Some airlines like Tiger in Australia have beggared belief that they run as a service business. After a load of complaints earlier this year they at least announced they would attempt to improve. I would like to think that the stink I created when I encountered their non-existent internet front counter contributed towards a reappraisal of simply awful business practice for which "low cost" constitutes a lame excuse. I will never have the chance to find out first hand whether there are real improvements because I will never fly with them again. Good one, Tiger!
The Tiger experience was not of an organisation under stress, but an organisation that deliberatively chose a cattle truck strategy to manage customers. But, in the hurly burly of airline competition, what used to be expected on long-haul flights can no longer be taken for granted. Poor staff morale is obvious in understaffed aircraft cabins. And front-line morale is a litmus test for how well managers in the airline are performing. The miracle is that most flight attendant crews are as cheerful and attentive as they are for at least part of the flight.
As a former business school academic I observe what goes on in businesses I deal with, especially when things don't go as well as they ought to do. The reflections here are from a specific single case, flying Iberia from JFK New York to Madrid and on to Amsterdam. The recent storms in North America and Europe have really been a full blown test of airline, airport and baggage handler management practices and service strategies. And the businesses I encountered over the snowy weekend of 20-21 December 2009 failed the implicit principles of organisational management and customer relations dismally.
Delays and cancellations can be expected given the severe weather conditions experienced on two continents in the northern hemisphere over the weekend. But, an airline would also be expected to have contingency plans for assisting their passengers when there would be nothing else but high customer demand for assistance from the airline. It has happened before and it will happen again, so airlines will have in place a strategy to make things as smooth as possible for customers, wouldn't they? Apparently not.
Most passengers deal with the delays that result from natural phenomena quite phlegmatically and often with remarkably good humour. But, if you have to wait for hours in a 100 metre long queue which is being served by three people, something tells you that senior management in the airline are not doing what they are being paid for: to run an efficient service organisation.
When information is withheld from passengers at JFK and they are told in the afternoon there will be no delays to a flight when snow is closing airports in Europe, they have a right to feel miffed when the plane is pushed back two hours after the due departure, ninety minutes of which they have been sitting in an aircraft whose engines had not even been started. Passengers can accept that their plane has to be re-routed when snow is falling on Madrid airport and they have missed their connection [which had been cancelled anyway, but noone will tell you that].
The lack of information about closed airports for people en route and anxious about re-booking a connection is completely unacceptable. What is likewise completely unacceptable is the failure to inform passengers heading for Madrid from New York and sitting on the tarmac in Malaga several hundred kilometres to the south that they would be lucky to get out of Madrid that day at all and the airport was full of people not only waiting for flights that day but also passengers whose flights had been cancelled the evening before.
A further aspect of this management failure to have in place systems that would keep passengers informed is the failure to advise where transitting passengers could go to make arrangements: indeed, there was no transit desk at the airport. If there was, there was no-one to tell you and no such information was given onboard to the unsuspecting passengers. The pilot spoke at length about the weather conditions in Spanish and English, but did not enlighten the passengers on what they were about to experience. There were no Iberia staff to meet the plane and to advise and assist passengers on the general situation and what they needed to do.
This failure of service by the company was exacerbated by the organisation of the modern, architecturally pleasing but poorly fitted out Madrid airport - an issue of style at the expense of utility [for example, general departure notices were at least 50 metres apart, did not face the pedestrian traffic but were 180 degrees to the traffic flow, were in small characters and were at eye level, so when crowds gathered at each of the sparse boards, you had to jostle to see the announcement regarding your flight. This is just one aspect of Madrid Airport, which is a design disgrace. All of the signage is confusing from the moment you enter from your flight.
So, passengers unfamiliar with Iberia and the Madrid airport had to discover for themselves where to go for information, only to find the enormous queues leading to under-staffed information booths. Eventually, I worked out the only way to deal with the chaos was to get into an Iberia check-in line with my original internet booking documents in hand as well as my boarding pass issued at JFK for my Amsterdam sector. There I was dealt with cheerfully by a Ms Fernandez, who waitlisted me on the next Amsterdam flight, which I eventually boarded.
At the boarding gate which changed three times - the final time while people were being directed from one end of the terminal to the other, at least 300-400 metres - another example of an airline, which failed to have in place basic procedures. First of all, given that it was clear that there were quite a number of standby passengers, you would think that the company would have had more than two people to handle boarding of passengers with boarding passes and the clamour of passengers seeking to get on the flight. One would have thought too that there would be a priority line for passengers who had been held over from the previous evening and had been at the airport all day [the plane eventually left at 7 pm]. There appeared to have been prior seat allocations for some passengers and I think that is how I got on board, but what resulted was pushing and shoving as passengers thrust forward their passports and standby passes. Chaos created by a failure of management to have contingencies to manage the gates in extreme weather conditions. The young man handling this mess should get a company award for the poise he demonstrated in dealing with the resulting mob. The responsible managers should be sacked.
Further delays in take-off and arrival at Schipol Amsterdam occurred that were weather related. But after my bag failed to appear on the carousel, I joined the growing queue outside AviaPartner, the baggage handling company. I counted the number in the queue and there were over a hundred people. They were being assisted... by two employees. Given the weather conditions, one would have thought an alert management would have had more employees on standby to deal with any demand of this sort. This was happening after 11pm. I was fairly grouchy by this time - it had been twenty-four hours since my trip had begun - and queue jumpers were getting on everyone's nerves. There was neither at Madrid Airport or at AviaPartners any queue ticket system to ensure that people doing the right thing were being protected. This is not advanced technology but it is used commonly in a number of businesses and government agencies in Australia [and who says government bodies don't know how to handle business!].
Now, my luggage tag has a company issued barcode. That would suggest to me that the baggage is scanned. It would also suggest to me that the woman taking my details could tell me whether my bag was still at Madrid, Dakar or on its way to Buenos Aires. Nothing of the sort. Twenty-four hours later [I am seriously jet-lagged] my online baggage tracing details still read, "No information available." That says it all.
I hope that the management at Iberia and other airlines and the management in other sectors of the industry reviews what has happened in their company and their industry because with climate change we are going to have more of these extreme weather events. The industry is old enough to have learned these lessons. What I observed while in Iberia's hands and their baggage handling company was a failure of customer support strategy, which is the prime concern of management to put in place systems to deal with not only the known but the unexpected. Or, what I was seeing was a hubristic lack of concern for passengers' interests, which are also the airline's interest, because each airline relies on returning customers and growing its clientele at the check-in counter.
The passengers were also poorly served by the airport infrastructure. Clear signage, with clear messages are the ABC of movement around airports. Boards that are too small with the wrong orientation, too far apart and at the wrong height to be seen in peak periods by large numbers of passengers are useless. In the very long terminal there were no moving walkways, but the ceiling was nice. The body responsible for the airport should either resign and/or get in place someone to fix the mess in the otherwise impressive building.
The Tiger experience was not of an organisation under stress, but an organisation that deliberatively chose a cattle truck strategy to manage customers. But, in the hurly burly of airline competition, what used to be expected on long-haul flights can no longer be taken for granted. Poor staff morale is obvious in understaffed aircraft cabins. And front-line morale is a litmus test for how well managers in the airline are performing. The miracle is that most flight attendant crews are as cheerful and attentive as they are for at least part of the flight.
As a former business school academic I observe what goes on in businesses I deal with, especially when things don't go as well as they ought to do. The reflections here are from a specific single case, flying Iberia from JFK New York to Madrid and on to Amsterdam. The recent storms in North America and Europe have really been a full blown test of airline, airport and baggage handler management practices and service strategies. And the businesses I encountered over the snowy weekend of 20-21 December 2009 failed the implicit principles of organisational management and customer relations dismally.
Delays and cancellations can be expected given the severe weather conditions experienced on two continents in the northern hemisphere over the weekend. But, an airline would also be expected to have contingency plans for assisting their passengers when there would be nothing else but high customer demand for assistance from the airline. It has happened before and it will happen again, so airlines will have in place a strategy to make things as smooth as possible for customers, wouldn't they? Apparently not.
Most passengers deal with the delays that result from natural phenomena quite phlegmatically and often with remarkably good humour. But, if you have to wait for hours in a 100 metre long queue which is being served by three people, something tells you that senior management in the airline are not doing what they are being paid for: to run an efficient service organisation.
When information is withheld from passengers at JFK and they are told in the afternoon there will be no delays to a flight when snow is closing airports in Europe, they have a right to feel miffed when the plane is pushed back two hours after the due departure, ninety minutes of which they have been sitting in an aircraft whose engines had not even been started. Passengers can accept that their plane has to be re-routed when snow is falling on Madrid airport and they have missed their connection [which had been cancelled anyway, but noone will tell you that].
The lack of information about closed airports for people en route and anxious about re-booking a connection is completely unacceptable. What is likewise completely unacceptable is the failure to inform passengers heading for Madrid from New York and sitting on the tarmac in Malaga several hundred kilometres to the south that they would be lucky to get out of Madrid that day at all and the airport was full of people not only waiting for flights that day but also passengers whose flights had been cancelled the evening before.
A further aspect of this management failure to have in place systems that would keep passengers informed is the failure to advise where transitting passengers could go to make arrangements: indeed, there was no transit desk at the airport. If there was, there was no-one to tell you and no such information was given onboard to the unsuspecting passengers. The pilot spoke at length about the weather conditions in Spanish and English, but did not enlighten the passengers on what they were about to experience. There were no Iberia staff to meet the plane and to advise and assist passengers on the general situation and what they needed to do.
This failure of service by the company was exacerbated by the organisation of the modern, architecturally pleasing but poorly fitted out Madrid airport - an issue of style at the expense of utility [for example, general departure notices were at least 50 metres apart, did not face the pedestrian traffic but were 180 degrees to the traffic flow, were in small characters and were at eye level, so when crowds gathered at each of the sparse boards, you had to jostle to see the announcement regarding your flight. This is just one aspect of Madrid Airport, which is a design disgrace. All of the signage is confusing from the moment you enter from your flight.
So, passengers unfamiliar with Iberia and the Madrid airport had to discover for themselves where to go for information, only to find the enormous queues leading to under-staffed information booths. Eventually, I worked out the only way to deal with the chaos was to get into an Iberia check-in line with my original internet booking documents in hand as well as my boarding pass issued at JFK for my Amsterdam sector. There I was dealt with cheerfully by a Ms Fernandez, who waitlisted me on the next Amsterdam flight, which I eventually boarded.
At the boarding gate which changed three times - the final time while people were being directed from one end of the terminal to the other, at least 300-400 metres - another example of an airline, which failed to have in place basic procedures. First of all, given that it was clear that there were quite a number of standby passengers, you would think that the company would have had more than two people to handle boarding of passengers with boarding passes and the clamour of passengers seeking to get on the flight. One would have thought too that there would be a priority line for passengers who had been held over from the previous evening and had been at the airport all day [the plane eventually left at 7 pm]. There appeared to have been prior seat allocations for some passengers and I think that is how I got on board, but what resulted was pushing and shoving as passengers thrust forward their passports and standby passes. Chaos created by a failure of management to have contingencies to manage the gates in extreme weather conditions. The young man handling this mess should get a company award for the poise he demonstrated in dealing with the resulting mob. The responsible managers should be sacked.
Further delays in take-off and arrival at Schipol Amsterdam occurred that were weather related. But after my bag failed to appear on the carousel, I joined the growing queue outside AviaPartner, the baggage handling company. I counted the number in the queue and there were over a hundred people. They were being assisted... by two employees. Given the weather conditions, one would have thought an alert management would have had more employees on standby to deal with any demand of this sort. This was happening after 11pm. I was fairly grouchy by this time - it had been twenty-four hours since my trip had begun - and queue jumpers were getting on everyone's nerves. There was neither at Madrid Airport or at AviaPartners any queue ticket system to ensure that people doing the right thing were being protected. This is not advanced technology but it is used commonly in a number of businesses and government agencies in Australia [and who says government bodies don't know how to handle business!].
Now, my luggage tag has a company issued barcode. That would suggest to me that the baggage is scanned. It would also suggest to me that the woman taking my details could tell me whether my bag was still at Madrid, Dakar or on its way to Buenos Aires. Nothing of the sort. Twenty-four hours later [I am seriously jet-lagged] my online baggage tracing details still read, "No information available." That says it all.
I hope that the management at Iberia and other airlines and the management in other sectors of the industry reviews what has happened in their company and their industry because with climate change we are going to have more of these extreme weather events. The industry is old enough to have learned these lessons. What I observed while in Iberia's hands and their baggage handling company was a failure of customer support strategy, which is the prime concern of management to put in place systems to deal with not only the known but the unexpected. Or, what I was seeing was a hubristic lack of concern for passengers' interests, which are also the airline's interest, because each airline relies on returning customers and growing its clientele at the check-in counter.
The passengers were also poorly served by the airport infrastructure. Clear signage, with clear messages are the ABC of movement around airports. Boards that are too small with the wrong orientation, too far apart and at the wrong height to be seen in peak periods by large numbers of passengers are useless. In the very long terminal there were no moving walkways, but the ceiling was nice. The body responsible for the airport should either resign and/or get in place someone to fix the mess in the otherwise impressive building.
