David J. Danto
Principal Consultant,
Collaboration/ AV / Multimedia / Video / UC
Dimension Data
Director of Emerging
Technology
Interactive
Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Video &
Technology Industry News: @NJDavidD
(Read David’s Bio) (See
David’s CV) (Read David’s Other Blogs & Articles)
Time To Take Back The Sky
My friend
Joe Brancatelli wrote an
article a couple of months ago asking the question “why do the airlines
hate us?” It’s a really good
question. If you’ve flown a US
commercial airline over the last few years you know that ‘hate’ is the truth
even without reading his examples (or mine below) - you have plenty of examples
of your own. A small cabal of airline
companies run by greedy management (that is totally in the pocket of Wall
Street) are not just making everything harder for their passengers and
employees, they’re doing it with an “in your face” attitude that knows no
bounds. It’s time for people to rise-up
and put a stop to it.
The incident that brings me to this conclusion wasn’t as much of a big
deal as it was the proverbial straw that
broke the camel’s back. When leaving
on a family vacation last week I was stopped from boarding a
United flight by a surly and disrespectful gate agent who said my carry-on bag
was too big. When I complained,
explaining that the bag in question had flown with me on-board for the last few
years, and fits correctly (lengthwise) without incident, an argument
ensued. A supervisor came over. The supervisor said “I know your bag will fit
on the plane without a problem, it just doesn’t fit easily into our
sizer.” Then, not just me but my entire family was forced to check our
legal carry-on bags if we wanted to board ‘just
‘cause the agent said so.’ My kids
and wife had no opportunity to show that their bags fit in the United sizer –
they were convicted as rule breakers simply because of my protest. We lost an hour of our already brief vacation
waiting for our perfectly sized bags to be returned (late of course) when we
arrived at our destination. Here’s a
picture of the instantly convicted bag fitting with plenty of room on our
flight home today – same airline, same plane, no ‘I hate you because I work at EWR’ hassle on the trip back. Was I lucky this time or just unlucky last
time? Why should luck have anything to
do with physics and science?
Maybe my infuriating carry-on incident doesn’t seem like a big deal to
you. However, how big a deal is it if
your airline strands
you in a foreign country with no communication? That’s exactly what happened to people flying
United to London a few weeks ago. Their
flight from Chicago to London made an unscheduled stop in Goose Bay, Canada
when the pilots saw an indicator they didn’t like. No one argues with the cautious decision to
check the plane, but how it was handled is appalling. United put passengers into an unheated army
barracks for almost 24 hours (while they put the crew up in a hotel.) They could have sent another plane for them,
they could have communicated with them, they could have treated them with respect
– but instead, they treated them with the same hate and disdain Joe spoke of
above.
How big a deal is it if your airline kicks you off a plane on the whim
of a single flight attendant? A United
crew diverted
a flight and kicked-off a passenger and her autistic daughter because they
feared the girl might be disruptive.
This was a passenger that politely requested to have some food heated-up
to help keep her disabled child comfortable.
This was done without incident, and the child never showed a behavior
problem, yet it made the flight crew feel their authority was challenged, so
they unilaterally decided they didn’t want her on the plane anymore.
How big a deal is it if your airline changes the rules about the
frequent flyer programs they’ve used to lure you into buying their
services? Delta recently made changes to
its frequent flyer program – and won’t even tell passengers what new amount of
miles are needed for what flights. As covered in this good recent article, Delta
will do whatever they want whenever they feel like it.
Think about that phrase for a minute.
The airlines know they can do
whatever they want, whenever they feel like it. They throw around the phrase “breaking
federal law” when they don’t want you to do something (the same way a four year
old would say “I’ll tell my daddy”) even though no actual laws that I know of
exist to:
· support
their freedom to kick passengers off planes because their disability makes them
uncomfortable
· limit the
size of carry-on bags to smaller than the size of the overhead bin
· change the
rules of their contracts with passengers for services, mileage redemption, etc.
· strand
passengers for hours without communication or adequate facilities for sleeping,
dining, etc.
Yet the courts have upheld an airline’s rights to do just that – to do
whatever it feels like. In a recent
lawsuit, the federal Seventh Circuit court found that United Airlines could
get away with offering their million mile flyers what they called “lifetime
benefits” yet are free to change these “lifetime benefits” whenever they feel
like it. While the court’s written
opinion found United “misleading and perhaps even fraudulent,” it said that
passengers had no rights to sue to address the fraud under the way current laws
are structured.
So why should a passengers continue to give business to an airline if it
does whatever it feels like? If a
supermarket treated us that way we’d shop somewhere else. If a doctor treated us that way we’d find
another one. So, why not just fly
another airline? Well, as the Delta
article above points out, “many of you
are more or less stuck with your airline. With just a handful of big carriers
left, there may be only one reasonable alternative for decent flight times
where you live…” Or, as I
pointed-out in my blog If Airlines Were
Restaurants, the airlines have conspired to prevent competition on direct
routes between airports. They’ve carved
up the sky amongst themselves and don’t really compete with equivalent direct
service from individual locations. The
fact that US airlines are diminishing their service and changing their loyalty
programs is exact proof that they feel they can get away with anything.
The biggest reason this should be of grave concern to you is
simple. As opposed to supermarkets that
own their land / products or doctors that provide services based solely on
their skills, with airlines, they’re providing you services based
on sky and airports that you already own.
The airlines act as if they’re selling you a product they created, when
in reality they are providing a service that uses facilities and natural
resources owned by the public, not them.
Our governments
and communities own and pay for the airports that we let the airlines
use. And even though the airlines treat
the “slots” at these airports (the allowed take-offs and landings) like their
own property, the reality is that the public
owns them too.
Despite this, the majority of benefits derived from US air travel today
go to airline company management and Wall Street investors. What should be operated in the “public
interest, convenience and necessity” (as we used to describe it the broadcast
spectrum) is being operated for the private gains of the greedy few. The passengers are irrelevant cargo that have
to put up with whatever the airlines want to do whenever they want to do it -
and the airline employees face management that cares less about quality and
conditions and more about cutting costs and increasing profits. Just last week United announced that it is
beginning a stock repurchase program at the cost of three billion dollars. In
very strong words, the United pilots were infuriated – saying that it is
ridiculous for United to continue to let its service deteriorate and be an
industry joke, yet take the money to line the pockets of investors and
management instead of making service improvements.
I’ve personally come to the conclusion that this situation will never
improve unless the government steps in and takes the unilaterally usurped
authority back from the airlines. We
need a new passenger bill of rights, but one much more extensive than the one
discussed in the past covering
tarmac wait times and lost bags. We
need actual laws preventing the “do whatever we feel like” actions of the cabal
of US airlines. Guarantees that clearly spell out that the people’s airspace
and airports need to be operated in the public interest – not those of the
stock investors. Guarantees that ensure
airlines can’t just make unilateral decisions about kicking people they don’t
like off planes. Guarantees that set
minimum standards for seat width and pitch and carry-on size. Guarantees that ensure airlines who want to
charge you for checking luggage feel a financial sting when that service
doesn’t return the bags to you within a reasonable time. Guarantees that ensure that when airlines
make fraudulent claims they can be acted against just like with any other
business entity.
So ultimately, the answer to Joe’s question - why do the airlines hate
us – is because we let them get away with it.
We need to stop. Now.
This article was written by David Danto and
contains solely his own, personal opinions.
All image and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.