I’m writing this while sitting on an airplane on Christmas Day. I’m grateful to be on the airplane, but I’m not anywhere near the seat I selected when I bought these tickets two months ago. In fact, I lost all of my seats. I discovered that rude fact when I went online early this morning to check in for my afternoon flight. I couldn’t even find an available seat on any of my other flights and I’m very upset about that fact because I always carefully choose seats on the aisle that are also likely to have outlets. I know how to find these seats because I fly American Airlines so often that I’ve figured out what I need to maximize my flight time.
I’m still angry about this seat situation because I learned that if you do not check in a FULL TWENTY FOUR HOURS before your flight, American Airlines can and will reassign your seat to someone else who didn’t previously have a seat on your flight. I never knew this horrid little secret until today and I’m mad as Hell.
The thing about airlines is that they get away with crap like this all the time because they are big and totally in control of their customer’s experience. In a sense, we, the customers have NO RIGHTS when it comes to flying. We are at the total mercy of airlines who do not care about us.
Let me take a moment to clarify that statement because I do believe most airline staff care about the customer. Flight attendants, pilots, gate attendants, baggage handlers and ticket agents all seem genuinely interested in the customer having a positive experience. Many of their efforts are thwarted, however, by airline policies that treat us as chattel or game pieces to be stuck wherever they can find a place.
I propose airlines try harder to have REAL customer service. If my gym can text me to let me know they are closing during a snow storm, surely the airlines can pro-actively do things to make our experience flying (and, most likely, their experience managing flights) better. All they have to do is send automated “please confirm you’ll be on this flight” messages to each passenger with paid tickets BEFORE they start giving away that passenger’s seat. WHY on earth would this be hard? They have lots of money and technology. Their programs have perfected supply and demand pricing in a way that borders on truly obscene. All they need to do is employ a little of that fancy technology toward GENUINE customer service.
So, if you are reading this, tell all your friends to write the airlines and request GENUINE customer service from all parts of the company, not just on the customer-facing staff in airports and on planes. Teach those programmers who start moving people around without consideration to customer’s wishes to show some customer service, too.
After all, we pay their bills with our hard-earned money. They need to show us respect.
