"Airline service gets critical report card"

Tuesday, February 13, 2001

Airline service gets critical report card
By Marilyn Adams
USA TODAY


Here are some realities of air travel in 2001:

If your flight's delayed and you're stuck on board, waiting and waiting for
a gate or for takeoff, your fate depends on which airline you chose.

United Airlines promises, in writing, to feed you an energy bar if there's a
prolonged delay. Alaska Airlines will pour a free beer or martini after an
hour, while American Trans Air will only serve soft drinks or juice.

Delta Air Lines calls 45 minutes a lengthy wait, while American Airlines
doesn't consider a delay extended until after 3 hours.

Those were some nuggets made public Monday in the most detailed study ever
of airline service. A painstakingly compiled report by the Department of
Transportation's Office of Inspector General documents how airlines treat
customers with regard to delayed and canceled flights, refunds, fare quotes,
lost bags, overbooked flights and other issues. Its 133 pages portray a
record of customer service that is wildly inconsistent.

The report card will provide ammunition to the industry's harshest critics
who are already alarmed about record delays and complaints in 2000 and the
prospect of worse service if mergers involving the two largest airlines go
forward.

The report also comes 20 months after the nation's 14 largest airlines
agreed to voluntarily repair customer service. Faced with a fast-moving
passenger-rights movement in 1999, the airlines, through their trade group,
pledged to do a better job if Congress postponed action on a passenger bill
of rights. The Air Transport Association (ATA) says major airlines have
spent $3 billion redesigning Web sites, training employees and upgrading
technology.

Clearly the airlines have made progress, Inspector General Kenneth Mead
says. But they need to do a much better job addressing delays, cancellations
and bags not showing up on time, he says.

In fact, the overarching theme of Mead's report is that the airlines, the
Federal Aviation Administration and Congress all need to find solutions to
help more planes run on time.

The Inspector General found one out of four flights last year was delayed or
canceled.

"The aviation system is not working well — the road ahead is long, and
aggressive progress will be required by the airlines, airports and FAA if
consumer confidence is to be restored," Mead's report says.

The airline industry praised the report's fairness.

"I think it accurately reflects solid progress we've made," says Carol
Hallett, president of the ATA. "We have much more to do and are prepared to
do it."

Senate Commerce Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., who ordered the report,
chairs a hearing today on airline customer service and said Monday he will
introduce consumer-protection legislation. He wants airlines to tell
passengers if they are about to book a flight that is chronically delayed.
He also wants the minimum compensation for bumped passengers increased and
for airlines to tell passengers what they are entitled to if they are
stranded away from home by a delay.

Two outspoken Democratic critics, Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Harry Reid
of Nevada, also plan bills.

"It is time for Congress to step in with an enforceable set of consumer
practices and not settle for fluff from the industry lobby," Wyden says.

Wyden plans to introduce legislation to beef up DOT's small
consumer-protection office — which the IG's report also recommends — so it
can investigate and punish unfair airline practices. That office now employs
fewer than 20 people, down from 40 in 1985.

Reid has introduced a bill that would give passengers the right to get off
an airplane that's been sitting on a runway for more than an hour. And there
could be other proposals.

Airline executives are on edge.

"I don't think you can regulate customer service," says Colleen Barrett,
Southwest Airlines executive vice president for customer service. "I don't
mind being held accountable for commitments we make. But I don't think it's
appropriate to regulate what we commit to customers. We compete — that's the
point."

She says some recommendations being floated would require new tracking
systems, new departments and personnel — real cost. For example, being
required to voluntarily tell callers about chronically delayed flights would
be an irritant, she says. "We don't want to make each reservation take 10
minutes. I don't know how much of this is just politics."

Remembering Detroit

The passenger rights movement was born amid a Detroit blizzard in January
1999. As the snow pounded down, Northwest Airlines continued trying to
operate flights in and out of Metro airport until dozens of planes were
gridlocked on the ground, unable to find free gates.

The now-infamous delays trapped thousands of passengers on planes for up to
8 hours without food, beverages or working toilets, in some cases.

Even today, the report found, many airlines don't appear prepared to deal
with passengers' essential needs — such as food — during long onboard
delays.

Even with routine delays, the report says most airlines still don't do a
good job communicating promptly and honestly with passengers about delayed
and canceled flights. Alaska Airlines did the best job, telling fliers why
and how long their flight would be delayed 70% of the time, while Southwest
did so only 38% of the time, it says. And, it stresses, the airlines'
customer plans don't address the underlying cause of customer
dissatisfaction: delays and cancellations and what the airlines plan to do
about them — such as not scheduling too many flights to depart at the same
time, for example.

But other findings were startling. Passengers who voluntarily give up their
seats usually get more compensation from an airline than passengers bumped
against their wishes, it found. And airlines' ability to return lost bags
within 24 hours varies widely, with financially strapped Trans World
Airlines doing so 91% of the time vs. giant Delta only 66% of the time.

Only three airlines (Alaska, Southwest and United) have included all the
promises in their customer plan in the contract of carriage with passengers.
Promises not included in the contract aren't legally enforceable.

Even with the loud public outcry, legislation to regulate customer service
could face an uphill battle.

For one thing, the voluntary effort has resulted in some demonstrable
improvements. Most airlines, the report finds, do a very good job quoting
passengers the lowest available fare, holding reservations without charge
for 24 hours and responding to written complaints, the report says. And
airlines appear to be paying higher amounts in lost-baggage compensation
since the government last year doubled the legal limit to $2,500. The
Inspector General's report cited a 14% increase in the number of payments in
excess of $1,250 in September 2000 vs. September 1999.

Many airlines have invested heavily in helpful technology. United, which had
the worst delay-and-cancellation record last year, is installing software so
reservation and other frontline agents can access weather and airline
operations information in one place instead of having to make calls.

Improvements aside, the airline lobby remains a formidable and well-financed
force opposing legislation. President Bush is thought to be cool to measures
the airlines would view as re-regulation of the industry.

And there's a larger issue looming. Giants United and American are proposing
mergers that would catapult them to unprecedented size and power. The
departments of Transportation and Justice are reviewing the merger plans.
Critics say the question now is how to make sure sometimes-poor service by
the biggest airlines doesn't get dramatically worse if they suddenly get
bigger, employ larger workforces represented by increasingly militant unions
and dominate more major airports and routes.

Some in the industry and on Capitol Hill think customer service should have
a role in the larger debate about future competition in the airline
industry.

"If (new DOT Secretary) Norman Mineta made a speech next week saying the
department would look at the behavior of this industry and carriers that
engage in anti-competitive or deceptive practices, the message would get
out. Carriers would change their ways," says Ed Faberman, executive director
of the Air Carrier Association of America, which represents four low-fare
airlines.

It's possible the customer-service and competition issues will become
politically linked to increase support for both. McCain, for example, is
also an advocate of vigorous airline competition. Two years ago, McCain
co-sponsored a bill to boost airline competition, and he's said to be
considering introducing one again.

The Air Transport Association is likely to use the IG's findings to advance
its demands for a more modern, satellite-based air traffic control system
that can fit more airplanes in the same amount of airspace, reducing delays.
The ATA is calling for satellite-based navigation to be completed in 5 years
and for the government to accelerate the hiring of a thousand additional air
traffic controllers.

None of the posturing impresses Nada Rudolph, a 36-year-old mom who was
trapped with her diabetic husband, young son and a planeload of frazzled
passengers aboard a snowbound Northwest jet for 7 hours on Jan. 3, 1999.

Only when her husband, James, began slipping into diabetic shock from food
deprivation were passengers let off the plane at a Continental Airlines
gate.

The ordeal on her plane and 52 others at Detroit that weekend became a
searing symbol of the industry's customer service flaws and the catalyst for
the passenger rights movement.

"This case was the vehicle upon which everything else rested," says Lawrence
Charfoos, a Detroit lawyer who recently won a $7.1 million settlement from
Northwest for the 7,500 passengers trapped on those planes.

Rudolph hasn't forgotten that night.

"It's going to take a law," she says. "If there was a law, the airlines
would have to do something for passengers. They couldn't just do whatever
they want."

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