"As Airline Passenger Numbers Soar, So Do Delays, Lost Baggage And Flier Frustration"

Wednesday, September 6, 2006

As Airline Passenger Numbers Soar, So Do Delays, Lost Baggage And Flier
Frustration
By Kelly Yamanouchi
The Denver (CO) Post


The last straw for Mendie La Moure of Keller, Texas, was missing the last of
four standby flights on her way to prenuptial events for her nephew's
wedding in Fort Collins.

Her original United Airlines flight had been canceled, and she begged the
airline to get her onto another flight that would get her there on time.

It didn't happen, and La Moure became one of a surging number of travelers
filing complaints against airlines.

As the summer's record-high airline traffic winds down, many travelers have
endured flight delays, cancellations, rude airline employees, overheated
airplane cabins, lost baggage and hours of frustration at the airport.

Denver International Airport has been reporting record passenger traffic for
the past 14 months. In June, nearly 4.4 million travelers used DIA, up 7.9
percent from a year ago. DIA passenger traffic for the first six months of
the year was up 11.1 percent from the same period in 2005.

Planes have been fuller than ever. United Airlines reported a record July
"load factor," which measures how full planes are, with flights 87.7 percent
full on average in the month. Frontier Airlines planes were 85.2 percent
full on average in July, up from 81.9 percent a year earlier.

With more crowded planes, "there's more likely to be service hiccups," said
Air Travelers Association president David Stempler.

The number of air travel complaints filed with the U.S. Department of
Transportation for June, the most-recent data released, increased 18 percent
to 758, from 640 in June 2005. The airline with the lowest rate of
complaints was Southwest, while the highest was Mesa.

The numbers represent only a fraction of dissatisfied customers, because
most people do not file complaints with the DOT.

Flight problems, including cancellations, delays and missed connections,
were the most common complaints, followed by baggage. Third was customer
service, including rude or unhelpful employees, inadequate cabin service and
treatment of delayed passengers.

No airline is exempt from mistakes. "I always tell people, if you fly long
enough, you'll have a problem," said Doug Skelton, director of customer
relations at Frontier Airlines.

Stempler expects to see an uptick in baggage-handling problems since the
mid-August ban on liquids in carry-ons, including longer lines to check
bags, and mishandled bags.

Bad weather also increases the risk for trouble.

Traveler Meryl Kahn ran into problems with a flight from Boston to Columbia,
S.C., in July during floods in Washington.

After her flight was canceled, she says she got conflicting information from
United Airlines on how to get rebooked on a different flight and where to
pick up baggage.

"We couldn't trust anything we were being told," Kahn said. The trip from
Boston to Columbia ended up taking three days, including two nights spent in
the Washington area.

Stempler said he hears passengers all the time say, "'I swear I'll never use
this airline again.' But if it's still the cheapest and the most convenient
time, people tend to go back to those carriers." Most travelers will not
choose to inconvenience themselves because they had a past bad experience,
he said.

United Airlines has been studying how to improve the experience for premium
customers through a pilot program in San Francisco, including separate
boarding lanes for premium customers.

"Getting this work right and earning our fair share of these travelers'
business can mean hundreds of millions of dollars in additional profit for
United," the company told its employees last week.

Frontier spokesman Joe Hodas said, "It's the way (customers) are treated by
our employees when they fly us that brings them back to our airline, so it
is absolutely essential to the bottom line."

Working in airline customer service can be challenging. Passengers can be
tense about flying, and many factors are beyond the airline's control, such
as security lines, weather and other airlines' cancellations, Hodas said.

Moreover, while airline employees at carriers including United have taken
pay cuts and lost pension benefits, they're working harder.

"These people get barraged with complaints. They kind of get shell-shocked,"
Stempler said. Still, "in a service industry there's no excuse for bad
service."

United said it receives a lot of questions about irregular operations,
particularly during bad weather, and said all customers' feedback is
important.

The challenge for the employees who deal with complaints is to not be jaded,
said Frontier's Skelton. "It does take a special person," he said. "You have
to be a great judge of character. You have to have good listening skills."

In graduate school, Skelton recalls, he studied counseling - good
preparation for a career in airline customer relations.

"You were counseled, you counseled others. It was very intense," Skelton
said. In dealing with angry airline passengers, "skills that came out of
this counseling thing really fit."

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