They Just Don't Care
While the World sputters and burps along. War, Pandemic, Inflation, turmoil everywhere. You can count on one thing. Flying and the airlines that help us fly suck.
Maybe it goes back to an appearance I had on CNBC, before the Financial Crisis, with Mark Haines (may he rest in peace) and I said that the only industry in the World that could care less about its customers was the airline industry. It still holds true. Maybe they remember that comment.
There have been some attempts to reform the industry (not by legislation but by competition) and at the end of the day they have all failed.
Having just spent the past three weekends traveling I stand by those comments from fifteen years ago. This is an industry that could care less if the passengers are happy. They do take safety seriously and they always have so I guess thats something but the overall experience is horrific.
Transportation authorities around the country have upgraded facilities to make the passenger experience a pleasant one and for the most part they have succeeded. Even though the companies that operate in these locations have a pricing model that is abusive, they do provide a service and you really have no choice.
The experience has been prettied up by billions of taxpayer dollars but it doesn’t really change the fact that the end result is a frustrating, time consuming experience.
Normally, I would keep my frustration to a sector or an idea but today is different and today my wrath falls squarely on Jet Blue.
As I mentioned, competition, and not legislation, was supposed to bring prices down and quality of service up. Jet Blue was the leader and they were based in New York so it was welcomed and grew quickly. The planes were new, the prices were cheap and the people that worked there seemed to enjoy it. They flew directly to places that people wanted to fly and had plenty of flights to that location. Something happened during their journey. The employees started getting nastier and the planes, ugh, older and rattier. The service on board went from mediocre food (it is an airplane after all) to no food. Flight attendants gave out free soda and a one half ounce bag of Cheezits. Thank you!!
The came Covid. It got worse. Planes were delayed and cancelled non-stop. They had a variety of excuses and in the first twelve months of Covid I could understand it. Most of your planes are grounded because of lack of personnel and lack of paying customers. It costs a tremendous amount of money to maintain a fleet working and non working so they were in trouble financially. The government came to the rescue (just like in’08) and that should have carried them over and given them a chance to do maintenance and reformulate their strategy so that when business came back, they were prepared. Uh, not a chance. Jet Blue in particular blew it. They have more maintenance issues now than they have ever had. Their on-time performance was abysmal and they just didn’t care.
The “just don’t care” is not only a problem with Jet Blue however, it’s with all airlines. They know they have you. They know for the most part you are going to pay whatever price they want you to pay so you can get where you need to go. They could care less if they told you that departure time is one thing and they leave three hours later. They could care less if you miss a connecting flight or miss your brothers bachelor party. This industry has absolutely zero regard for their customers because they know we need them more than they need us. You don’t get on that seat to Fort Meyers or Vegas, they have three people waiting to pay more than you paid for your seat. They hold all the cards.
I could present the opposite viewpoint here and say that flying is a complex process and we only see a sliver of the challenges that airlines have but for everyone of the airline industry’s defense points I will say this, you have been doing it for a very long time, you should have it figured out by now. No more excuses.
For example; A friend of mine was scheduled to leave Florida on a 8:55am flight to come back to New York. The pilot who was supposed to be there was sick. Took Jet Blue three hours to find a pilot. The fact that you don’t have a contingency in place is ludicrous and this was not some small regional airport either, it was West Palm Beach International, which is one of the busiest Jet Blue locations in the US. Another example; I was scheduled to leave mid afternoon and get home early evening but Jet Blue had some crew problem in New York. Crew problems, huh? Get another crew, it’s your hub for God’s sake. While we watched the departure time stretch out hour after hour, five Jet Blue planes landed from New York and departed, some late, some not. My point is, they don’t care anymore. Critical thinking and worrying about your passengers is gone. I got home basically five and half hours after I was scheduled.
The day before, everyone I knew who flied out on Jet Blue was delayed. Some up to five hours. The excuse was the weather. Ok, but Delta (Which I used to like) had no delays. Pretty much the same routes as Jet Blue, no delays. It’s because Jet Blue has no interest in figuring it out. They went from one of the best airline in the country to the absolute worst.
One passenger I spoke to on that flight said that if you complain long and hard enough, you might get some satisfaction but don’t count on it. Having planes delayed more than two hours, compensating passenger should be an automatic thing, it’s not.
I challenge anyone anywhere to give me an industry that has such disregard for their customers and I will win that argument every time.
Oh wait, I know one. The Federal Government.