Comment by kyro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kyro | Hacker News Reader

Allow me to vent:

The airline industry is byfar the worst run, worst staffed, most inefficient excuse of business ventures. This is the second time I have been stranded at an airport because agents haven't a clue how to navigate the system, dick around and make customers wait, and are incredibly dishonest. I was told today that supervisors were telling agents to, and I quote, "blow off" the passengers today who are desperate to fly. They tell you one thing, make you wait hours, all the while knowing what they told you wasn't true just to avoid customer anger.

Someone needs to completely flip these morons on their heads. They're making flying such an unbelievably frustrating and inconvenient task. I now dread to head to the airport, nervous they'll screw up my reservation or find a way to make me wait unnecessarily. Not to mention how pricey it is now to fly for just 4 hours.

I'm seriously fuming, and this is far from the first time it's happened. The airline industry has consistently delivered the crappiest customer experience I have ever seen.

It's a highly-regulated, highly capital intensive industry, with a complex perishable product, extremely price sensitive customers (it's basically a commodity), with a history of state champion regulated airlines everywhere, and continuing operation of national flag carriers on that basis. International flights are politically regulated as well (i.e. which of the 9 freedoms you get depends on binational agreements), and various countries seriously subsidize their airlines.

Plus, extreme variation in demand with the economy, and cost due to fuel.

So what? That means absolutely nothing to me as a customer.

I'm here speaking with other passengers and am finding that we were all told completely different things. People have been stranded here for 2 days and are being told to wait while others who stroll in with the pilot hours beforehand are given priority standby seats. Let's say there's a valid reason for that, you're sill leaving many customers feeling as if they're being pushed to the side. Everyone feels lied to and ignored.

I'm aware that this is one specific incident, but things like this have happened a handful of times to me, and I'm absolutely certain to thousands and thousands on a daily basis. It's absolutely absurd.

If running an airline isn't sufficiently profitable, there won't be enough spare capacity to handle irregular operations, personalized customer service, etc.

Some of it is just being badly run, but a lot of it is trying to eke out as much efficiency as possible.

The only way to win is not to play; the airline industry still has overcapacity as a result of the legacy carriers and deregulation, so it's not a great idea to enter the market. The exception is air cargo -- FedEx is an AMAZING business.

The folks who strolled in earlier might have more status (miles/revenue) on this airline, and having that means a great deal to the airline's systems and humans. They know what you're worth to the company and whether it's worth bumping someone else lower on the totem. It doesn't feel good but it's generally pretty rational.

So rational, in fact, that I will do all I can to avoid flying this specific airline.

Losing customers in an overbook situation is not a faikure mode.

It's a highly-regulated

-- Not enough, or not in the right way.

Not a political or even an economic argument. The purpose of regulation is to get the consumer something that is a decent product for a decent price, in a manner that is efficient in time and money.

Virgin has proved that on a level playing field they can compete on product, via Virgin Atlantic. Jet Blue was the first Domestic Carrier to even try on the Product Front. The US carriers are apalling and quite frankly embarassing. Even the us automakers have been improving their quality and design in the past 5 years. If they can do it, so can the airlines. =/

The regulations (domestic) are largely about planes not falling out of the sky. They do a pretty good job on that.

The international regulations are both about planes not falling out of the sky (which is good for basically all international airlines, bad for some national domestic airlines), and about political things like who gets how many gates, who is allowed to pick up passengers where, etc.

Some of it is about documenting price and standardizing other terms of carriage, but very little is about consumer comfort or anything like that.

This is a good elucidation. Still a crap product, though. And arguably the business practices of the Airlines are geared towards making informed decisions more difficult. The regulatory body should actually look at <this>, precisely because they are new (these practices were not at all common prior to y2k). Opaque pricing as a marketing strategy, in particular, is a policy concern. The net result is the cost of a trip -- in time and money -- are almost impossible to predict. Part of this is pricing, part of this is the assymetry of the ticketing terms. This makes reasonable economic allocation decisions problematic. And that is actually an issue, for the public and for the regulatory bodies to consider. I'm normally not a fan of bueracracy, but the ticket sizes ($1,000's per year) and the multiplier effect (cost of doing everybody elses business changes) is such that some basic frameworks would probably be productive. In particular, if the industry is on a level playing field, it wouldn't be distortive to competition (any more so then the current concetration issues or the impact of opacity on mkt efficiency).

The obvious problem with this is that one generations "floor" of minimum quality becomes the next "ceiling" when tech changes and innovation promises better/faster/cheaper ways of doing things. Once the power is given to write the rules, then the special interests will ensure they are written for their benefit. Etc. But its still worth thinking the problem through. To big an issue to not even try.

Look at the impact that Heathrow had. It provided London and the UK with a massive advantage over the past 20 years as the English speaking gateway to the EU. And thats despite all of its limitations and problems.

And terrible incentives: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/american-and-us-airwa...

tl;dr; the executives make the big money by rewarding themselves for going a certain amount of time between bankruptcies

Any mass-scale business that is required to hold customers on their premises for hours at a time in a space-confined area is always going to be challenged with customer service. Combined with the modern consumer who is taught they're always right, and it's a recipe for dissatisfaction. I travel a ton for work and have learned to let things roll off my back. Yet when I travel with friends and family, they will always find something dissatisfying, even if it's on a car trip. Nasty bathrooms at a rest stop, a missed exit, etc. are no different than a flight. When 99% of things go right and you travel at 800mph for hundreds of miles for less than a hundred bucks, people let inferior coffee ruin the entire trip for them. God forbid the complexity added by doing it with a few hundred other people.

You're a sensing a market opportunity. You should be asking the question of why nobody is disrupting it.

Probably because right now an airline is the best way of creating a millionaire, out of a billionaire.

But I agree with the parent, and unfortunately, those who are making money are 'cattle transporters' like Ryanair

The airline model has to be rethought from the ground up: fares, service, route allocation, price segmentation. Throw everything away and start afresh.

Because physics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com