So are the discount airlines going to kill Delta?

[johnbail]

Because it won’t, your posting about the business model they are following is dead on IMO. I would further add that some of the lager airlines have to many interests in business ventures other then their core business. This drags them down even further in a bad economy. There is such a thing as to much diversification. I do have one question for you pilots out there. A Pilot for Comair once told me they where paid only for hours flying I have always wondered why you would not prefer not to be paid salary? Is this even true. From the information I have seen the make you work right up to the maximum time allow by law anyway. Being paid a salary seems a much better arrangement then being paid hourly. And as I have said on the other board I post on With nothing but respect to you pilots out their but with the investment and time you have put in to your carriers you could have been doctors and purchased really nice plans for your self

 

[derg]

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Being paid a salary seems a much better arrangement then being paid hourly.

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Not really in all circumstances.

As an FO, I was paid salary.

I got paid $14,400 whether I flew 0 hours (cool!) or if I flew 75 hours.

It wasn't so bad at first because I had quite a few blocks of days off that I could get out of MKE and see m'lady down in Florida.

However, the director of operations at Skyway decided that 11 days off per month was way too much so everyone went down to 8 days off per month (mixed some reserve into regular line schedules for 'efficiency') and my hours went from about 75 to 85.

Still at a whopping $14,400.

More work, fewer days off is a great cost savings for the company, but man, what a blow to your personal life. Then they experimented with a continuous 24-hour block of time being considered a 'day off'.

You could legally work all week, and as long as you didn't 'time out' as per the FAA maximum, marketing was scheduling your final arrival at 6pm on tuesday, but then your check-in time for the next trip was at 6:05pm on wednesday. The FAA was happy because you had 24 hours free of duty, the company was happy because they're doing more with less, but then the pilot pretty much gets reamed.

"You got a day off, sheesh!" was the crew scheduler's remark.

 

[johnbail]

Ok point taken, I guess I have the good fortune to work for desent people.

 

[tonyw]

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I was speaking more about businesses who say for example, "hey you don't liked being crammed into a little seat, then go someplace else we don't need your business".

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Where you gonna go? The standard seat is the same for pretty much anyone. If someone's going to bitch about a seat on airline A, well, they'll bitch about a seat on airline B, because they're pretty much the same.

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I will argue, however, that UAL isn't "rewarding" anybody with a bigger seat. If you paid for a bigger seat, that's what you get. If you used frequent flier miles you've probably paid for that seat 10 times over.

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You need to go back and read what their policy is again. You don't PAY for the e-plus seats with miles. If you fly enough to be put in their upper tier program, you get the e-plus seats. Put your butt on a seat on their metal for 25K miles and you get the e-plus seats. And you get those seats whether you paid the Aunt Bessie fare or the I know you're screwing me but I gotta be there tomorrow so I have no choice fare.

Or you pay the refundable coach fare and you get the extra room. Your choice. That, in addition to the fact that I can pretty much get anywhere I need to without having to change planes, is why most of my business goes to UAL.

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Professional treatment doesn't really cut it IMO. I have been treated very professionally by employees, and made to feel like it was my fault I had a problem.

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Then you weren't treated professionally. Treating you professionally would be saying, "sorry to hear that, sir, here are your options." You get what you need, which is a choice of things you can do. They get their job done efficiently. Everyone wins.

This isn't from you, but instead of posting another message I figured I'd just reply to it all at once.

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Nothing bothered me more then to sit and listen to the FA and gate agents just say such hateful things about customers.

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Come on, man. You're telling me you think this is any different than any other job? They're just swapping stories about people who made their jobs difficult. It's no different than me telling some of the people I work with what a pain Joe at company XYZ is or that Sue at company ABC is an absolute idiot.

As for Aunt Bessie and the car seat, it isn't that Aunt Bessie doesn't know what she's doing. That's understandable. It's that she complains and bitches and whines when she's told, there really isn't any room to store this in the cabin, so we're going to have to check it.

 

[johnbail]

But it is unacceptable to do that in front of customers. When the Gate Agents or behind their counter there is not cone of silence you can still hear plainly what they are saying. When those FA sit in those seats in front of the place they are only a few feet away you can still here them.

 

[naunga]

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Where you gonna go?

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I could decide to drive. I could decide to go on a carrier who's first class isn't that expensive. I could decide that you know, the trip isn't worth the hassle, so I'll just make a phone call. There are always options.

As far as the frequent flier stuff goes: Whether you use miles or what you still have had to spend a lot of money to get that "reward". I admit UAL appears to be better than most, but you still had to make a lot of trips, which means a lot of money was spent, in order to get that seat. I agree also that rewarding people for repeat business is a great idea, but if ratio of money spent to value of the reward is low then it wasn't worth it, and IMO can be insulting.

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Treating you professionally would be saying, "sorry to hear that, sir, here are your options."

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I guess you and I have different definitions of professional. I look at being treated professionally as I don't get cursed at and people use proper grammer. So I get "What do you want sir?" instead of "What 'cho need?" or "I'll ask my supervisor" instead of "I axe my boss." But IMO I can be treated professionally but get an attitude (most times it's this elitist snobby attitude I get).

I see your point though.

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Come on, man. You're telling me you think this is any different than any other job? They're just swapping stories about people who made their jobs difficult

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Even though this was for another user I wanted to chime in. You're right they weren't doing anything wrong by swapping stories / venting to eachother, except for the fact that they were doing it in a public area. It's has to be kept out of the public eye. As I said before we used to have some pretty ugly sessions at the helpdesk talking about difficult / clueless people, but it stayed at the desk. We were even conscious enough to not talk about that stuff when another tech was on the phone. I had a Boy Scout leader once tell me during a Leadership Training that "it's all magic show", meaning that you have two faces the one the public sees and the one that your co-workers see. If you had a crappy day no customer should be able to tell that by your body language, your speech, or in the way you treat them. It's not impossible, I worked on a staff with a bunch of teenagers who never once let a kid see that they were having a bad day. If they can do it, then so can Joe Ticketagent. So, on one hand you're right, not a big deal, but on the other hand no customer should ever be able to say, "you should've heard those employees talking about their customers."

Think about it. You're obviously in business (what do you do BTW...if you don't mind telling), if one of your customers came to you and said, "You know, I didn't appreciate your employee talking about me that way." was that employee acting professionally? Would you simply look at your customer and say, "Oh well it's not a big deal you know. They were just swapping stories. I'm sure they meant 'clueless moron' in a good way." How would you feel if the roles were reversed and someone you heard someone you did business with bad mouthing you?

My two cents for now...BTW (and I'll probably jinx this now), but I must say that I think this may be one of the longest threads on this board that wasn't a flamewar ala AL or the like)

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Cheers.

Naunga

 

[tonyw]

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I admit UAL appears to be better than most, but you still had to make a lot of trips, which means a lot of money was spent, in order to get that seat.

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Well, that's kind of the whole point of the e-plus seating and a frequent flyer program, don't you think? They want to get my butt on UAL metal versus that of another airline. And they succeeded. Plus, I was going to make those trips, anyway. Now they gave me a reason to look at them first instead of their competitors. It's one of the things they did right.

I think that AMR messed up with their version of it, with the whole more room through coach bit. That means that someone who travels a lot on them and who pays a lot for a seat gets the same amount of room as Aunt Bessie who paid $200 for her transcon and flies twice a year. Everyone gets rewarded, instead of those who generate the most revenue for you.

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I guess you and I have different definitions of professional. I look at being treated professionally as I don't get cursed at and people use proper grammer.

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I guess I have higher standards of professionalism than you do. I expect a professional person in a CSR role to present me with solutions to my problem. In my opinion, someone who can't use proper grammar and who curses at a customer, shouldn't have been hired at all. Period.

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You're right they weren't doing anything wrong by swapping stories / venting to eachother, except for the fact that they were doing it in a public area. It's has to be kept out of the public eye.

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You're right, but the thing is, it's really easy for those of us who sit in an office to do that. Get off the phone with someone, and then you can go to your co-worker's office and say, man, did you deal with so and so before? What a pain in the butt and what a clueless idiot! Believe me, I have said things that would make anything you've heard CSRs and FAs said sound like warm praise. But I get the benefit of a little privacy. They don't.

Believe me, I do understand how important it is to build relationships with customers and so on, because that's what I do all day long. But the customer has to have realistic expectations. All I can do is deliver an audience. I can't make their phone ring if they're selling something that people don't want to buy or if they put together a crappy ad or whatever.

I think that's why I'm a lot more understanding of the problems of unrealistic customer expectations than a lot of people are. Unfortunately, I deal with them every day.

Finally, I try to avoid any flame wars. We're supposed to be exchanging different viewpoints and opinions here and we're supposed to do it in a civil way. Just because I disagree with someone doesn't mean that I have to insult him.

And, to get to the topic of conversation here, nope, the discounters ain't gonna kill any network carrier that didn't have any serious problems beforehand.

 

[blee256]

I've got a comment. You should either be a LCC or "full Service" airline. Don't be a full service airline with LCC amenities.

I generally fly United. I think its a great airline and I hope they emerge from backruptcy. Last week I was going to fly home (LAX)from jax for a wedding. United's plane was broken so they put me on delta. I was excited because i was going thru hartsfield, since I've never been there. I get on my atl-lax leg and they start passing out menu's with prices on it. I was like "what the hell". Good thing i ate breakfast. And then they start charging a $5 entertainment fee. I knew that was coming, so i opted to rent those portable dvd players. I'll prolly do that more often, its really helps the time go by a lot faster. Back to my ranting How are they considered a full service airline if they charge for food and IFE? The only reason they dont charge for drinks is probably because they arent allowed to.

I think america west and US airways charges for food too. United's , meals arent the greatest but they hold me over til we land.

-Brian