Agony Air
A recent column by Monica Yant Kinney of the Philadelphia Inquirer made me cringe just thinking about my trip to Florida next week. In Better to stay on terra firma, in the wake of the JetBlue debacle, Kinney describes why she has given up flying. She details the various ways the airlines make air travel an experience from hell. And she add not to bother complaining about it, because no one in the industry cares. There is a reason for that -- it's all in the definition of service. For airlines, bad service is regular service. It follows that if bad service is the standard, then why voice complaints about what has become "normal" treatment?
Of course, as Kinney notes, we who live in Philly are used to lousy service in the skies (and on the ground) from US Air. US Air, originally named Allegheny Airlines and aptly nicknamed Agony Airlines, may have changed it's name years ago, but its reputation lives on. For example, a week after a normal snowstorm on Valentine's Day, lost baggage at the US Air terminal in Philly was still piled "sky high," see A weather-related pileup. The installation of a new computer reservation system, US Airways sees more delays for today, has caused long lines and delays going into its second day.
My brother and I are heading south for a long week-end to visit our parents next week. He is flying on US Air & stopping in Philly on his way to Florida. He couldn't understand why I refused to fly with him, instead booking a flight on another airline. It is certainly inconvenient for us to travel on different flights at different times, but I'd rather not go than travel on US Air. And, if the drive to Florida wasn't so long, like Kinney, I'd really rather not fly at all.
UPDATE (3/7/07): See what I mean? The Inquirer has a follow up article on US Air's problems with its computer reservation switchover, Once again, US Airways at the hub of discord. The view of the airline is that the cutover went mostly smoothly and that they had sufficient staff at airports to deal with the service glitches. This is only true if the expectation level is so low that it was in fact met. In other words, bad service is the expected level of service.
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