It’s been a long but interesting few days here at PhoCusWright. Mostly, I’m here to meet with people and learn more about their companies, so I haven’t been attending too many of the sessions. That being said, there was one presentation I absolutely had to attend: “Customer Experience and Flying: Not an Oxymoron.” Oh yeah, and this was presented by United. I figured it would get ugly, and I was right.

Tim Simonds, Managing Director, Customer Strategy and Metrics, first gave a presentation that was entirely focused on the premium experience that United is trying to create. He used many of the buzzwords out there – they want to be “best in class” and they have a “bias for action,” and yes, he even pulled out the “purchase funnel.” Let me try to translate.

United is trying to provide an excellent premium product on its international fleet. The airline wants to really excel at delivering when the customer experiences the product, and this includes everything from the right seat/bed to little things as well . . . for the premium customer. The airline has a first class lobby at O’Hare to create a great experience on the ground, and they’ve even taken the agents that work there to the Disney Institute to give them training on customer service.

We were also shown a video with, as I jotted in my notes, “dramatic piano music and backdrops of Chicago.” This was all about the premium seat, and it made me wonder why they even bothered putting it together.

And that was that. Sounds good, right? Yeah, well if you’re flying international premium class then it is pretty good but there are a couple problems that came to mind immediately.

1. Not once was the back of the plane mentioned in the presentation
2. On time performance didn’t come up in the prepared remarks

I thought it was rather odd that these wouldn’t be discussed, but fear not, it came up immediately after the presentation was done. See, PhoCusWright has a Talkback feature where two people from the industry come in after the presentation to gang up and ask questions. This time, we had Josh Weiss, Delta’s Managing Director of delta.com and Self-Service alongside Jim Young, Frontier’s Vice President of Marketing, Sales, and Distribution (though he has a much longer history in the industry with other companies).

Apparently, Josh and I were on the same page, because he immediately addressed my first point above. He said something to the effect of, “I see a lot about the premium product but what about everyone else?”

Tim then clarified that United’s strategy is to provide a good experience for everyone and a great experience for premium passengers, but we didn’t get any details of what that might mean other than saying that good service was important.

Jim then jumped in and said that everything United appears to be doing is playing catch up. What are they doing to differentiate themselves?

Tim said that service would be the differentiator.

Josh wanted to know what else they were doing besides sending 200 people to Disney for training. What are they doing to help everyone else at the airline?

Tim said they’re having meetings with people every day and they’re really trying to make sure that management is setting them up to succeed. I’d guess few employees would say management is doing a good job of that right now, so there’s a lot of work to be done here.

On time performance did finally come up in discussion and Tim said they were making progress on that. I certainly hope so, because while the details didn’t come up on stage, I looked it up and found that they were 17th out of 19 airlines in September and they’re in 18th place for the full year. They’re also in the bottom half of the pack for lost bags (12 out of 19 in September) and they have well above the average level of complaints. So again, there’s a ton of work to do.

Josh had a good question that seemed to be almost an afterthought, but it was important that it was asked. He wanted to know what “class” the airline was trying to be in when it said it wanted to be “best in class.” Were airlines like Singapore and Lufthansa included?

Tim responded that no, they weren’t. They’re only looking at North American carriers. And then he said, “For us to say we want to be as good as foreign flag carriers is overstretching.” Ouch. So they want to be the best of the worst, apparently.

At this point, everyone started piling on. An SMS showed up on the screen that said, “All this focus on the customer but where were they in that video? I only saw a bunch of suits in downtown Chicago.” Good point.

Then an audience member noted that the magic of Disney is that they treat everyone well while United is “abandoning the back.” Tim tried to respond that you get a very different experience at the Grand Floridian then you do at Port Orleans (at DisneyWorld), but in my eyes that isn’t comparing apples to apples here. I thought about this as the session ended and we all left the room.

United (along with most legacy airlines) doesn’t understand which of its travelers are premium, so it’s pretty ridiculous for them to focus so intently on that area. It rewards its frequent fliers, but those people could have bought the cheapie fares for all their flights. Meanwhile, someone who has never flown United but buys a full fare walkup ticket won’t even get to sit in Economy Plus.

Putting it in DisneyWorld terms, you could have one traveler who goes to DisneyWorld 25 times a year, pays $80, and gets to stay in the Grand Floridian since he comes in so often. Meanwhile, you could have another customer who pays $500 for his only visit of the year and gets put in Port Orleans. That’s not how Disney treats its customers and it’s not how airlines should either. I won’t even get into the fact that even the lowest paying Disney guests are treated very well whereas United has a lot of work to do all around.

In the end, Tim took all the shots pretty well considering that his employer deserved them all, but I ended up almost feeling sorry for the guy. United has a lot of work to do, and they probably shouldn’t be giving a presentation with this title until they get all the basics in order.

Back at the Southwest Halloween contest last month, the planning group had us try to guess what the next Southwest city would be. Holly Hegeman of PlaneBusiness put down three letters – LGA. It appears that she was right. Southwest is trying to put together a deal that would secure slots at New York’s LaGuardia airport. Meanwhile, Virgin America is saying that it can’t get gates at O’Hare even though the airline already said it would be flying there. Sounds like one airline is far more determined to grow than the other.

Let’s start with Southwest. The airline has put a bid in to pay $7.5 million for ATA’s operating certificate. The only reason they appear to want this is for the LaGuardia slots to fill the giant hole in their route map. (I believe they lost their Washington/National slots long ago, so that shouldn’t be part of the package.) Now don’t freak out, Southwest employees. This isn’t yet another codeshare announcement. ATA is toast, and this is just an effort to buy the slots to be flown by Southwest airplanes.

Clearly this is a big deal, but this doesn’t mean Southwest will get in immediately. It’s always possible that someone else will put a bigger bid down for the assets, and then we could see a bidding war. (Grab some popcorn!) But even if they don’t win this round, they’re clearly stating that they plan on finally entering New York City. It’s going to happen at some point, and I’d put my bet down that Chicago/Midway will be one of the first markets. (Yep, those Delta flights on the same route would be gone in two minutes.)

They’re not going to take over New York with this initial move, but they will certainly cause a big headache for the other carriers. It’s bold, and it’s a smart move. Southwest needs to be in New York, especially if it wants to be a bigger player in the business world.

On the other side of the coin, we find Virgin America. The airline had announced plans to start flying to Chicago/O’Hare this fall, but then that was pushed back. Now a Chicago Tribune article says that Virgin America can’t find gates so it may decide soon not to go into the airport after all.

Something here doesn’t smell right. I have no doubt that they can get gates if they want them. They could always fly out of the mostly (but not entirely) international Terminal 5 since those gates are controlled by the city. Or I imagine some airline would be willing to sell them a gate or at least partial use of one. It says they’ve only spoken with United, American, and Delta. What about US Airways? I’m pretty sure those guys would sell their mothers if they could make enough money on the deal. Or what about one of the many other carriers that fly to the airport?

It sounds to me like they may want gates, but they don’t want them THAT much. Unless the Tribune article is inaccurate, it just doesn’t sound like they’re really exhausting all options here. Definitely an interesting contrast between two airlines’ efforts to get into crowded airports. One is willing to go a lot further to make it happen.

For years, Alaska has been the slut of the industry, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. The airline has set up codesharing and/or frequent flier agreements with just about everyone without committing to a single partner and that has been a solid strategy for them. Yesterday, Alaska and Delta announced that they would getting even closer, and though many will say this is the end of the “slut” strategy, in my eyes this is just an extension of the existing Northwest partnership.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll bet that Delta would love to have Alaska alone in the Delta family, but for Alaska, this is just affirmation that they gained a benefit from the Northwest agreement and they want to extend that to the new Delta/Northwest. Here are the details:

• Reciprocal club access so members of Delta/Northwest clubs get access to Alaska’s and vice versa




• Priority seat assignments, check-in, and boarding for Platinum and Gold members in each elite program




• Expanded codesharing on more flights, including the new Delta Seattle-Beijing flight that begins next year

Ok, so what does this really mean? Well, Delta has a big hole in the west and it needs to fill it, especially since it has Pacific aspirations. Codesharing is one thing, but a closer tie-up is much more attractive for elite fliers, and that’s who these airlines want to attract, of course. So let’s look at a couple maps to show why this is good for both, thanks to the Great Circle Mapper. First, how about flights from LAX.

I’ve gone ahead and shown routes from Delta/Northwest as well as Air France/KLM in blue. You can tell it’s mostly an east-west route structure with longer hauls. This has been the case since Delta dismantled its short-lived hub in Los Angeles recently. But when you overlay Alaska in red, you can see significant north-south operations that mesh quite nicely with the existing Delta route map. Now Delta can have more feed for its longer haul flights, in particular potential new destinations in the Pacific. Now let’s look at Seattle.

It’s a similar story here but with much more power added from the Alaska route map. Delta/Northwest/Air France have a smaller presence, but it’s still east-west, long haul based. Alaska, however, while having a strong north-south network also has the ability to bring people in from all over the country to Seattle nonstop. So if Delta really wants to continue to build a Pacific presence, it needs to be able to tap into the western markets, and it has already proven it can’t build that itself. Alaska is the perfect fit for what they want to do.

So will this be the end of Alaska’s cooperation with other airlines? I highly doubt it . . . for now. There’s no reason for Alaska to end its myriad of codeshares unless Delta ends up actually buying Alaska. That wouldn’t surprise me, eventually, but I think Delta would probably like to make sure that this sort of feed will actually be worth trying to buy in the first place. This is a way for them to do that without having to lay out the cash.

Just a heads up for those who are interested. I’m at the PhoCusWright conference here in LA this week. Most of my coverage will be over on BNET, but I may put a post or two in here if I find some interesting bits.

If you’re in town for the show, come on by and find me.

What, you’ve never heard of Northwest flight 710? That’s probably because the crash happened nearly 50 years ago, on March 17, 1960 to be precise. After I left Indianapolis last week, I decided that I would avoid interstates for the drive to Phoenix, and that helped me find all kinds of excellent aviation-related stops, including a memorial for Northwest 710.

The recommendation came from a friend. He said if I went south until just before Indiana met Kentucky at the Ohio River, I could find this memorial just a few miles east of Cannelton, Indiana. It wasn’t easy to find at first, but once I got there, I found this:

The memorial is very simple, but extremely touching. In addition to the names of all the passengers and crew (including, eerily, someone with the same name as my grandfather), there is a very nice inscription. See for yourself:

This accident was one of the “whirl-mode” accidents that plagued the Lockheed Electra in its early days. The wing broke apart in mid-air and the pieces came crashing down into this spot at full speed.

If you’d like to see the location on Google Maps, enter these coordinates: 37.911041,-86.633044. I also have more pictures from my visit here.