Free Consulting Help for U.S. Airline Executives

Free Consulting Help for U.S. Airline Executives

Wherein one of the world’s finest consultants provides free help to those in desperate need of it:

• When I call you I don’t want to speak to someone in the Philippines who doesn’t understand American idiom and keeps reading to me from a script.
• You should LOWER your prices as the flight time gets closer, not make last-minute reservations more expensive. Do you want to fill inventory or not?
• I’ve never seen unhappy employees and happy customers. Get along with your unions and encourage your people. If Southwest and Continental can do this at times, so can you.
• Stop nickel-and-diming us with charges for pillows, rest rooms, drinks, and oxygen when these charges are only being levied to compensate for idiotic decisions made in the executive suite.
• Competition is going to increase, the economy is going to recover, and people will have the opportunity to fly true world class airlines, such as Singapore Air and Emirites. You need to increase service and loyalty before that happens or you’re through.
• Merging two bad operations does not magically create one good one, but does result in one atrocious one.
• With advanced technology (boarding passes on cell phone screens) when will you end the antediluvian practice of boarding hundreds of people through one bottleneck access?
• Advise us of what we need for our safety, but don’t treat us as if we’re the village idiot in a concentration camp. We need education, not admonishment.
• Get wifi and cell phone use moving along, there is no evidence that this stuff impedes the airplane’s operation and it’s needed.
• If you leave passengers on a plane on a runway without relief for more than two hours, you should be publicly humiliated and forced into exile.
• When you create a hundred elites, no one is elite. You have first class, and coach, sometimes business. All the nonsense about 1K, Chairman’s brown-nosers, Global alliances, and people who once made the honor roll is dumber than dirt. Whomever pays the most for their ticket deserves the special treatment.
• Enforce a grooming code. I know it will never return to nice outfits, trim people, and coiffed hair, but fight attendants shouldn’t barely fit in the aisles, have unwashed hair, be devoid of makeup, and wear wrinkled clothing. It’s to the point where I’m loath to accept food from some of them.
• Painting your planes does not improve service, loyalty, brand, or image. Spend the money more wisely.
• In the airline lounges, arm the hostesses with Tasers and allow them to blast anyone in bare feet, torn tee-shirts, or who is obviously intoxicated.
• If you want to keep charging for baggage and/or encouraged checked bags over carry-on, then do something serious about lost bags and employee theft.
• Learn to treat animals traveling with more decency and humanity.
• Clean the darned planes. I’m tired of finding crap in every crevice because you think this expense can be scaled back. You’re responsible for a healthy environment. Or do you intend to charge us for clean seats?
• Fuel prices change, often abruptly. Deal with it.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.