Time to Spare? Then Go By Air

02/21/2007

Paul Munnis

As a prior Commercial Pilot I have a lot of interest in aviation. It’s not just technical for indeed I have flown around the world several times now on commercial airlines as a passenger. Like many I have watched airline passenger comfort and convenience erode and like most I know the airlines could and should be doing a much better job trying to delight their passengers.

That’s what quality means -- to delight one’s customers -- our airlines have become mediocre and shoddy at their normal service. The government isn’t helping either with the belt off, shoes off, and computer tear-down drills.

So when airline passengers start demanding a ‘Passenger Bill of Rights,’ they have my nod of approval.

Everyone knows the drill. Airlines have to lease airport facility passenger lounges and so they lease only the bare bones space needs to handle peak normal daily load. When the weather deteriorates and flights must be postponed the system manages the overflow by putting the passengers onto an aircraft under pretense of planned departure, then taxing out to a remote taxi-way and parking there for ten hours with dwindling and inadequate food, water, or other amenities.

In the meantime connecting flights are missed, hotel reservations are not honored and are given away or worse yet if a room is guaranteed then you are charged. Of course kids get tired, cranky and the cry, and they drive others nuts. Passengers thus inconvenienced are not very happy people.

When the toilet paper runs out, a flight plan is finally available, some de-icing effort is done, and finally you are airborne. Everyone wants to know why they weren’t put in a hotel and rescheduled – the answer is obvious – the airlines don’t want to pay. As for the overbooked passengers -- forget them. They got paid off, were rescheduled, and they went to a local hotel to get a good nights’ sleep. They were the lucky ones.

Today even first class passengers get no food (maybe Doritos) and even water runs out. Sometimes it’s been confiscated by a security guard who fears that it might be nitroglycerine instead of H2O.

There should be a law and now there will be – good, it’s about time.

I think that we need to go even further. We have a huge aviation trust fund full of money paid in from passenger tickets. It’s time to spend some of it on mobile passenger convenience pods at bad weather airports. Passengers who are bound over should be able to enter the pods and find a comfortable lounge area, with food, water, toilet facilities, TV, self-serve child care areas and even sleeping facilities much like Pullman accommodations on a train. Voice Over IP telephones should be available offering free long distance calling. The use of the passenger pods should be gratis to stranded passengers and airports should charge the airlines a fee when they must use the pods. Airports with the most weather related flight problems should get first dibs on these pods and airports with little to no such problems should not get them.

I was encouraged while listening to MN Congressman Oberstar the other day. He is a man of common sense. I expect that he will use it on behalf of airline passengers. At the least he would put them on an Amtrack train and get them on their way. That’s what they do in Europe when a connecting flight is missed – put you in first class comfort on a fast train headed to your destination. Taxis are used to get you connected with your train. Why can’t we do just as well as Europe does?

Start deducting poor passenger quality experience on a cost basis from the performance bonuses of airline execs and then see how fast things get fixed. Better yet make them join the throng of passengers stranded in an aluminum tube for 10 hours out at the end of a taxi-way with the aircraft tires frozen to the pavement and with everyone aboard fully aware of who he is and then throw his cell phone in the toilet.