Just in case you needed more evidence that this nation has lost its collective mind:
A 22-year-old University of Michigan student going through a security checkpoint at Philadelphia Airport was stopped by a TSA employee, who reached into her computer case and pulled out a small plastic bag of powder -- the sort of bag used to carry earrings, or drugs. He demanded to know where she had got it. And told her she'd better tell the truth.
As tears began rolling down her cheeks, the TSA employee said he was kidding, and “you should have seen the look on your face.”
http://tinyurl.com/yl9wc8b
Isn't this hilarious? Read on.
A US Airways Express flight en route from New York LaGuardia to Louisville, Ky., was diverted to Philadelphia because a flight attendant told the pilot that a passenger was behaving suspiciously and had something that might be a bomb. The TSA released a statement saying the diversion was due to a “disruptive passenger.”
The perp turned out to be a Jewish teenager who decided to use his time on the plane by praying. As is the custom of Orthodox Jewish men and boys, he strapped on tefillin – small leather boxes containing verses from scripture – to his arms and head. When he was taken off the plane, he and his 13-year-old sister were placed in handcuffs.
http://tinyurl.com/ylpn9kr
The TSA employee who terrorized the student apparently either resigned or was fired – “as of today, the employee is no longer with TSA,” Blogger Bob said on the TSA’s blog (which, by the way, offers hours of family entertainment) – but his identity cannot be released because his privacy must be respected.
OK, I have a few questions.
1. If a passenger makes a joke about terrorism, or just about anything, he or she is arrested. The passenger’s name would be splashed across the media. Why does a government employee get both a get-out-of-jail-free card and privacy protection?
2. The TSA guy apparently was involved in training screeners to look for “contraband.” Hello? I thought they were supposed to look for bombs and such. Yes, powder can be used in explosives, but what the TSA guy had was more in keeping with a package of drugs. Is the TSA once again engaging in mission creep?
3. Despite the fact that the terrorized passenger reported the incident on the spot, it took about two weeks for the TSA guy to become disemployed. And only after it became a news story. In fact, he wasn’t even taken off the floor after his “joke” was reported. What do you have to do to get fired from the TSA (besides ending up in the news)?
4. OK, maybe I should cut the ignorant US Airways flight attendant some slack, even though her job takes her to New York, which is probably home to more tefillin than any other place on earth. We can’t all know everything about every religion. But why was the praying teenager described as “disruptive”?
5. And why was his 13-year-old sister placed in handcuffs?
Friday, January 22, 2010
Monday, December 21, 2009
They brought it on themselves
The Transportation Department has ordered airlines to allow passengers to deplane after a tarmac delay of three hours.
This will be hailed as a victory by groups that have lobbied for such a rule. Over the last decade, there has been no dearth of gruesome tales of passengers trapped for eight or more hours on planes with no food, water or working toilets.
The straw that broke the camel's back was overnight captivity of passengers on a Minneapolis-bound regional jet that was diverted to Rochester, Minn., in August.
In reality, the rule probably won't prevent many of the more horrifying events, at least not initially. If a major snowstorm cripples operations at an airport and there are no gates to be had, there's little that can be done. You can't allow passengers to deplane on air stairs in the middle of a blizzard. Nor can you allow ground crews to move equipment around during a lightning storm. The pilot of the Continental Express flight in the Rochester incident wanted to deplane her passengers, but the Mesaba Airlines employee who was manning the station wouldn’t allow it.
But this is a wakeup call for commercial airlines, which have appeared to ignore the rights of human cargo to be treated as human beings.
Behind the scenes, several airlines have taken steps to reduce the number of horror stories. Some, like American, have worked on technologies that track trouble spots so that aircraft sitting on tarmacs aren't forgotten. Southwest has made a point of avoiding such situations and has procedures for dealing with them when they do.
Publicly, most airlines have claimed that they are at the mercy of events over which they have no control. They point out that the horrible incidents represent a small fraction of airline operations, overlooking the fact that they represent thousands of hours of human suffering. The same people who accept no deviation from absolute safety in the air have appeared clueless when it comes to caring for passengers on the ground.
Now they are going to have to pay attention. The good news: History shows us that when airlines pay attention to problem areas – on-time performance is a good example – things get better.
This will be hailed as a victory by groups that have lobbied for such a rule. Over the last decade, there has been no dearth of gruesome tales of passengers trapped for eight or more hours on planes with no food, water or working toilets.
The straw that broke the camel's back was overnight captivity of passengers on a Minneapolis-bound regional jet that was diverted to Rochester, Minn., in August.
In reality, the rule probably won't prevent many of the more horrifying events, at least not initially. If a major snowstorm cripples operations at an airport and there are no gates to be had, there's little that can be done. You can't allow passengers to deplane on air stairs in the middle of a blizzard. Nor can you allow ground crews to move equipment around during a lightning storm. The pilot of the Continental Express flight in the Rochester incident wanted to deplane her passengers, but the Mesaba Airlines employee who was manning the station wouldn’t allow it.
But this is a wakeup call for commercial airlines, which have appeared to ignore the rights of human cargo to be treated as human beings.
Behind the scenes, several airlines have taken steps to reduce the number of horror stories. Some, like American, have worked on technologies that track trouble spots so that aircraft sitting on tarmacs aren't forgotten. Southwest has made a point of avoiding such situations and has procedures for dealing with them when they do.
Publicly, most airlines have claimed that they are at the mercy of events over which they have no control. They point out that the horrible incidents represent a small fraction of airline operations, overlooking the fact that they represent thousands of hours of human suffering. The same people who accept no deviation from absolute safety in the air have appeared clueless when it comes to caring for passengers on the ground.
Now they are going to have to pay attention. The good news: History shows us that when airlines pay attention to problem areas – on-time performance is a good example – things get better.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
US despAIRWAYS
It’s been a long time since I’ve flown US Airways. I flew it last week, and I think it will be another long time before it happens again.
I ended up on a US Airways flight to Amsterdam because Continental, the airline on which I had piles of miles ripe for redemption, joined the Star Alliance. One day, it was offering SaverPass seats in BusinessFirst; the next day, the only thing available for the outbound flight was US Airways’ economy cabin.
This was a very sad experience. The itinerary was gruesome, with an eight-hour layover at Philadelphia. The airline would not check my bag through to Amsterdam because the layover was too long, so I had to claim it, drag it to the international terminal and recheck it. I guess they thought I might need something to do.
The flight was on a 757 – a terrible aircraft for transatlantic flights – and this one was showing its age. The bathrooms looked completely beaten up.
US Airways has taken the ancillary revenue concept to heart. Flight attendants marched up and down the aisles hawking movie headsets for $5 – this despite having only overhead monitors and no choice of film. They sold beer for $7. Budweiser. Seriously.
Saddest of all was the little “breakfast,” which confirmed for me that this airline has lost its pride. It didn’t even come with a plate.
My return flight was on Continental. I watched a couple of movies of my choice on the seatback monitor (no charge), had a gin and tonic for $5, was given actual utensils with which to eat and flew in relative comfort.
The old aphorism, “You are judged by the company you keep,” applies to airlines as well as people. If my loyalty to one airline is rewarded by a flight on a carrier with a far lower standard of service, I’m going to have to rethink where I buy my future flights.
What's wrong with this picture?
Check out this bathroom sink. The countertop was waist-high, and the protruding scallop thing in front of the sink made it impossible to brush my teeth without standing on tippy-toes or climbing up on the counter. OK, I’m on the short side, but I’m still well within the normal range. Obviously I should have paid more attention to those watermelon seed-spitting contests at camp. This wacky design is part of an otherwise very nice new Holiday Inn Express in Davenport, Fla., which has comfortable and spacious rooms and a very helpful staff.
Meanwhile, if I have to attend another conference in a hotel that cranks up the AC to the point where you need a blanket, I’m going to start lugging a space heater around. Earth to Omni Championsgate: It’s November in Florida. The weather is mild. I don't want to have to put a coat on when I go indoors.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The TSA learns about the Constitution
Somebody at the Transportation Security Administration read the U.S. Constitution and found Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The TSA issued a new directive: “Screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security.” Then it reminded screeners that “traveling with large amounts of currency is not illegal.”
The TSA’s enlightenment was aided by a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union after a member of a political organization passed a metal box containing cash donations through a security checkpoint at Lambert Airport in St. Louis. He was taken to a small room where he was detained, interrogated and told he was under arrest. His “crime” was that he politely asked the agents to explain the scope of their authority.
The ACLU said its concern was that “TSA interpreted its limited authority to safeguard air travel as a license to conduct unlimited law enforcement searches for which TSA agents are not trained and which distracted from the agency’s critical mission of ensuring flight safety.”
With the new directives, the ACLU is dropping the lawsuit. Score one for the Constitution.
The TSA issued a new directive: “Screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security.” Then it reminded screeners that “traveling with large amounts of currency is not illegal.”
The TSA’s enlightenment was aided by a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union after a member of a political organization passed a metal box containing cash donations through a security checkpoint at Lambert Airport in St. Louis. He was taken to a small room where he was detained, interrogated and told he was under arrest. His “crime” was that he politely asked the agents to explain the scope of their authority.
The ACLU said its concern was that “TSA interpreted its limited authority to safeguard air travel as a license to conduct unlimited law enforcement searches for which TSA agents are not trained and which distracted from the agency’s critical mission of ensuring flight safety.”
With the new directives, the ACLU is dropping the lawsuit. Score one for the Constitution.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Report walks airlines through the world of social media
For the last few years, airlines and other travel companies have tried to figure out what to do about social media.
Since the advent of TripAdvisor in 2000, suppliers at one industry conference after another were warned that they should not ignore the phenomenon. “It’s out there,” speakers would say. “You can’t ignore it.” But suggestions about the appropriate response were uniformly vague.
A new report by Steven Frischling and Addison Schonland of Innovation Analysis Group tackles the problem head-on. Titled “The Airline Industry & Social Media - A must-have strategic guide for airline marketing and sales,” the 62-page report aims to show airline executives what social media can accomplish for them and to walk them through the process of establishing a presence on Twitter, Facebook and other virtual venues.
Airlines can’t be blamed for not intuitively knowing how to get a handle on the concept, the authors noted.
“Twitter, Facebook and MySpace were never designed to be business tools,” Schonland said. “And it’s still so new. It’s still proving itself in so many ways.”
But several airlines have shown that in the right hands, social media can indeed become a powerful tool. While brand awareness is often the initial goal, there are other benefits to be had.
Southwest Airlines, for example, has an active Twitter team that acts on customers’ problems before they escalate into complaints. The report notes that retired chief executive officer Herb Kelleher attributes the reduction in the airline’s U.S. Department of Transportation complaints to this quick intervention.
The report provides a summary of the dos and don’ts of social media, as well as a rollout plan.
If any single event illustrated the need for airlines to understand the power of social media, it was the experience of a Canadian band whose instruments were callously mistreated by United Airlines baggage handlers.
After seeking restitution in vain for more than a year, the band posted a music video titled “United Breaks Guitars” on YouTube in July. At last count, the original video had been viewed more than 5.5 million times. The video has been reposted on sites like Facebook countless times.
The IAG report, produced in association with the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation, analyzes the behavior and experiences of several airlines on Twitter, the current hot social medium, and identifies the good, the bad and the sadly mistaken ways in which it is used.
The first lesson to be learned is that a presence on social media “cannot be created with a view to quickly turn it into a revenue stream,” the report says. “Social media is about relationships first. These systems work on referrals.”
“Airlines are jumping in and out of Twitter because they can’t figure out, ‘How do we jump in and make money?’” Frischling said. But they can’t just “jump in to say, ‘We’re here!’ They need to interact fully.”
The burnout rate on Twitter is “significantly high,” he said.
“One of the big problems is lack of resources. Another is airlines’ inability to determine who this project ‘belongs’ to: Is it the marketing department, communications, customer service?”
The reality, he said, is that the effort “needs to span all those departments. It can’t be kept in a silo.”
Many airline executives, faced with the daunting prospect of learning the Twitter “language” and protocol of # and @ and RT, do what they did when they got their first VCRs: They ask the nearest kid to set it up.
Schonland and Frischling found a number of major airlines that entrusted their Twitter accounts to college interns. “Of course, in September, the interns all go back to school,” Schonland noted.
Interns also are not usually empowered to make customers whole when problems arise; often, they may not even know where to seek help.
The IAG report cites one major U.S. airline that joined Twitter in early August, sent out its first tweet five days later and never responded to the same tweeter more than once. During the last week of the month, 231 complaints about the airline appeared on Twitter.
In addition, 186 direct questions were sent to the airline via Twitter.
Yet it sent out a total of five responses.
The carrier missed 231 opportunities to address complaints and 186 opportunities to respond to direct questions made in a public forum, the report said.
The complaints and question simply went unanswered.
While answering all the questions and complaints can be an impossible task, the report urged airlines to endeavor to address some of them based on priority and validity.
In contrast, JetBlue, Southwest and Virgin America have a high level of interaction with their followers and develop a level of loyalty among them.
For example, JetBlue is interacting frequently with purchasers of its All-You-Can-Jet pass, which offered unlimited travel between Sept. 8 and Oct. 8 for $599. JetBlue encouraged other tweeters to follow the pass users as they traveled and tweeted.
United takes a different approach, using Twitter to distribute distressed merchandise, which it calls “twares” (for Twitter fares). They tend to sell out quickly.
Twitter is more effective than e-mail for these purposes, Schonland said. “E-mail is too long, it has all the graphics, it doesn’t get to the point quickly,” he said.
Twitter, on the other hand, is like “Ding on steroids,” he said. Ding is Southwest’s application that delivers short-term deals to users’ desktops.
The phenomenon of social media is a moving target, making it tricky to determine how to allocate resources.
Notably absent from the report is any mention of Second Life, once the hot new thing just a few years ago.
The love-it-or-hate-it quality of Twitter could also send the medium into cyber-afterlife, “but there will always be something coming up behind it,” Frischling said.
“Airlines need to be there when that something shows up.”
A tale of two airlines on Twitter, and how they tweet
The authors of the IAG report on social media developed a “star chart” to plot airlines’ updates, following, followers, friends and messages in a graphical manner. The data were assembled from public sources.
To get a sense of each airline’s level of interactivity, the authors calculated the ratio of outbound traffic – messages plus updates – divided by the number of followers. The average of the airlines that were studied is 10%.
“This number suggests account managers are generating little outbound traffic relative to their constituencies,” the report states.
JetBlue and British Airways (in North America) were among the carriers whose activity was charted. Here are excerpts from the analysis:
If any airline wants to see what works best, it only needs to look at JetBlue. The airline has a team supporting its Twitter account. This team has been so successful that its members are now frequent speakers at social media events. Imagine that, an airline invited to discuss its success at making a success out of customer service. It has been, and can be, done again.
BA’s North American Twitter activity is clearly way behind the industry average. That said, it has built up a useful number of followers. Clearly it needs to grow it traffic to build dialogue.
But the U.S. operation is likely under direction from the head office and is also limited by being focused on the U.S. However, BA is a global airline, and consequently, the U.S Twitter account could be creating news and information on all points the airline serves.
Since the advent of TripAdvisor in 2000, suppliers at one industry conference after another were warned that they should not ignore the phenomenon. “It’s out there,” speakers would say. “You can’t ignore it.” But suggestions about the appropriate response were uniformly vague.
A new report by Steven Frischling and Addison Schonland of Innovation Analysis Group tackles the problem head-on. Titled “The Airline Industry & Social Media - A must-have strategic guide for airline marketing and sales,” the 62-page report aims to show airline executives what social media can accomplish for them and to walk them through the process of establishing a presence on Twitter, Facebook and other virtual venues.
Airlines can’t be blamed for not intuitively knowing how to get a handle on the concept, the authors noted.
“Twitter, Facebook and MySpace were never designed to be business tools,” Schonland said. “And it’s still so new. It’s still proving itself in so many ways.”
But several airlines have shown that in the right hands, social media can indeed become a powerful tool. While brand awareness is often the initial goal, there are other benefits to be had.
Southwest Airlines, for example, has an active Twitter team that acts on customers’ problems before they escalate into complaints. The report notes that retired chief executive officer Herb Kelleher attributes the reduction in the airline’s U.S. Department of Transportation complaints to this quick intervention.
The report provides a summary of the dos and don’ts of social media, as well as a rollout plan.
If any single event illustrated the need for airlines to understand the power of social media, it was the experience of a Canadian band whose instruments were callously mistreated by United Airlines baggage handlers.
After seeking restitution in vain for more than a year, the band posted a music video titled “United Breaks Guitars” on YouTube in July. At last count, the original video had been viewed more than 5.5 million times. The video has been reposted on sites like Facebook countless times.
The IAG report, produced in association with the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation, analyzes the behavior and experiences of several airlines on Twitter, the current hot social medium, and identifies the good, the bad and the sadly mistaken ways in which it is used.
The first lesson to be learned is that a presence on social media “cannot be created with a view to quickly turn it into a revenue stream,” the report says. “Social media is about relationships first. These systems work on referrals.”
“Airlines are jumping in and out of Twitter because they can’t figure out, ‘How do we jump in and make money?’” Frischling said. But they can’t just “jump in to say, ‘We’re here!’ They need to interact fully.”
The burnout rate on Twitter is “significantly high,” he said.
“One of the big problems is lack of resources. Another is airlines’ inability to determine who this project ‘belongs’ to: Is it the marketing department, communications, customer service?”
The reality, he said, is that the effort “needs to span all those departments. It can’t be kept in a silo.”
Many airline executives, faced with the daunting prospect of learning the Twitter “language” and protocol of # and @ and RT, do what they did when they got their first VCRs: They ask the nearest kid to set it up.
Schonland and Frischling found a number of major airlines that entrusted their Twitter accounts to college interns. “Of course, in September, the interns all go back to school,” Schonland noted.
Interns also are not usually empowered to make customers whole when problems arise; often, they may not even know where to seek help.
The IAG report cites one major U.S. airline that joined Twitter in early August, sent out its first tweet five days later and never responded to the same tweeter more than once. During the last week of the month, 231 complaints about the airline appeared on Twitter.
In addition, 186 direct questions were sent to the airline via Twitter.
Yet it sent out a total of five responses.
The carrier missed 231 opportunities to address complaints and 186 opportunities to respond to direct questions made in a public forum, the report said.
The complaints and question simply went unanswered.
While answering all the questions and complaints can be an impossible task, the report urged airlines to endeavor to address some of them based on priority and validity.
In contrast, JetBlue, Southwest and Virgin America have a high level of interaction with their followers and develop a level of loyalty among them.
For example, JetBlue is interacting frequently with purchasers of its All-You-Can-Jet pass, which offered unlimited travel between Sept. 8 and Oct. 8 for $599. JetBlue encouraged other tweeters to follow the pass users as they traveled and tweeted.
United takes a different approach, using Twitter to distribute distressed merchandise, which it calls “twares” (for Twitter fares). They tend to sell out quickly.
Twitter is more effective than e-mail for these purposes, Schonland said. “E-mail is too long, it has all the graphics, it doesn’t get to the point quickly,” he said.
Twitter, on the other hand, is like “Ding on steroids,” he said. Ding is Southwest’s application that delivers short-term deals to users’ desktops.
The phenomenon of social media is a moving target, making it tricky to determine how to allocate resources.
Notably absent from the report is any mention of Second Life, once the hot new thing just a few years ago.
The love-it-or-hate-it quality of Twitter could also send the medium into cyber-afterlife, “but there will always be something coming up behind it,” Frischling said.
“Airlines need to be there when that something shows up.”
A tale of two airlines on Twitter, and how they tweet
The authors of the IAG report on social media developed a “star chart” to plot airlines’ updates, following, followers, friends and messages in a graphical manner. The data were assembled from public sources.
To get a sense of each airline’s level of interactivity, the authors calculated the ratio of outbound traffic – messages plus updates – divided by the number of followers. The average of the airlines that were studied is 10%.
“This number suggests account managers are generating little outbound traffic relative to their constituencies,” the report states.
JetBlue and British Airways (in North America) were among the carriers whose activity was charted. Here are excerpts from the analysis:
If any airline wants to see what works best, it only needs to look at JetBlue. The airline has a team supporting its Twitter account. This team has been so successful that its members are now frequent speakers at social media events. Imagine that, an airline invited to discuss its success at making a success out of customer service. It has been, and can be, done again.
BA’s North American Twitter activity is clearly way behind the industry average. That said, it has built up a useful number of followers. Clearly it needs to grow it traffic to build dialogue.
But the U.S. operation is likely under direction from the head office and is also limited by being focused on the U.S. However, BA is a global airline, and consequently, the U.S Twitter account could be creating news and information on all points the airline serves.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Attention must be paid
In talking with Henry Harteveldt about the latest Forrester Research report on travelers' dissatisfaction with the online booking experience, I was reminded of my first flight on Southwest Airlines. I was sitting in the first row, and when the plane arrived at the gate, the door opened almost immediately. Having grown accustomed to standing in the aisle and cooling my own jets for several minutes, I was stunned. I asked the flight attendant, "I'm free to go?"
A few days later, I was talking to a friend at another airline. I asked him why it takes most airlines so much longer to hook up the jetway and open the door. He said, "That's because whenever one of our planes lands, it's a surprise. Southwest wants to turn its planes around quickly, so it pays attention."
You have to wonder how much money travel companies are leaving on the table — maybe even actively pushing away — because they are not paying attention to the right things. These are difficult times (I so look forward to never saying those words again), and it's hard to stay focused on customer satisfaction when staffing is at minimum levels and costs are being cut like Yul Brynner's hair. But maybe travel companies could spare a tiny bit of energy for thinking of ways to boost customer satisfaction.
This doesn't necessarily entail throwing tons of money at a problem. Sometimes, just focusing a bit more attention on a particular thing, and making it a priority, can result in some significant improvements.
A few days later, I was talking to a friend at another airline. I asked him why it takes most airlines so much longer to hook up the jetway and open the door. He said, "That's because whenever one of our planes lands, it's a surprise. Southwest wants to turn its planes around quickly, so it pays attention."
You have to wonder how much money travel companies are leaving on the table — maybe even actively pushing away — because they are not paying attention to the right things. These are difficult times (I so look forward to never saying those words again), and it's hard to stay focused on customer satisfaction when staffing is at minimum levels and costs are being cut like Yul Brynner's hair. But maybe travel companies could spare a tiny bit of energy for thinking of ways to boost customer satisfaction.
This doesn't necessarily entail throwing tons of money at a problem. Sometimes, just focusing a bit more attention on a particular thing, and making it a priority, can result in some significant improvements.
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