"I can understand air rage"
As I was boarding the plane yesterday, I eavesdropped on the conversation of the couple behind me -- a young man and woman, who like me, had "Group 6" tickets -- aisle seats, which meant that we were the last to load on to the plane. As a result, we were stuck in the jetway for what seemed like an eternity before we could actually get on the plane, as we waited for everyone else on the plane to stow their luggage and take their seats.
About halfway through the process, the young woman remarked, "You know, I can really understand air rage. There has to be a better way to do this."
Coincidentally, the B section of today's USA Today has an article entitled "Airlines may never fly right on customer service, experts warn."
The long and short of it is that while airlines seem to be going through the motions to improve customer service, industry experts aren't expecting it to make much of a difference. Factors at issue include the obvious "vagaries of weather" that effect on time travel, that cost of fuel and labor are more important factors on profitability than customer service, that continued cuts have taken such a toll on customer service that they're unlikely ever to full recover, and that people are so used to being abused by airlines, they're unlikely to ever look at them positively.
Now, on that last part, I think there are important exceptions, though many of us have had those experiences: stuck in a strange city overnight, on the floor of a terminal, or had our luggage lost, or faced with a particularly surly gate attendant or flight attendant. But most of the people I know, for example, who fly JetBlue love it. And I wouldn't hesitate to use it more, if JetBlue and my company's booking process only worked together. But they don't -- JetBlue requires a separate credit card for our standard travel account, so I'm stuck using AA, United, or one of the other half-dozen or so carriers that fly regularly from Boston to the west coast that actually do work with our system, unless I want to pay for it out of pocket and get reimbursed.
Still, there's no question that travel in the U.S. has just gotten abysmal over the past few years. It's bad enough being in a strange city, sleeping in a hotel and eating food you're not accustomed to. That getting from here to there and back again has gotten intolerable is just icing on the cake.
It doesn't help that the air traffic control system is decades out of date and that the volume of passengers and airplanes has increased disproportionately to the amount of traffic that the airports can physically accommodate. It makes me wish someone would hurry up and invent Star Trek's transporter beam already.