Just another ex-customer - at least for now

Given that the time required to get through airport security is totally unpredictable, I arrived early yesterday at Washington National Airport for a flight on US Airways. As it happens, the line at security was minimal and the TSA screener, unlike some, wasn’t interested in aggravating a passenger (myself) traveling in a wheelchair.

I arrived at the gate one hour and forty five minutes before the departure of my flight. Since it was forty minutes before the departure of the next earlier flight, and it was leaving from the same gate, I asked if I could travel on the earlier flight.

The gate agent, who clearly got out of bed on the wrong side yesterday morning, told me that a) there wasn’t time to switch me to that flight and b) even if there was, I had to travel on the flight for which I had a boarding pass, and c) even if I didn’t, it would cost me $50 to change.

So I waited.

The current condition of airlines in the USA puts them close behind the Detroit Three automakers in terms of financial weakness. Given that most airlines have extensive experience with Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, one might expect that customer service would be high on everyone’s list as a possible strategy to avoid another episode.

Apparently not!

The last airline that pulled this stupid, customer unfriendly, stunt on me (you can’t go on the early flight – even though we have lots of empty seats) was Southwest. That was ten years ago and I haven’t flown on Southwest since.

It is sad to say that few people make a choice of airline based on the quality of customer service. Some would, perhaps, if such a thing existed but it doesn't. We are forced to make decisions with the major criteria being price and "least worst". That airlines should have become trapped in a cheap fare, zero service, business model says much about the [in]competence of management and, to be charitable, the dysfunctional economics of the airline business.

I would like to think that there is a market segment of those, like myself, who are willing to pay a bit more for decent customer service but whose budgets do not run to First Class - let alone corporate or fractional jet service.

I am not holding my breath.