Having recently flown to California and experienced delays both going out and coming back, I was not surprised to see the report that delays on domestic flights are the highest in U.S. history. The report on June flights said one of three domestic flights was delayed. The report also noted that incidents of lost, damaged or stolen bags had increased as well.
Airlines blame increased passengers, outdated air traffic control equipment and the weather. (Everyone blames the weather. Haven’t we always had weather to deal with?)
If they have more passengers, that means more business. Why is that a cause for delays and poor service? Just add flights—and be polite.
Fact is, my experience on most airlines has been they have poor customer service and they’re a bunch of liars. (There are a few exceptions, and I’m sure everyone has a favorite airline.)
My recent flight on United Airlines (Ted, a subsidiary of UA) was poor.
It was late arriving and late leaving for California from New Orleans. On the return, the flight was initially delayed 90 minutes. Then they announced 30 more minutes. Then another hour. Then the agent announced in a matter-of-fact manner that it will be two more hours before a “decision” is made. Parents with little children had been sitting around listening to these lies for five hours. I approached the agent and asked her to tell everyone the truth. She finally called and found out a part on the wing was not working and they might have to cancel the flight. The agent then decided it might be a good idea to provide a lunch voucher (at 2 p.m.) to everyone who had been waiting patiently. (Where do you find lunch in an airport for $7.50? Ha! And she had an “attitude” as she handed them out as if we were getting on her nerves.)
I told her I knew that the airlines string passengers along and don’t tell the truth so passengers won’t switch airlines and cancel their tickets. It is wrong. As a precaution, I went ahead and booked the next United flight at 6:13 p.m. In the next 15 minutes (at 2:15 p.m.) they announced the 10:44 a.m. flight was canceled. Everyone else began to scramble for the remaining seats on the 6:13 p.m. flight. Many were put on standby and told they may have to stay overnight. Outrageous.
As all this was going on, I wondered how an entrepreneur who might own this gate would have handled the situation? Maybe they would have walked around and given coloring books to the children, offered bottled water or coffee to the adults and provided the lunch vouchers at lunch time. They might have also seemed pained at the delay and told us what was really happening—and the chances of take-off. If we chose to change carriers, at least we would not have been as angry at United, which I will avoid flying whenever possible.
Most of the airline’s corporate employees seem unhappy. Not sure why, but it shows. I suggested to my fellow passengers that the FAA should require score sheets to be handed out to passengers on each flight. You and I would score the airline and place the form in a secure box in the terminal. If an airline gets poor scores from a majority of passengers repeatedly, the airline would lose the route. Now that’s consequences for bad service and delays! It would cost the airlines plenty on choice routes. (I am sending this idea to our U.S. senators and congressmen. I will also send it to the president of United.)
The fact is, I have had bad experiences, as I am sure you have on most of the airlines. Maybe they should make all the airlines post on their homepage and print on the tickets their “on-time” rating or percentage. A “warning” like they have on cigarettes. If they had to expose it on every ticket, they might worry about it. (I might suggest this idea to the Washington officials as well.)
Flying is still the quickest way to travel and passengers on regional flights are up 38% since 2003. The baby boomers like to travel so it won’t slow down. But someone needs to figure out the problem and fix it—because as it stands, most airline service stinks.
Another taxpayer rip-off
And folks wonder why the taxpayers don’t trust politicians and feel taxes are too high. Just look at how our politicians spend your tax dollars. Spending more than $300,000, 34 legislators and 94 staff traveled to Boston for the National Conference of Legislators. I don’t care if Louisiana is the host next year, that’s ridiculous. (How many legislators and staffers does it take to screw in a light bulb?)
On top of it all, a dozen of the legislators are term limited and not running for re-election. Is this like one last vacation at the taxpayers’ expense? What a rip-off.
Scrap July elections
Secretary of State Jay Dardenne is right on track with the idea of scrapping the July election dates, thereby increasing turnout and saving money. He has all the evidence he needs in the recent July elections. I was embarrassed by the dismal 4.89% voter turnout in East Baton Rouge. But did you see where there was an election in Assumption Parish for a drainage tax renewal and only ONE PERSON voted. I guess one vote does count BIG in July elections.
In our Daily Report online poll (though unscientific), 94% of the 1,650 votes said to get rid of July elections.
The only faction speaking out against the change is the Policy Jury Association, which doesn’t want to get their issues tied up with other matters on the fall or spring ballot. They don’t understand it’s NOT about what they want. Elections are for the people to make decisions, and they should be convenient for voters. They should also be set up to save money and encourage participation. That doesn’t happen in July elections.
Dardenne’s initiative deserves our support in the 2008 legislative session.
You thought B.R. was expensive?
In last week’s Daily Report you may have read that Forbes magazine has a report on the most and least affordable housing markets in the United States, based on the median home price and the median household income. Los Angeles topped the least affordable market, where with a median household income of $58,319, just 3% of the houses that sold in the first quarter were affordable.
No surprise there, if you look at the prices. I was just in L.A. and was astounded. You think the prices in Baton Rouge are high at a cost of $200 per square foot for a home or condo? There are condos being built on Wilshire Boulevard in L.A. that are quoting $2,000 per square foot.
I saw a nice, older, two-story home in Brentwood on a small lot with a pool. I thought, in Baton Rouge it might reach $700,000 to $800,000 at current prices. I picked up the flyer and saw $4.75 million.
And to top it off, the most expensive residential listing in U.S. history is now on the market in Beverly Hills. The 1920s-era estate of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst is on Sunset Boulevard on 6.5 acres. It has four homes, plus an apartment and security cottage. It features 29 bedrooms, three pools and a theater. Price tag: $165 million.
Comments
Posted by fourx5 on August 16, 2007 at 12:33 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Rolfe:
Adding flights is not the answer.
As with vehicle traffic, air traffic has a finite capacity, and must fit within a relatively defined structure.
At most major aiports, take-offs and landings must be spaced 90 seconds apart. Put this together with airlines that have built on a "hub and spoke" architecture and taken the mantra of "just-in-time/smaller batch size" engineering to the logical extreme. Any ripple in the system reverberates for days.
Since the airlines know it'll cost billions to move to larger airplanes flying less often (both in capitol costs and customer ill-will over fewer departure times), they've put off upgrading for the past fifteen years, letting the taxpayers bail them out over and over again.
The fact is that high load factors and a fleet of small-to-midsized jets for domestic travel have created a problem of overserved undercapacity. It's not a problem with air traffic control, and not necessarily a true service problem (airline employees have seen their pay plummet over the years while executives take home massive pay packages); but simply a question of too many airplanes, all stuffed to the gills, seeking too few slots in an overused system.
Want it to change? Wait 20-30 years - because that's how long it'll take.
--
Posted by fourx5 on August 16, 2007 at 12:41 p.m. (Suggest removal)
And by the way:
Baton Rouge _is_ expensive, when you count quality of life. We're paying $1800 rent on a beautiful 1500-s.f. home in San Jose's Willow Glen district. (http://downtownwillowglen.org/index.php)
When we were living in Baton Rouge last year, we found a 1300 s.f. apartment for $1200 a month.
The house in Willow Glen is newly renovated, has hardwood floors, a basement, a detached garage, detached shed, built-in brick barbecue and a fireplace, a covered patio, an eight-foot redwood fence, native plant landscaping, and a nice yard. We're walking distance from several boutiques and restaraunts ranging from fine dining to taco bars, as well as grocery stores, cleaners, etc. We live in a neighborhood of professionals. Very little noise or commotion, even on weekends. It takes me about twenty minutes to drive twelve miles to work on a system of expressways and highways at 8:30 a.m. Violent crime is rare in San Jose; we've had sixteen murders this year in a city of about a million people.
In Baton Rouge, our $1200 per month got us an early-80s condo apartment off of Bluebonnet with an electric range, an unsheltered patio, thin walls and noisy (usually drunk) college students, not to mention erratic neighbors and the occasional drug dealer and lots of "cars that go boom". When I finally found a job in Baton Rouge, it took me thirty minutes to drive seven miles to work on the Interstate. (How many murders in Baton Rouge this year, by the way?)
You tell me which you'd prefer. Brentwood prices are not nearly representative of what the vast majority of Californians pay, and our quality of life is arguably worth the premium, at least in the rental market. Land is at a premium here; we get along with smaller, more efficient and sustainable homes instead of 3500s.f. monsters that cost $500/mo. to cool. (Did I mention our utility bill here is around $60.00 a month? In summertime? And our car insurance is HALF what we paid in Louisiana.)
In all fairness, our cozy home would probably hit the market at about $950k, while an equivalent-sized home in Baton Rouge's Garden District would be closer to $5-600k. But our public schools are better, the weather is incredible, and we don't have to put up with Louisiana's ridiculous politicians, including the entire lot of gubenatorial candidates the state has managed to field.
Posted by JohnZachary on August 16, 2007 at 12:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Mr. McCollister,
You are spot-on in your comments about the airline industry. Customer service almost does not exist, and one wonders how other industries would fair with similar conditions. The root-cause, I believe, is not weather, increased passengers, and outdated air-traffic control equipment. The fact is, airlines have no incentive to change their behaviors because customers don't have alternatives to long travel (e.g., trains) and airlines typically receive generous treatment from our federal government thanks to their lobbyists (e.g., bankruptcy, post 9/11 handouts). When passengers sit in a crowded airplane on a hot tarmac for several hours on end, there is no punitive action taken against the airline. When flights are delayed or canceled, nothing happens to their bottom line. Wouldn't it be great if the Business Report kept making money even if only 68.1%[1] of your issues were delivered on-time, if at all?
I hate to suggest that government should step in and do something because I don't believe a nanny state can make things better. But as things stand now, customers are powerless to make airlines behave and entrepreneurs are largely locked out of the system for various reasons. The only hope I have when I fly is that my safety isn't negatively impacted by these behaviors.
John Zachary
[1] http://www.dot.gov/affairs/dot7707.htm
Posted by fourx5 on August 16, 2007 at 1:24 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Rolph wrote: "Most of the airline’s corporate employees seem unhappy. Not sure why, but it shows."
Gee, maybe it has something to do with having their pay cut year after year, pensions cut, benefits cut, and having to deal with the repercussions of stupid executive decisions that result in unahppy customers and higher stock prices?
Are you really happy knowing the captain of the regional jet you're flying makes $18k a year after training for thousands of hours to get in that seat? Or that the ex-Air Force jet jockey flying your large twinjet had his $100,000/year pay and pension cut to $60,000 so an executive can brag about "shareholder value"? Or that maintenance and cleaning are deferred until the last possible mandated period, so airplanes are more unpleasant and potentially more unsafe?
When you gonna write that column about executive (over)compensation? That's where a lot of the problems you're complaining about stem from.
Posted by ColonelHenryJohnsonRetired on August 18, 2007 at 10:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Mister Rolfe,
Had you taken a few moments to look at united's website, you can click 'show flight details' and you'll find out the on-time percentages. If you're too good to do that (yes, i realize you're an important executive), perhaps you should be shopping for a new travel agent who will fully disclose this sort of data so you can make a somewhat educated decision.
Not to defend any airline, but would you rather be somewhere between california and New Orleans at 40000 before they discover the inoperable part of the wing? (perhaps you can use your online poll to see if your readers would rather united find it out with you on the ground or up in the air!)
Colonel Henry Johnson (retired)
henryjohnson@cox.net
ps
Try flying in a plane when an engine gets blown off its mount...i bet you'd be needing to change your panties instead of dictating letters to company presidents and congressman who could care less about your thoughts.
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