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Improving air travel
by Harry Browne
Pity the poor airlines.
That's right -- I said pity the poor airlines.
Yes, those airlines that try to bump you from flights, that keep you sitting in
the plane on a runway for an hour, that take so long getting your bags to you,
that have the long lines at the ticket counters. Those airlines.
I'd estimate that about 75 percent of the problems we blame on airlines are
caused either by government-owned airports or by the federal Air Traffic
Controller system.
Prior to Sept. 11, the airlines kept offering cheaper and cheaper fares, the
demand for air travel kept increasing and increasing, the airlines' inventory of
planes and employees kept growing and growing, while the airports and air
traffic control system became more and more out of date.
The government-owned airports are always so far behind the curve that there's
never enough room at the ticket counters to process passenger volume quickly,
never an efficient baggage system, never enough gates available to handle all
the planes.
And those flight delays? When they're not caused by the weather, they almost
always are caused by a federal traffic control system that operates with ancient
computers and typical bureaucratic inefficiency.
Taking the blame
But who gets blamed for all these problems?
The airlines, of course.
Two years ago my wife and I boarded a plane at LaGuardia Airport to go to
Atlanta. The plane left the gate on time, but we got no further than the runway.
The control tower held the plane on the LaGuardia runway for four and a half
hours.
Why? Because the traffic control system was overloaded and planes were backed up
arriving at Atlanta airport.
So why didn't the plane simply go back to the gate and let us wait inside the
airport? Because there were no available gates at the overloaded airport.
The pilot was on the Intercom apologizing profusely for the delay as though it
were the airline's fault. It was almost as though he thought he'd be punished if
he said anything bad about the airports or the air traffic control system.
And the airline paid for an Atlanta hotel room for the night (because we missed
our connection to California), even though the airline wasn't responsible.
Making a bad situation worse
Since the sad state of air travel today is primarily the fault of
governments, the Ralph Nader types have a solution -- more government.
They want a "Passenger Bill of Rights" with such intelligent provisions as
making an airline pay a passenger 200 percent of the ticket price when a flight
is more than two hours late. Presumably, that will "send a message" to the
airlines that they should make government more efficient.
Public relations
The biggest failing of the airlines themselves is probably poor training in
public relations.
Not only do their employees too often apologize for problems that aren't their
fault, the employees don't show empathy when it really is called for. They
apologize inappropriately in a collective way, but they too seldom apologize in
a personal way.
When you wait forever in line at the ticket counter, rarely does the ticket
agent say, "I'm sorry you had to wait so long." When you can't get the seat
selection you ask for, you don't hear, "I'm sorry we can't accommodate you."
When your baggage is lost or late getting rerouted back to you, no one says,
"I'm sorry you've had to put up with this."
An airline employee needs to learn only two simple lessons: 1) No one likes to
be inconvenienced, and 2) when inconvenienced, anyone will feel a lot better if
you just show a little sympathy. It amazes me that, in such a "people" business,
I'm not aware of any airline whose ground personnel are noticeably well-trained
in public relations. (Southwest is
probably the best I've seen, and the telephone reservation clerks for most
airlines seem very well-trained.)
I said 75 percent of the air-travel problems are really government problems.
Probably most of the other 25 percent would be reduced considerably if new
competitors could come into the market and pressure existing airlines to improve
their public-relations skills. But a lack of gates at the government airports
makes it virtually impossible for a new airline to get started.
Solving the problems
It would take a separate article to explore all the possible
improvements, but two general remedies are obvious:
1. Cities and counties should sell their airports to private companies and make
it easier for competing airports to open within each city.
2. The federal government should get completely out of air traffic control. Let
the airlines operate the system, modernize it, and make it efficient.
Let's make air travel fun again.
The URL on WorldNetDaily for this commentary is
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27380 .
Harry Browne is Director of Public Policy
for the American Liberty Foundation
(www.AmericanLibertyFoundation.org).
You can read more of his articles at
www.HarryBrowne.org, and his books are
available at
www.HBBooks.com .
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