times, it shows. Passengers too often are treated like parcels.

Fifteen of the passengers on American Flight 1348 that day are asking Congress for a bill of rights requiring, among other things, procedures for returning to a gate if a plane must sit on the tarmac for more than three hours.

They also want airlines to respond to complaints within 24 hours and notify passengers of canceled flights, delays and diversions within 10 minutes.

In other words, they want a law requiring common courtesy.

Similar efforts have fizzled in the past after the airlines made an array of promises to improve services, then didn't. The industry's financial problems eroded, and, as they always do, airlines made their financial problems our fault. They enacted fees for ticket changes, for printing a ticket on paper and even for talking to an actual person in making a reservation.

Rather than dictating unenforceable policies, Congress could make one change that would force airlines to do better.

Wouldn't want a repeat

If I'm left on the runway for nine hours in close proximity to overflowing toilets, I don't want the chance to experience it again. Vouchers are nothing more than sales promotions anyway, the ultimate coupon settlement. That's why airlines like them.

But if airlines were forced to pay for vouchers on the airline of the passenger's choice, that might make a difference.

Aggrieved passengers could then decide if they wanted to try again with the airline that abused them, or put the money toward flying on a competitor that might treat them better.

Front-line employees might be given more freedom to make decisions that could help passengers. I doubt that the pilot on American Flight 1348, for example, wanted to keep his passengers and his crew under such deplorable conditions. Let them pull to a terminal, order a pizza, have water trucked over, whatever it takes.

Years later, still not there

The airlines will tell you such a plan would wreak havoc on their systems and raise their costs.

As passengers, though, that's not our problem. Their business involves getting their systems right, and they've had almost 30 years since deregulation to do it.

Passengers understand delays happen and that weather complicates travel. It's the industry's collective shoulder shrug at such problems that enrages us. We deserve something more than bureaucratic excuses.

One of the oldest maxims in business is that the customer is always right.

Airlines not only don't get that, they seem to fail to understand a more basic principle: Do whatever you can to keep your customers and your sewage as far apart as possible.

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