THE RETURN OF THE FLYING GORILLA — The Consumer Playbook

In a November 3 post, I addressed customer abuse when flying on American Airlines. While I didn’t expect a quick fix, I’ve seen a bit of yin/yang recently.

We were in Los Angeles with Cory over the holiday. Unfortunately, once again, we had no choices for non-stop flights. Going to LA, we were cramped into the usual American minimal space. However, there was an interesting little perk before we boarded. After a couple of very brief interactions with American's Director of Customer Service in Philadelphia, we were surprised when the gate clerk called Howard’s name. Were they going to tell us that they had seated us in Cargo? No, the director had left toiletry kits for us and arranged first boarding. These kind amenities were a very gracious gesture. But this doesn’t address the bigger issues. Socks and toothpaste are nice, but they don’t fix the major problems.
The return flight—not good! Before we left our hotel, we found that our flight had been delayed. When we reached the airport, we found that there was an American flight to Hawaii ahead of us, also delayed. Since American didn’t provide any information about the problem and plan to rectify, I ambled over to the gate staff and asked why we were delayed and what was being done to get us in the air. The clerk said that she didn’t know. Didn’t know? I asked how that could be. Her response—the airline hasn’t told the staff. As I stood there, a pilot walked onto the jetway. Ms Clerk perkily said “Oh, you must be here for the Philadelphia flight”. AHA! This must be the usual American game, Musical Flight Crew. This is now the fourth time since last March that we’ve experienced this scenario. In a valiant effort to remain polite, I pointed out that it seemed that Ms Clerk did know the reason for the delay, but for some unknown reason, wasn’t telling me. When she protested that she didn’t know, I said, “If you saw the pilot and said that he must be here for the Philadelphia flight, wouldn’t missing flight crew be the problem?” “I’m not talking to you anymore, Ma’am”! Nice answer. I got her name and asked for a manager. “There are no managers”, she replied.
My reply: “There must be managers”.
Clerk: “Well, they’re not here”
Me: “Then where are they?”
Clerk: “They’re in the other terminal.”
Me: “Who’s your manager?”
Clerk: “I don’t know”
Me: “You don’t know?"
Clerk: “I don’t know who my manager is today.”
Me: “Then get me any manager.”
A manager arrived, not too helpful, but took my complaint about Ms Clerk. This clerk needs training about how to deal with passengers, and American still needs to address the bigger problems of these too frequent delays, smaller seats and higher pricing. Not to mention the loss of some of the AA Advantage card perks.
Back on home turf, I called the Director of Customer Service in Philadelphia to thank her for her efforts on the way to LA and to ask her to call me because the substantive passenger issues remain. And, I didn't have confidence that the lackadaisical manager during the LAX incident would deal with Ms Clerk's lack of customer service skills. I also called the Director of Operations in Philadelphia. (Note to readers—I generally don’t do more than 1 outreach at a time, but in this case, since I wasn’t sure who could really address the issues, I broke my usual rule.) I reached her assistant. I’d spoken with her before. (I don’t think that she likes me. Not that this ever stopped me before, and it doesn’t stop me now. Becoming the enemy isn't my goal, but...) I pointed out that there had been too much phone tag, with the ball now in her court. The assistant told me that they are aware of my issues (I’ll bet that they are!) And, she added that the Director was in a meeting “with people”. I’m not sure what “with people” meant—“People” as opposed to other 2000 pound gorillas? “People” as opposed to passengers? Are they living in an Orwellian world where “Some animals are more equal than others”? Probably. The assistant gave me the usual-- a busy time with holidays and weather problems and blah, blah. Yes, but we haven’t had holidays and weather issues consistently over the past couple of months since I started this little endeavor. She assured me that she’d relay my message.
Now, the good news—I've had three calls from higher level American staff. First, the Director of Customer Service in Philadelphia called and listened intently as I told her about our recent experiences. While she couldn’t change corporate policy, at that moment, she was very focused on the customer service problem at LAX. I have since received a call from her designee to deal with the miscreant clerk. Based on this experience, I do believe that there is a real commitment to customer service, at least at the day to day interactional level.
Why do I feel confident that the issues with Ms Clerk were addressed? Because the director and her designee asked very specific questions to identify the culprit and the problem. They also told me that American is instituting training on customer service, where they are looking at the issue from the customer point of view. Good move!
The Customer Service Director also had a Corporate Communications representative contact me about the other issues—musical crews, seat pitch (the industry term for space between seats), and cost. She couldn’t speak to the higher ticket cost because she couldn’t discuss proprietary business information. I get that. But, that doesn’t mean that the airline can’t look at their increased cost from the customer standpoint. Will they do that? Probably not. In terms of pitch, she referred me to an interesting article https://airwaysmag.com/airlines/new-seat-pitch-plan-boeing-737-max/ . Here, you can see that Spirit is worse, United is the same, but the others-- Delta, Virgin and Jet Blue-- are more passenger friendly on this issue, with more leg room. I’m guessing that even with the greater space, they still make money. And looking at the article, it seems that customer noise had an impact in changing American's original plan to set seats at 29 inches So, here, voices mattered. On the other hand, 30 inches is still too tight. When I had to fly with a four year old seated behind me, able to reach my seat to kick during the entire flight, something’s wrong. I made the suggestion—very real and not sarcastic—that the CEO and other executives should fly in coach seats for a few hours and then re-examine the pitch. Will this happen? I don’t know—but of course, I will follow up.
What’s next? I’ll wait to hear from the Philadelphia Director of Customer Service and/or the other people who have become involved in my crusade about cost, seat pitch, a way to avoid such frequent musical crew delays and lost Advantage perks. On the one hand, there’s some progress with the knowledge that American appears attuned to improving basic customer service. And they’re certainly going to need those customer service skills if they don’t change the bigger issues. (Irate passengers, unite!) And I learned that higher level Customer Service staff, who do have a voice within the company, heard me—they were truly attentive. But, with a monopoly, what’s the incentive for American to address the bigger issues? Can simple humanity and common sense prevail when the airline is looking at profit versus comfort? I don’t know.
If the opportunity presents itself, take the airline problems to a higher level—government oversight, legislators—anyone with the power to cage the gorilla.
And, lesson—you can find good people, even in a gorilla company, so keep looking for them when problems occur.
Stay tuned—let’s see if I accomplish anything more than customer service. And feel free to join me.