Are Flyers Fed Up?

By Richard Zoglin

Eileen Sailer is one air traveler who wasn't broken up when Northwest Airlines went on strike. A health-care consultant from Denison, Iowa, Sailer had her bad air day on Northwest last June, when she traveled from Minneapolis, Minn., to Washington. First, her 2:30 p.m. flight was delayed 2 1/2 hours because a cabin door wouldn't shut. Then, after the passengers had boarded and the plane was backing away from the gate, there was a jolt that knocked over several flight attendants; a wheel had fallen off. After a two-hour repair delay, the plane finally took off--not for Washington but for an unscheduled stop in Detroit, where the passengers had to scramble to find another flight to Washington. They finally arrived at 1 in the morning. Sailer was so upset at the mishaps and the "apathy and rudeness" of the airline's personnel that she wrote a letter complaining. She never got a reply.

Service is just now returning to normal on Northwest, following settlement of the pilots' strike that shut down operations for nearly three weeks. But for many disgruntled flyers, normal service isn't anything to look forward to. Customer complaints about Northwest, for everything from canceled flights to surly ground personnel, were mounting well before the strike and now lead the industry. Northwest officials blame many of the prestrike problems on labor slowdowns, but others think the trouble is more endemic. Some travel agents say they routinely try to avoid booking Northwest for customers with a choice. General Motors grew so annoyed with the airline's spotty on-time record that it now uses a new airline, Pro Air, to fly employees between Detroit and New York City.

Northwest's problems may be worse than most, but they're hardly unfamiliar for an industry that, amid soaring profits, seems to have left customer service on the runway. Planes are more cramped, meals are less filling, and the cost of business seats has climbed steadily over the past few years. With widespread discount fares, the average ticket price has stayed relatively low, rising less than the rate of inflation. But restrictions on those fares are getting stiffer, and pricing practices have grown so byzantine that no layman can hope to fathom them. The hub system--in which each airline feeds its flights into one or more central airports--has boosted service for many passengers, but it has also exaggerated the effect of weather delays, created longer airport lines and increased frustration. "Airlines don't think they're in the service business," says John Tschohl, a Minneapolis-based customer-service guru. "They think they're in the transportation business."

Complaining about airline travel is, of course, as American as booing the umpire in baseball. And despite those meager snacks that have replaced hot meals on most flights, it's easy to forget how smoothly the industry has turned air travel into an affordable, convenient and (despite tragedies like the recent crash of a Swissair flight) overwhelmingly safe mode of transport. Some carriers, moreover, seem to be doing things right. Southwest Airlines, for example, has won high marks by offering cheerful, low-cost service and eschewing the near ubiquitous hub system. And Continental, for years an industry stumblebum, has improved substantially under new CEO Gordon Bethune.

Yet the industry that built its business in the 1960s and '70s by stressing customer service (remember when passengers could change flights at the last minute?) has become an arrogant and forbidding behemoth. Written complaints to the Department of Transportation for the 12 months ending in July were up 15% over the previous year. Consumer advocates say it's worse than that. Paul Hudson, executive director of Aviation Consumer Action Project, a watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader, estimates that complaints have nearly doubled and claims "the level of intensity in complaints is greater than I've ever seen." Hal Salfen, director of consumer affairs for the International Airline Passengers Association, an advocacy group based in Dallas, asserts, "Service has totally gone down the tubes."

Consider Benito Martinez, who set out for Albuquerque, N.M., from Burbank, Calif., aboard America West with his wife and toddler earlier this month. The plane was delayed 90 min. by weather and an additional 25 min. because the pilot missed the gate when parking the plane, so of course the Martinezes missed their connection in Phoenix, Ariz. They waited several hours for the last flight to Albuquerque, only to discover, after trekking to the other end of the terminal for a "gate change," that the flight had been canceled and they would have to spend the night in Phoenix. "All I want to hear is, 'We're sorry,'" says Martinez. "Instead I hear, 'You have to go downstairs,'" to wait in line again.

Then there's the executive for a bottled-water company who booked a round trip from California to Greenville, S.C., and decided, on his return, to drive to Atlanta and pick up his connecting flight there. Though Delta agents in Atlanta assured him that he could do this, agents at the same airport on his return trip insisted he buy an entirely new ticket--an extra $671 for not taking one leg of his flight. An NBC Sports employee, flying Delta from Salt Lake City, Utah, to New York City in June, was delayed first by problems with the plane's air conditioning, then by malfunctioning radar. He finally arrived after midnight at the wrong airport (JFK instead of LaGuardia). His luggage didn't follow until four days later--plopped, inexplicably, on the doorstep of his traveling companion, who lived more than 50 miles away.

And pity this unhappy young woman looking for satisfaction at a US Airways ticket counter in Boston:

Passenger: Things like this make me realize why Delta is my favorite airline.

US Airways agent (overhearing the conversation): So go to the Delta terminal.

Passenger: I wasn't talking to you.

Agent: I'm a supervisor, and I can join in any conversation I want.

Financially, the airlines have never been healthier: operating profits for the second quarter of this year were $2.8 billion, up 17% from the same period in 1997. Though airline stocks dropped 20% in the recent stock-market plunge, analysts feel the industry is better equipped than it has been to handle future economic downturns. One reason for its profitability is low oil prices; another is that planes are flying at a record capacity, with load factors of more than 70%. That increased efficiency has helped hold down fares, but it also means more crowded planes. Airline employees--particularly the overburdened gate and ticket agents--seem increasingly unable to cope. "Ten years ago, employees were trained in customer service," says Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, a Colorado-based aviation-research firm. "Today they're trained to process passengers."

The airlines' secretive and sometimes high-handed manner doesn't help. Passengers are routinely herded onto planes and only afterward told they must endure an hourlong air-traffic delay. Big discount fares are advertised widely, but prices seem to slide up and down with little explanation. Nor will the airlines reveal how many discount seats are allocated on flights (the number varies according to demand for the flight, with the goal of maximizing revenue). And the airlines have drained most of the spontaneity from the nation's leisure-time travel, with those money-saving but anxiety-producing "nonrefundable" fares, which require long advance purchases and slap heavy penalties for even a slight change in plans. (The Internet has lately helped reverse this a bit, offering customers a chance to bid for cheap last-minute fares.)

Airline deregulation, instituted in 1978, has reduced competition, with major hub cities like Atlanta and Minneapolis dominated by a single carrier, which can virtually dictate fares. American Airlines, which dominates the market from Miami to the Caribbean, cut fares drastically a couple of years ago, when a reconstituted Pan Am came on the scene; only hours after Pan Am shut down last February, American's fares shot up. Miami travelers complain that American's busy schedule is something of a sham, with flights often canceled for mysterious reasons. On the route to Nassau, says Perla Martinez, a Miami travel agent, "everybody books American because it has so many flights. But when you get to the airport, it's, 'Sorry, your flight is canceled for mechanical problems.'"

Airline executives deny that they engage in anticompetitive practices, contend that individual horror stories don't reflect the industry's generally good service record and argue that the benefits of the hub system far outweigh its drawbacks. "It allows medium-size cities like Sacramento to have one-stop service to 200 cities," says American spokesman Chris Chiames. "If we didn't have the hub system," asserts Northwest spokesman Marta Laughlin, "we wouldn't have the number of passengers that are needed for the volume of service we offer. You pay a premium for convenience and accessibility."

Yet the complaints of travelers and small airlines have begun to reach Washington. The DOT is about to institute guidelines aimed at preventing "predatory" pricing, and Democratic Congressman John Dingell of Michigan last week introduced a bill to foster more competition in hub cities. Meanwhile, Northwest, which has five more union contracts to negotiate, is hoping to move from its labor problems to winning back angry customers. "We will do whatever is necessary to regain their trust and their business," vows Laughlin. For Northwest, and the rest of the industry, it will be a long journey.

--Reported by Wendy Cole/Minneapolis, Tammerlin Drummond/Miami, Aixa M. Pascual/New York and Adam Zagorin/Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by Wendy Cole/Minneapolis, Tammerlin Drummond/Miami, Aixa M. Pascual/New York and Adam Zagorin/Washington, with other bureaus