David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org 
Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
NOT Traveling Blog, 2nd
Week Of January 2021
David Danto’s ongoing list of disjointed and occasionally random
observations and thoughts as we wait-out the pandemic – mostly NOT traveling
like we used to.
As I was reading my morning,
on-line news today I came across an
article bemoaning how much growth the airline industry has lost during the
pandemic.
Anyone who has read my blogs knows that I called-out early how
devastating and long lasting this pandemic would be (while many others were
looking at the situation through rose colored glasses.) So the idea that this industry has lost all
of its progress of the last 20 years should come as no surprise to them. But that’s not the reason this particular article
stuck-out at me.
I read the line about 20+ years of growth and I couldn’t get
past the fact that I fundamentally disagreed with the premise. The “growth” is incontrovertible if you are only
thinking in monetary terms. The industry
barons thrived, prices were unbundled and rose, airline company costs dropped,
fees were jacked-up, etc. Yes, if you
live and breathe Wall Street you’d call it a period of sustained growth.
But what about the traveler?
How can he or she refer to the last two decades as anything but
set-backs?
As a frequent flyer I’d propose that the period in question
represented nothing but unprecedented failures.
The ‘User Experience’ – a metric that all service industries has come to
understand to be the true measure of success – was severely diminished across
the board during that time:
·
Airline
loyalty programs were gutted. Airline
management viewed them as a cash cow – not as a responsibility to be good to
the customers that were being good to them.
Upgrades disappeared, “waivers and favors” disappeared, award charts and
award availability disappeared, decades old promises to long-time customers
were forgotten, fairness disappeared.
·
Airline
in-seat experiences were gutted. Whether
we are discussing seat comfort, seat spacing, meals service, IFE, heck – even the
freaking size of the seat-back pockets – all were decimated. If you weren’t paying for a full-fare,
first-class seat you were most definitely in steerage. And, if that first-class seat was on a
typical domestic US flight, you likely only experienced what coach was like two
decades earlier.
·
Airport
experiences were gutted. Lounges raised
prices, reduced services, and in many cases were also reserved only for
travelers buying the highest-priced tickets.
Limitations were placed on food and drink items that could be brought into
the airport in the guise of security, when in actuality it merely protected
airport vendor’s price gouging (with it often costing the price of a case of
water to buy a bottle of water.)
·
Airline
routes were gutted. Smaller airports and
“non-profitable” routes were reduced or eliminated. Any feeling of responsibility to the public
for using their airports and their airspace was forgotten.
·
Honestly
was gutted. It’s now completely understood
that US airline management just routinely lies about everything. They lie about “changes our passengers have asked for” that only serve them; they
call service elimination and perk elimination “improvements;” and they perpetuate a culture where big and little
lies are just accepted at every level of the flying experience. This includes things like publishing known hours-long
delays in 10-15 minutes increments to make it seem minimized, listing flights
as on-time when its clearly known for hours that the
arriving aircraft will never make it on-time, and claiming that “federal law” gives them the right to
act certain ways when no such laws exist.
And let’s not forget how they’ve consistently lied about how safe flying
is during the pandemic, going against all logic and CDC guidance.
·
Airline
safety was gutted. As has been well
documented over the last few months, the US government winked-at airplane
manufacturers and airlines, allowing them to self-check safety procedures in
design, certification and operation.
In many of my travel blogs over the last two decades I
regularly pointed-out that this artificial period of financial growth was
unsustainable. It could be best
visualized as taking-out bricks from a structure’s foundation and placing them
on top to build higher. Without that
solid foundation of excellent service and great experiences in place the
industry would surely collapse. At the
time the first issue would arise – be it a terrorist attack, a safety crisis,
or – as happened – a deadly pandemic, the flying public would drop airline
travel like a hot potato – and that’s exactly what occurred. With apologies to those who’ve already read
it too many times, I again quote my 2017 blog here:
Nowadays,
just about every business in the world is adopting a “put the customer
experience first” approach to the future.
The travel and hospitality industry could do the same, with some easy
and relatively inexpensive steps. I
doubt that they will – their management is generally too greedy and
stubborn. The second option is to just
pull the plug on all of it. Travelers know
that the airlines and hotel chains are lying to them. It would do less damage to promise nothing
and deliver nothing than it does to promise everything and deliver
nothing. I doubt they’ll do that one
too. The third option is most likely the
one they’ll choose – to move blindly forward, lying, overpromising
and under delivering the most basic of services. That will seem like the best option to the
industry – until whatever the next incident is that causes the stock to drop
and credit cards to get cut up. At that
time they’ll once again need to dip into that bank of good will and find it
completely empty, having dried up from lack of attention for years and
years. And then, despite my presentation
and hundreds of articles like this one from dozens of business travelers who
take the time to write, the airline and hospitality industry management will
tell the Wall Street investors that no one could have seen it coming.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m
not happy about what has happened to the airline industry. The current pressures will more than likely hurt
the innocent employees and the flying public much more than evil management in
charge through till today. The
difference for me is that I saw this situation as inevitable years ago – while greedy
airline management were pocketing huge bonuses, and investors were patting them on the back – all as more and more bricks were
being removed from the foundation of what should still be a service industry.
So, ultimately, I do hope the whole industry is blown-up. The past two decades of “growth” should be completely erased – not
just the profits, but the evil, counterproductive-to-service processes by which
they were achieved. Then, hopefully, we
can begin to see the rebuilding of an industry that we all want to succeed –
but have that success be based on service and performance excellence.
As always, please feel
free to write to me with comments or items I should add to a future Not
Traveling blog (or if you just need someone to write to.) Stay safe, be well, hug those you’re
sheltering with (but no one else) and do your best to stay positive. We’re going to be in this for a while
longer.
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.
++++++++
The Explanation
for my Not Traveling blogs: In 2014 I was voted
by USA Today readers as one of the top ten business travel bloggers in the
USA. Now mind you,
I turned out to be number ten on the list of ten, but I did make it on (with my
thanks to all those who voted.) Now
that we’re all stuck at home and not traveling, I had to think about what to do
with my blogs. I could stop writing them
entirely – waiting till we all get through the current COVID19 pandemic / crisis. I could wax nostalgic and/or complain about
past trips. Or, I could focus all of my
efforts on my day job – growing the use of collaboration technologies –
especially in light of how many people are now forced to use those tools for
the first time. In reflecting upon those
choices, what I decided to do is compile an ongoing list of observations during
the crisis. Some of these may amuse,
some may inform, some may sadden and others may help. My goal will be for you to have seen
something in a different light than you did before you stopped to read the
blog. I was going to apologize for how
disjointed these thoughts may seem when put together, but then it dawned on me
that feeling disjointed is our new normal – at least for a little while.