Friday rant: shitifying the airline traveler experience
- Summary:
- Changes in airline customer loyalty programs and the impact on seating arrangement are aptly described as shitifying the experience by Jeff Nolan. I concur.
"If you’ve ever had a really frank conversation with a brand-loyal frequent flier, you may understand the perverse way elite status can get tied up in a person’s sense of self-worth. By changing the priority seating rules, Delta has said to me I am no longer the sort of person who deserves to pay a regular economy fare and reserve a Comfort+ seat at the time of booking. I, they are saying, am not as special as I had once been led to believe I was."
And at the same time they are shitifying every other aspect of the flight experience so not only are you no longer as elite as you once thought but the rungs on the ladder has also moved farther apart.
The NYT article makes the economic case:
A few economic factors have led to acute elite bloat in recent years. Airlines have cut capacity, so planes are packed and there are fewer choice seats to hand out. Business travel has returned with the economic recovery. Airlines have increasingly chased after co-branded credit card business by handing out not only redeemable points to credit card holders but also miles that count toward elite qualification — so some customers are getting elite status based on their nonairline spending.
As airlines merge, it is easier for travelers to consolidate all their travel with one airline and achieve status without flying lots of painful connections. As such, flying 60,000 miles a year on a single airline isn’t the feat it once was.
This is especially noticeable in the US where the rejigging of rules around the interplay between 'elite' status and boarding process makes for ever more inventive ways of gaming the system. This has become apparent to me the last few months as I've schlepped up and down the west and mid-west of the US pretty much every week.
The conclusion I've come to is that airline status has almost taken on the taint of stack ranking, the much hated way in which Microsoft ranked employees but which was earlier popularized by 'Neutron' Jack Welch during his time as CEO at GE. This gives rise to all sorts of weirdness and anomalies.
For example, I recently took an 'in and out' trip to Seattle. On first attempting the booking with Alaska, I found nothing but middle seats available in coach. We all love those - right? I bit the bullet and opted to travel first where there was plenty of space at time of booking. By the time I arrived at the airport, upgrades had taken care of the rest in first and the plane was full. In an upcoming flight to Nashville, it's the same thing only this time with Delta and no obvious ability to book an economy comfort seat for reasons outlined in the NYT article. It's all about status and finely tuned capacity planning.
I can see the logic of rationing better seats in coach to those with greater status and I can also see the logic in tempting me to upgrade for cash or simply buy that 'better' ticket. But isn't it more the case as Delta pointed out: 'When everyone's an elite flyer, no one is' and that somehow, the frequent flyer/loyalty programs need a serious amount of rehashing?
The main impact issue centers around the overhead bin problem. The way baggage charges are presented, the smart traveler never wants to put baggage in the hold. It's well known this has led to a near free for all when it comes to getting overhead space for hand baggage. While the airlines have theoretical size restrictions, it's almost always a bunfight trying to find overhead storage in coach.
On Southwest, the situation has become so bad that it is routine for passengers in the last boarding group to find their hand luggage being checked for free and for staff to be constantly reminding people how and where to store hand luggage. While irate passengers might bemoan the way airlines fail to enforce their own carry on standards, my sense is that knowledge alone leads to a level of rules abuse. And why wouldn't you?
If as Jeff suggests, the airline travel experience is being shitified, then why wouldn't passengers seek to kick back in the most passive-aggressive way possible.
What to do?
As the NYT author points out in response to the quotation at the top of this story:
The only way for me to prove them wrong is by flying 75,000 miles this year on Delta. And by gum, I will do just that.
I am guessing that many others will follow suit. I'd much rather see a scrapping and reset of the whole elite status system. In what many of my colleagues will regard as near heresy - I'd argue that the whole topic of complementary upgrades (except in very limited circumstances) go out the window. You want that better seat? Pay for it. You wanna screw around with overhead luggage restrictions? You pay for it.
My reasoning is straightforward: airline and route consolidation combined with optimized operations means there is no economic reason for airlines to offer these so-called perks. Sure, give me an allocated seat. Sure, give me an airport lounge if I'm flying with you a lot. But please - don't continue with the current lottery that almost guarantees chaos and ill feeling. We all deserve better. We all deserve a less shitifying experience.