Cpt Kangaroo
Active member
- Joined
- May 24, 2005
- Posts
- 32
Weekly Letter from Bryan Bedford
For the week ended 2-23-07
Good afternoon. This is the winter of disappointment if you’re a passenger flying the nation’s air
carriers; and much to my own disappointment that includes us.
Below are two news article’s that involve some disappointing service failures with our product.
The article’s somewhat speak for themselves. And while there are several inaccuracy’s in the
various reports, there is one very common thread that we must focus on and that is the
communications coordination between us, as the operating carrier, and our partners, as the ticket
seller and ground handler.
For example, in the Cheyenne report below, we are rightfully called to account for how we left 110
people stranded in Wyoming while two perfectly good jets simply flew away empty without any
word to the passengers left behind. While it isn’t the crew’s job to get in front of a room full of
angry passengers and tell them what is going on, in this case there was no one else to do it. So
what can we learn?
Well maybe we should not have approved alternates that do not have dedicated or contract
personnel to manage the people once they are safely on the ground. Maybe the plan could have
been for United to have 3-4 Denver employees drive up to Cheyenne to manage the passenger
communications, buses and hotel accommodations. Maybe we should have given the
passengers a choice to fly with the aircraft to Indy and Kansas City if they preferred that to being
bussed to Denver. Probably they would have preferred to be bussed to Denver had they known
at the time that was the plan. In that case everything would have worked out exactly the same
except people would not have felt abandoned and helpless. We can do better, we should have
done better, we must learn from this and do better should we find ourselves in the same position.
What was not reported was that Great Lakes was United’s contract ground agent in Cheyenne,
but since Great Lakes had already cancelled their flights for the day the airport people went
home. Why they didn’t return to the airport the next two days still remains a mystery. United
assures us they are addressing it.
Now, in regard to the CLE runway incident (the airplane with 70 passengers which ran off the end
of runway 28 this past Sunday). I am not going to speculate on what happened as we have
several agencies managing that process. However, what I will address is what happened (or in
this case didn’t happen) after the plane came to a stop.
The flight deck crew reported the incident to the tower who notified CFR. CFR was on the scene
within 5 minutes of the incident. The passengers were still on the plane in their seats wondering
what just happened. They remained on the plane for 55 minutes until CFR unloaded them down
a step ladder. Again I am not in a position to second guess the crew as to why they chose not to
blow the slides and evacuate the passengers; what I do take exception to is the flight deck crew
never once made a public address to the passengers; never came out of the cockpit to see if their
passengers and crew were all okay. No apology, no communication whatsoever, nothing. I don’t
know how you feel about this, but I find this aspect of the incident to be the most disappointing.
Our airline has a very long history of a caring culture and empathy for our guests on board, but in
this situation, when it was needed the most, it seemed to just go out the window.
The second fumble was with Delta, their station manager came to the scene spoke to all the
passengers and did a great job trying to take care of all the passengers needs. They were
evaluated by paramedic’s and released or taken to area hospitals for observation and then later
released. Again we are blessed no one was seriously injured in this mishap. So where is the
fumble? Well the station manger never informed Delta’s customer care center in Atlanta about
the incident, so after the passengers were sent on there way they went for two days without
hearing anything from anyone. It wasn’t until Monday, when we asked for feedback on how the
passengers were doing and what they were saying did the center get activated. And once
activated it still took Delta until Tuesday night before the passengers contact actually begin.
That’s a more than 48 hour gap between the incident and the first follow up contact from anyone.
Again, this lack of coordination is unacceptable.
So what are we going to do about all this? Three things for sure:
1. We are going to use these two cases to develop some additional passenger skills training
that we will incorporate into our CRM curriculum. In this way we hope to provide our
flight crews with more tools or comfort to be able to address these stressful situations if
they arise.
2. We are going to select and train 15-20 employees with full family assistance training so
that we will not be forced to completely rely on our marketing partner to manage such
situations in the future, and
3. We will use these case studies to meet with each of our marketing partners to see how
we can improve our joint respond in a more coordination fashion so that the needs of the
passengers are fully met in a timely manner.
None of us should be satisfied with this type of performance, but as bad as this was we can learn
from it, adapt and improve. If we do this then the inconvenience and unhappiness we have
caused these folks won’t be in vain.
I’m sure you will read the articles and have a few thoughts, please feel free to email them to me;
I really do enjoy hearing from you.
BTW, it was Ash Wednesday on the 21st, have you figured out what you are giving up for lent?
And no you can’t give up bad weather….although I wish we could.
For the week ended 2-23-07
Good afternoon. This is the winter of disappointment if you’re a passenger flying the nation’s air
carriers; and much to my own disappointment that includes us.
Below are two news article’s that involve some disappointing service failures with our product.
The article’s somewhat speak for themselves. And while there are several inaccuracy’s in the
various reports, there is one very common thread that we must focus on and that is the
communications coordination between us, as the operating carrier, and our partners, as the ticket
seller and ground handler.
For example, in the Cheyenne report below, we are rightfully called to account for how we left 110
people stranded in Wyoming while two perfectly good jets simply flew away empty without any
word to the passengers left behind. While it isn’t the crew’s job to get in front of a room full of
angry passengers and tell them what is going on, in this case there was no one else to do it. So
what can we learn?
Well maybe we should not have approved alternates that do not have dedicated or contract
personnel to manage the people once they are safely on the ground. Maybe the plan could have
been for United to have 3-4 Denver employees drive up to Cheyenne to manage the passenger
communications, buses and hotel accommodations. Maybe we should have given the
passengers a choice to fly with the aircraft to Indy and Kansas City if they preferred that to being
bussed to Denver. Probably they would have preferred to be bussed to Denver had they known
at the time that was the plan. In that case everything would have worked out exactly the same
except people would not have felt abandoned and helpless. We can do better, we should have
done better, we must learn from this and do better should we find ourselves in the same position.
What was not reported was that Great Lakes was United’s contract ground agent in Cheyenne,
but since Great Lakes had already cancelled their flights for the day the airport people went
home. Why they didn’t return to the airport the next two days still remains a mystery. United
assures us they are addressing it.
Now, in regard to the CLE runway incident (the airplane with 70 passengers which ran off the end
of runway 28 this past Sunday). I am not going to speculate on what happened as we have
several agencies managing that process. However, what I will address is what happened (or in
this case didn’t happen) after the plane came to a stop.
The flight deck crew reported the incident to the tower who notified CFR. CFR was on the scene
within 5 minutes of the incident. The passengers were still on the plane in their seats wondering
what just happened. They remained on the plane for 55 minutes until CFR unloaded them down
a step ladder. Again I am not in a position to second guess the crew as to why they chose not to
blow the slides and evacuate the passengers; what I do take exception to is the flight deck crew
never once made a public address to the passengers; never came out of the cockpit to see if their
passengers and crew were all okay. No apology, no communication whatsoever, nothing. I don’t
know how you feel about this, but I find this aspect of the incident to be the most disappointing.
Our airline has a very long history of a caring culture and empathy for our guests on board, but in
this situation, when it was needed the most, it seemed to just go out the window.
The second fumble was with Delta, their station manager came to the scene spoke to all the
passengers and did a great job trying to take care of all the passengers needs. They were
evaluated by paramedic’s and released or taken to area hospitals for observation and then later
released. Again we are blessed no one was seriously injured in this mishap. So where is the
fumble? Well the station manger never informed Delta’s customer care center in Atlanta about
the incident, so after the passengers were sent on there way they went for two days without
hearing anything from anyone. It wasn’t until Monday, when we asked for feedback on how the
passengers were doing and what they were saying did the center get activated. And once
activated it still took Delta until Tuesday night before the passengers contact actually begin.
That’s a more than 48 hour gap between the incident and the first follow up contact from anyone.
Again, this lack of coordination is unacceptable.
So what are we going to do about all this? Three things for sure:
1. We are going to use these two cases to develop some additional passenger skills training
that we will incorporate into our CRM curriculum. In this way we hope to provide our
flight crews with more tools or comfort to be able to address these stressful situations if
they arise.
2. We are going to select and train 15-20 employees with full family assistance training so
that we will not be forced to completely rely on our marketing partner to manage such
situations in the future, and
3. We will use these case studies to meet with each of our marketing partners to see how
we can improve our joint respond in a more coordination fashion so that the needs of the
passengers are fully met in a timely manner.
None of us should be satisfied with this type of performance, but as bad as this was we can learn
from it, adapt and improve. If we do this then the inconvenience and unhappiness we have
caused these folks won’t be in vain.
I’m sure you will read the articles and have a few thoughts, please feel free to email them to me;
I really do enjoy hearing from you.
BTW, it was Ash Wednesday on the 21st, have you figured out what you are giving up for lent?
And no you can’t give up bad weather….although I wish we could.
