People deemed to be “crazy” by most of us often ramble on about matters that seem unimportant, unintelligible, and sometimes unbelievable. But sometimes we can learn important things from crazy people that we otherwise might not think about, or certainly wouldn’t speak about openly ourselves.
Take the case of a woman who, though perhaps not clinically “crazy” ended up last Friday being held against her will for “mental health observation” after she faked an illness in order to get, she said, a bigger and/or better seat. Apparently after being told that wasn’t going to happen the lady pitched such a fit on her early morning flight from Pensacola, FL, to Miami that the pilot turned the plane around and landed back at Pensacola. Once back on the ground everyone else got off but she – the lady whose seat was supposed to be so uncomfortable that it made her resort to drama as way of getting a free upgrade – refused to get out of that seat.
Consumers, intentionally or not, have told airlines that we want cheap fares. But many of us don’t … [+]
Okay. Let the un-“P.C.” crazy jokes – both about this lady and/or about airlines – begin here. (You know she was crazy because she actually believed there were more comfortable seats somewhere aboard her plane.) But that’s not the point.
Rather, the key point from this sad little affair involving a woman to whom we probably should give at least some benefit of the doubt is that she merely acted out publicly what many/most/all of us silently have thought to ourselves whenever we’ve been stuffed into one of today’s economy seats.
“Get me out of this medieval torture device!” Or something like that.
And that’s a problem. Not just for us. But for the airlines. In fact, it’s a BIG problem for them.
Today’s U.S. airlines are teaching all of us travelers today to hate them. We pay them our money. They get us where we want to go – most of the time anyway. And there’s roughly a three out of four chance that we’ll actually get there somewhat close (within 15 minutes +/-) to the time the airline promised us we’d be there (that’s not nearly good enough, but more about that later). But many/most/all of are learning to hate the airlines a little more every time we fly in coach.
Having our hate for a carrier we normally try to avoid re-confirmed whenever we get stuck having to fly with them is a sad state of affairs. But growing, bit by bit, to hate our preferred carrier more and more each time we board one of their flights is a pathetic comment about the state of affairs today between U.S. airlines and their customers. But that’s what happens for most of when we get shoehorned into a seat that resembles our elementary-aged children’s desks at school. That is arguably – no, make that definitively – the worst example of customer service/customer relationship management/customer loyalty management in America.
Yes, we – and by “we” I mean all us dunderheads who make getting the lowest priced ticket our primary or even only goal when shopping for a flight – deserve much of the credit/blame for our own suffering in this regard. Airlines, rather logically, have responded to the signal we’ve VERY CLEARLY SENT saying that price is pretty much all that matters to us by shaving off an couple of inches of width from coach seats, and by effectively eliminating altogether the concept of “legroom.”
But we’re irrational consumers, focused too much on price and really not aware of the overstated marketing signals we’re sending to the suits at Airlines Inc. HQ.
The suits at Airlines Inc. HQ, however, with their fancy MBAs from Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, Chicago, Hank Williams Junior College or wherever, ought to know better. They know – or should know – that consumers consistently send wrong or overstated signals about what’s most important to us when shopping for and buying goods and services.
You know that old bromide about being careful what you wish for because you might get it? That’s us consumers. We want cheap seats from here to there. Real cheap seats. But then, when we get what we asked for we hate the product (a really, really uncomfortable seat that we have to sit in for one to seven hours or whatever it’ll take from us to get there – then we get to do it again on the return flight). And then we discover we have to put up with the really really bad service, too (our flight has a 25% or greater chance of being significantly late, we get no or lousy food, we are the “targets” of cabin service that would have to improve considerably to earn the description “indifferent,” and we’re surrounded by lots of other travelers who’ve been put into really bad moods by the very same conditions that have put us in a bad mood).
Airline managers, though, should have anticipated such results all along. And they should at the very least understand them now – and do something to fix it.
Yes, yes. We told them “cheap” was the sine quo non for us. But what do we know about marketing? We’re just ordinary folks trying to squeeze a trip into our calendars and budgets (often times when neither can really painlessly accommodate those trips).
But the suits at Airlines Inc. HQ are marketing folks. And they should know that giving us what we say we want will just eventually make us hate them all the more for treating us the way we, unwittingly, told them we wanted to be treated even though we really don’t very much like being treated that way.
Alas, the allure of easily increased revenue, market share growth (or maintenance when they’re all playing the same game), and perhaps even a half-penny more profit per mile flown by the 15 to 30 additional people they can jam into their planes these days by adding more (and more narrow) seat rows is pretty hard for the suits at Airlines Inc. HQ to resist. So now, they’re giving us lots and lots of what we say we want.
And we hate them for it.
Nobody wins that way. Certainly not us. And not the airlines, either; not in the long term, or even in the mid-term.
But what if, just maybe, one or two, or a handful of those suits at Airlines Inc. HQ tried something radical like giving us travelers what we really want? Like a tiny bit more seating comfort? Like perpetually pleasant interaction with their staff and their sophisticated computer and automated voice systems? Or even consistently compassionate, caring and cooperative service when things do go wrong and we have to make changes (especially when the changes are caused by events beyond our control, like weather or airline screw-ups)?
Could the airlines actually prosper by giving us more than what we say we want? Could a bit more comfort and a little better service be a more profitable way of operating for U.S. airlines?
A few of us out here among the great unwashed like to think it can be done, and done quite well and quite profitably, especially by the first airline or two that breaks ranks from the Airlines Inc. HQ way of doing things. The first airline or two that actually gives us back just a little bit of comfort and service and, most importantly gives us back significant amounts of time by actually operating their flights not just on time vis-a-vis the scheduled arrival time but efficiently on time, will find at least $1 billion a year each in operating cost savings. (Check out these stories on the subject from the past)
Forbes
Flying planes efficiently on time means the airline will need to own fewer of them (and they cost over $100 million each, with the biggest ones going for over $300 million). It also means burning a lot less fuel, which, while down from its peak, still ain’t cheap. And it means hiring fewer people and paying less for their expensive retirement plans. Or, such an airline could go in the other direction and use all that airplane time, fuel and additional personnel freed up by operating more efficiently to expand into new markets, or increase service in existing markets, attracting even more revenue and profits.
Either way, the airline wins.
And so do we. In fact, a slightly more comfortable flight, a more pleasant travel experience and less of our time wasted by inefficient airline operations might just induce us to pay a $10 or $20 premium for a flight even when other carriers keep offering those slightly lower-priced (and significantly less comfortable/pleasant/efficient) flights between the same two cities.
Wishful thinking? Of course.
But it’s not a fantasy. It can be done. It should be done. ASAP.
I’ve been writing about this concept – which I learned about from talking with some very smart, wise and highly frustrated airline operations, marketing and finance experts – for nearly five years now. In that time, despite my writing and the writing of other like-minded boosters, and despite the passionate evangelism of the airline industry prophets crying the wilderness that the current path on which Airlines Ink. HQ is headed is the path of their ultimate failure, nothing much has changed.
Airlines are still teaching their customers to hate them by giving their customers what they wrongheadedly say they want rather than what their customers – us – really want. It’s the safe, even cowardly path of least resistance for Airlines Ink. HQ. But they’re killing their own future by following it No business can survive forever by disappointing hundreds of thousands of customers every day.
No wonder that lady on the flight out Pensacola acted up. Maybe the only way to get the attention of an entire industry committed to crazy long-term self-destruction is to act a little crazy yourself.
