David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org 
Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
Overpromise And Under-Deliver
Over and Over Again during the
pandemic, I told my readers that we should just let the legacy US airline
companies die. I explained that, as Joe Brancatelli has said ‘they
are capitalists during good times and socialists during bad times.’ They took the government’s massive bail-out
monies ostensibly to keep employees on the payroll, yet as we ramp-up travel
again, they are short-staffed and unprepared for the rush, yet still investing
in new planes. What we are now seeing is
what the future holds in-store for us having made that bad decision.
As the first example a couple of
weeks ago, we had American Airlines implementing a schedule that they did not
have the staff to support. As a result, they
unilaterally cancelled hundreds of booked flights and caused chaos for
their passengers.
As another example, we now have a new
announcement from United’s CEO Scott Kirby:
He wrote to passengers this past
Wednesday that United has “announced the
largest aircraft purchase that our industry has seen in a decade.” The note
also included that “All of these new
aircraft will be outfitted with United's
signature interior which includes more premium cabin seats as well as
better entertainment, overhead storage and technology features for everyone on
board. We'll also be upgrading all of our current mainline planes to our
signature standard, with 66% of these updates complete by 2023 and 100%
by 2025.”
Like all airline announcements,
this one has to be parsed-out and translated to get at the truth. Apparently all United
aircraft will now be fitted with their awful new ‘slimline’
airline seats that have the non-functional mesh seat-back-pockets. It also means we get more Continental/United
CEO whiplash. We went from Continental’s
Bethune and the ‘they’ll fly at whatever
price I feel like charging’ to the disgraced Smisek
and his team’s confrontational ‘our
passengers are overentitled’ attitude, to a mostly absent and ineffective
transplanted train executive, now to the ex-American and US Airways leader
Kirby. Whiplash is actually an
understatement. I forget which one of those
past regimes that decreed ‘we don’t need
no stinking IFE’ as people were bringing their own devices on board. Suddenly now United has apparently completely
reversed that and will be including (and retrofitting) IFE into all aircraft.
All this with massive
crowds at airports and not enough people to get all the jobs done.
Honestly, while such airline announcements
used to bother me as a United Million Miler, at this point I just don’t care
anymore. I just assume they are lying
and then never get surprised when they don’t happen. We never got the promised, needed club in EWR C3 to replace the one they stole
for Polaris passengers. We never got
the promised Polaris premium seating rolled-out across the fleet, we never got
the promised ‘lifetime’ benefits
restored, and on and on. I have joined
the burned and enlightened crowd that just buys airline tickets when needed for
cash expecting none of the promised benefits.
And I fly only when absolutely necessary, not because it is an enjoyable
experience in any way.
As I said up at the top, by giving
these questionable management teams more bail-out money – as opposed to having
the standard capitalism process of letting companies that have poor and/or
short-sighted management just fail – we’ve again propped-up these people,
allowing them to keep making travelers’ lives miserable by announcing more than
they will ever deliver. “Overpromise and
under-deliver” would be a better tag-line for all of them, as the skies haven’t
been friendly for years.
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.
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As always, feel free to write and comment, question or
disagree. Hearing from the traveling
community is always a highlight for me.
Thanks!