The "We Hate You Airlines" Rant And How To Get Delta To Help You

Kevine Levine describes himself in his blog as “an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer. In a career that has spanned over 30 years Ken has worked on MASH, CHEERS, FRASIER, THE SIMPSONS, WINGS, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, BECKER, [and] DHARMA & GREG.”     He recently posted the following rant “Open letter to airlines: We hate you”.

As online rants go it is a pretty good one, and I would like to touch on a few points.    First, he talks about his experience following a recent systems outage over at my favorite airline, Southwest.    Frustrating, but the fact that their computers go down for a few hours every few years is hardly the core issue plaguing the airline industry.   Exasperated, he observes:

An article came out Friday saying that three major airlines made a big profit the last quarter.  First time since 2007.   How’d they do it?  By reducing flights and cutting back on passenger services.

He is only partly correct on this one.   The airlines have been turning a profit due to massive increases in ancillary fees such as baggage fees, change fees, and charging for food.   As a customer, I think the practice stinks, but in a capitalist society, you have to give them a little bit of credit for making a profit in a tough economy.    I would give them more credit if it were not for Southwest’s consistent profitability despite not charging nearly all of those fees.   It appears there are two ways to make a profit in the airline industry, providing a good product with no fees, or providing a lousy product with lots of fees.   Guess which strategy I prefer as a customer?

After that early misstep, he improves, when he cite’s the airline’s inability to communicate with their customers:

When our flight is delayed and a hundred frustrated people are milling around the gate, would it kill you to give us an update? You say you do but trust me, YOU DON’T. Instead we have to go up to the counter so you can blow us off individually. We’re not just doing this to annoy you. Many of us have connections to make.

This is a huge problem.   On a recent American Airlines flight, I was told at checkin that the flight was delayed an hour.   No problem, as I still had plenty of time to make my connection.   I proceeded to enjoy a leisurely meal.   Upon my return to the gate,  40 minutes before the revised departure time, there was no status update or any announcements, just a line at the ticket counter.     Another 20 minutes goes by, with no plane in sight, when I interrupt the gate agent to esquire as to the status of the flight.  Only then am I told, “Oh, it’s been canceled, you will have to wait in line to be rebooked.”    By then, we had lost any chance of being accommodated on another carrier to make our scheduled connection.   We only made our connecting flight because it too was delayed.

Tell Us The Truth

Here, Levine hits on the central problem of the airline business in this country, it is fundamentally dishonest.    I wrote an extensive blog post on my personal blog about the Airline Credibility Gap.   From institutionalized price gouging to deceptive frequent flier programs, very little of this business is on the up and up.    As Levine concludes:

Passengers are tired of being lied to. You must either hold us in contempt or think we’re all really stupid. Either way you have let the credibility gap widen to the length of a cross-country flight.

Yes it is a rant, but a good one.   Him and I have certainly been thinking along the same lines most of the time.

How To Get Delta To Help You

The staff at Delta Airlines is much like that of most major airlines; once they have your money their primary goal is to make you go away.   As one airline insider wrote:

I don’t see how giving passengers better information actually saves (or generates) the airline any money at all. How would it? The tickets are paid for, and most of them are non-refundable.

Realistically, they do care about bad publicity.   If you are a journalist or a consumer advocate, you could tell Delta that you are writing an article about something that happened, and they will fix it.   If you are just an ordinary traveler, apparently Twitter is the best way to get Delta to actually help you, according to the this article in the Wall Street Journal.    Sure their, poorly trained, outsourced customer service agents are only able to recite Delta’s byzantine policies to you, but if you Twitter your problem, someone will waive the rules and actually solve your problem.   Keep that in mind next time your travel experience goes completely south.