How to Fix the Airline Industry

As I write this, I am sitting in my room in the Hampton Inn in Alexandria, VA. Why am I in Alexandria, VA? I’m glad you asked. My flight home from Reagan National airport yesterday was canceled and there were no more flights available back to Rochester, so US Air sprung for the room and put me on a flight leaving later this morning.

As part of my new job, I am doing a lot of traveling, and am on 4-6 planes a week. I also am flying on several different airlines.

I have spent the previous 15 years in one customer service role or another, so it is kind of engrained in me. I can’t help but look for high levels of customer service and notice when I’m not getting it. Most of the time, I don’t think much of it. Other times, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

In the past few months, I have been in 12 different airports on 6 different airlines. When you travel that much, it is unlikely that you won’t experience a problem. Sometimes, the airline personnel were helpful, others, left things to be desired.

For the most part, in my experience, the industry as a whole has taken on a very ‘oh well’ attitude when it comes to customer service. As with everything, there are exceptions. I know that margins are razor thin these days, and people are more careful on how they spend their money. I also understand that I am new to the industry, so I do not know all the regulations they have to deal with and the costs and expenses involved with these regulations, but good customer service is free.

It is like one airline dropped the customer satisfaction and people didn’t revolt, so the rest of the industry followed suit, and now there is no going back. It makes me wonder if someone were to come along and make an airline that had decent flight routes that concentrated on customer satisfaction, rather than on the bottom line. What would that be like? Sure, it would most likely be more expensive to fly, but would enough passengers value the higher costs in exchange for better service?

Then it hit me.. what if Disney started an airline? I’m not saying they would make it like the cruise line or the theme parks, Minny and Daisy wouldn’t be your stewardesses, but just if they took a Disney attitude to the industry. Would the other airlines follow suit? Since everything Disney does is symbiotic in nature, they could make MCO (Orlando) and SNA (John Wayne) or even LAX (Los Angeles) their main hubs. That way, most flights to Disney World or Disneyland would be direct flights on Air Disney.

Sure it would be more expensive than flying on Southwest or JetBlue. Nothing Disney does is cheap, but in my trips to Disney, you don’t feel ripped off (with the only possible exception being the quick service meals). I always felt that I was getting taken care of, and the cast members always give the impression that they are always willing to go above and beyond to make sure you have a ‘magical’ day.

There will always be the people that use cost as their primary determining factor when choosing many things, but there are also the people who are willing to spend a little extra to get that little extra experience.