Major Airlines Will Fail

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I understand what you are saying Doug, but when it comes to saving airline jobs, the really important thing is the public's perspective. What else is there to it?

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Public perspective has never been any airline's strongpoint.

Just like last night, I went to bed at a weird time, got up fresh, flew over a thousand miles and didn't nod off once. But we had a passenger get pissed AT ME, standing in the doorway, because she used frequent flier miles and got booked the red eye.

I think the hardest pill to swallow as a pilot is that the general public has the perception that you simply 'mash' the ATL button, drink coffee and get paid $1 million/year while working 2 days a month.

The general public wants a factory fresh 777, all first class service, 'friends fly free' for $39 round trip between Baton Rouge and Paris.
 
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Public perspective has never been any airline's strongpoint.

Just like last night, I went to bed at a weird time, got up fresh, flew over a thousand miles and didn't nod off once. But we had a passenger get pissed AT ME, standing in the doorway, because she used frequent flier miles and got booked the red eye.

I think the hardest pill to swallow as a pilot is that the general public has the perception that you simply 'mash' the ATL button, drink coffee and get paid $1 million/year while working 2 days a month.

The general public wants a factory fresh 777, all first class service, 'friends fly free' for $39 round trip between Baton Rouge and Paris.

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I understand what you mean. I wish I could be a PR guy for the airlines. We could take care of that problem. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
you mean you didn't check with your local AAA triptik?! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

- that's probably what the gov will tell you.. hahahaha /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
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Im In the process of writing an article to the DOT. I was doing my normal drive to cities 3 hours apart on Interstates. To my shock! there was interstate closures in both directions of travel! No one told me! I had to take an alternate means to get there and added 2 hours to my trip. How horrible! I think ill write the governor or ban interstate travel all together. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/banghead.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/bandit.gif

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Nooo, just hop on the PA during your next flight and complain to them about the interstate freeway system!
 
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Public perspective has never been any airline's strongpoint.[/quote

I''d go further. The major airlines have been sending mixed messages about what their product is since deregulation. During that time one airline has consistently marketed the same product and consistently made money with high customer satisfaction.. That's SWA of course. One thing the airlines will have to do going forward is re-brand (DAL, UAL, etc will be no more) and decide what their product is and stick with it.


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The general public wants a factory fresh 777, all first class service, 'friends fly free' for $39 round trip between Baton Rouge and Paris.

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Not quite, but to the extent that they get ideas like that it's because the airlines put them there. I contend the majority of customers just expect a reasonable product for a reasonable price. Granted they decide what reasonable is, but that's true of any industry, any business. And lots of businesses and industries are doing just fine serving these same people.
 
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I contend the majority of customers just expect a reasonable product for a reasonable price. Granted they decide what reasonable is, but that's true of any industry, any business. And lots of businesses and industries are doing just fine serving these same people.

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No, No, No!! You're missing the point!! Those businesses and industries are bad guys, bringing down the industry! No matter how badly the public wants good, cheap service, we'd better not give it to them!! That's against the rule of the profession!
 
Dude, it looks like the FBI is trying to bring the server down! Haha! The IP addresses are hilarious.
 
Would the problem correct itself if the server went "down" for a few moments?

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Oh, the traffic is good. More expsoure to what we're going here at Jetcareers. No complaints from me!

My sh*t's correct, yo! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

You know, I've got a handful of students that I'm trying to get in here. Why don't people just register and join in the fun??
 
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If I ventured over to FlyerTalk, if one of us had the cajones to say, "Hey guys, look at this from the flight attendants perspective", they'd have a field day with that one.

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Heh heh heh. I used to do that. Every single time they started talking about paycuts, I would bring up how much money it cost for all the flight training, the CFI salary, and so on.

It shut most people up, but there were always a few bungholes.

Then I dropped the, well, if you screw up, what happens? A pilot screws up and hundreds of people die.

Would you believe that some bungholes still wanted to argue?

I haven't been back there in years except to recruit some of the employees on the boards to this one.
 
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Dude, it looks like the FBI is trying to bring the server down! Haha! The IP addresses are hilarious.

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You thought I was kidding about Ashcroft, didn't you?

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
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Heh heh heh. I used to do that. Every single time they started talking about paycuts, I would bring up how much money it cost for all the flight training, the CFI salary, and so on.

It shut most people up, but there were always a few bungholes.

Then I dropped the, well, if you screw up, what happens? A pilot screws up and hundreds of people die.

Would you believe that some bungholes still wanted to argue?

I haven't been back there in years except to recruit some of the employees on the boards to this one.

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It's a courageous argument, but not relevant to pay issues. Salaries are market driven. Not based on logical thought processes about who deserves what because they have so much responsibility and what it they screw up, etc. etc. (I acknowlege this makes me, by definition, a bunghole).

Airline pilot salaries got to where they were because of effective union organizing in a closed, regulated environment. Unions controlled the supply, government made sure there was no competition. Airline salaries were headed down from the day that Jimmy Carter signed airline deregulation into law. If the 1980s and 90s hadn't been such strong business cycles and if the first few deregulation carriers hadn't been so incompetent, underfinanced and slot restricted (de facto regulation), this would have happened 20 years ago.

Admittedly it wouldn't be so catastrophic today if airline managements hadn't borrowed to the hilt, over-expanded, and let costs spiral out of control. In other words they never adopted to an open market. They acted like they were still sheltered from competition. Oops.
 
Dude, those people were saying stuff like I hope you all get furloughed because I didn't get warm nuts on my last flight. One time someone said that their flight was cancelled due to the pilots reaching their duty time limits and they said, they should have flown anyway. Yeah, whatever.

I say that people like that deserve the Southwest treatment.

Go fly someone else. You ain't worth the time to deal with your whining.
 
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Dude, those people were saying stuff like I hope you all get furloughed because I didn't get warm nuts on my last flight. One time someone said that their flight was cancelled due to the pilots reaching their duty time limits and they said, they should have flown anyway. Yeah, whatever.

I say that people like that deserve the Southwest treatment.

Go fly someone else. You ain't worth the time to deal with your whining.

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Yeah I'm not familiar with that particular site. But it sounds like a vent site, so it by definition is where all the whiners and complainers come. I was just responding to your pay arguments.

I don't get the idea that there are all these huge numbers of whiners and complainers out there. It just doesn't jive with my 30 year experience of hauling these people and trying to interact with as many of them as possible, especially ones who were unhappy.

Is it possible that you are taking it all too personally? When some customer directed anger at me I never felt it was personal (well there was one time..) but rather the fact that I happened to be the company rep in front of them at the time. Usually a few minutes just listening to them got it ironed out. Often they were angry because they had gotten legitimately bad or rude service. Given a few minutes to vent about it they were ready to move on. Everybody needs to vent their frustrations (see: "bimbo" and "bunghole") it's just the way people are. It's part of what makes passenger flying more challenging and fun than box flying.

Given a choice I'll take the newbies or infrequent fliers everytime. They're just more fun to interact with than stone-faced, dismissive businessmen.
 
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Dude, those people were saying stuff like I hope you all get furloughed because I didn't get warm nuts on my last flight.

[/ QUOTE ] /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif that's dissapointing & rude!
 
Three pages and it's like the thread is a 'floater' that won't flush!

Man gets burned on flight.

Man writes scathing, broad article about a single incident.

Man uses title to capture as much interest in his written hissy fit.

Article gets permalinked, crosslinked and cut 'n pasted across a few thousand aviation websites.

People backbite, feed on themselves and pontificate how right/wrong the author was.

(repeat)
 
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I don't get the idea that there are all these huge numbers of whiners and complainers out there. It just doesn't jive with my 30 year experience of hauling these people and trying to interact with as many of them as possible, especially ones who were unhappy.

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Of course the airline industry can do better in customer service. What industry can't?

Most people just want to get from point a to point b in reasonable comfort in a timely way. Do that, and they'll be happy.

But there are always those people who will complain and say that's not good enough.

FlyerTalk exists for those people. Believe me, these are people who paid $250 for their transcon, and then they got all pissy because they saw a couple of pilots in first. I should have been upgraded to that seat, they said. Never mind that those guys got those seats as part of their contract if they were on their way to another city for work!

They thought they deserved those seats because their fannies had been on the airline for enough miles.

I've met those people in person. You know how at network JC we don't plan on talking about aviation all the time? Well, at their gettogethers, all they do is talk about how to earn more miles.
 
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