I received an email from a reader who had a really poor experience flying Southwest. He wrote “Southwest Sucks” on his boarding pass, and he wasn’t allowed to fly. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well yeah, but it’s not that simple. I’m sure that’s how most media outlets would pick up on the story, but there’s a lot more to it. This is a great example of how hard it can be to deliver 100% great customer service at all times.

Let’s go over the whole story. This customer had just had a really tough week. He was traveling to a family member’s wake and because of problems on the outbound flight related to weather, he missed it. This was exacerbated by poor communication so he was not happy, as you can imagine. By the time he came back, he was already at wit’s end. He tried to explain his frustrations to the customer service agent at his gate, but she couldn’t make time for him and suggested he contact customer relations. He got frustrated and wrote “Southwest Sucks” on his boarding pass and sat down.

The next thing he knows, he was trying to board the airplane when a flight attendant refused him boarding and he had to take a different flight. Sounds like a pretty bad case of customer handling, right? Well, yes, but possibly no. We need to think about this from every angle.

From his angle, there’s no question that this was the topper at the end of a horrible travel experience. I actually connected him with Southwest, and they were very sorry to hear about it. They apologized that he had such a difficult experience and offered him compensation.

But that doesn’t mean the flight attendant who kicked him off was completely in the wrong. Though I haven’t heard any report from that flight attendant, the other crew members said that a family onboard complained to the flight attendant that there was a passenger in the gate area causing trouble and they wanted to make sure they didn’t sit next to him.

Now, if you’re a flight attendant and you have someone on the plane who says someone else is causing trouble, you need to take that seriously. You could end up stuck at 35,000 feet with someone who really is causing trouble and bad things can happen. So the flight attendant acted under time pressure and made the decision not to allow him to fly.

Had she known what the customer had gone through and why he was so frustrated, I would hope she would have gladly let him on and maybe even have given him a free drink for his troubles. But she didn’t know the whole story, and she really couldn’t. She had to make a judgment call, and it turned out to be wrong . . . but only with perfect hindsight. With the information she had and the time pressure she was under, it may have been the right thing.

But we can back up even further here. Had that gate agent simply been willing to listen to him for a minute, he may not have written “Southwest Sucks” on his boarding pass and none of this would have happened at all.

But we don’t know what was happening with the gate agent at the time. She could have been overwhelmed from issues she had earlier in the day. Maybe she had personal problems and just wasn’t on her game. We’ll never know, and it doesn’t necessarily matter. The point is that this kind of stuff happens to everyone. We’re all people.

The reality is that just like in airline accidents, it takes a million little things to come together to erupt into a customer service issue like this. It’s going to happen to every airline at some point, and the key is to see how that airline responds.

Southwest handled this very well, in the end. I sent the email (with his permission) to Southwest social media guru Paula Berg, and she jumped on it. She immediately reached out to find out all sides of what happened, and within a couple of days she was on the phone with the customer apologizing that he had such a difficult experience flying Southwest.

Will it make up for the poor experience? No, not completely. But I imagine that he will now consider flying them again because they showed that they do care about trying to make things right after the fact.

In news that will surprise absolutely no one, the DOT has sent a letter to Family Airlines saying that it needs to get its act together if it actually wants to fly. Riiight. That’ll happen. You have to read the request and Family’s completely inadequate response for maximum enjoyment. (Here’s a brief refresher on their silly plan for domestic 747s based in Vegas.)

You can read the letter from the DOT to Family Airlines (pdf) yourself, but in short, they aren’t happy. (FAI = Family Airlines, Inc)

Although a substantial amount of time has elapsed since FAI’s initial filing and FAI has submitted certain supplemental information to its application to the Department, FAI has to date failed sufficiently to meet its burden of demonstrating its fitness to allow us to continue processing its application. We remain concerned about FAI’s fitness in every area: managerial competence, finances, and compliance disposition.

The rest of the letter is a scathing rebuke of every single aspect of the airline. It is some fun-filled reading, but not nearly as much fun as the response from the “airline.” You can read that here (.doc).

The response was dated August 4, the same day the letter came from the DOT. Yeah, sure. It had three parts.

1. This was simply a change of address. (It’s still wrong on the website.)




2. This was a list of bios for all the new proposed officers without justifying how any of them are qualified. In particular, it didn’t address the DOT’s concern about having Dan Eikleberry as VP of Flight Ops. It also never even touched the concern that DOT had about Barry Michaels continued involvement.




3. Finally, they addressed the DOT’s concern that they didn’t have enough money to run this operation. This is probably justified since the company’s balance sheet at the time of its previous submission showed $30 in assets. Seriously. The DOT says the airline would need $185 million to begin. The response? They are going to issue 22 million shares of preferred stock to institutional investors at $7.50 each for a total $165 million. Even a non-math whiz could figure out that’s still $20 million below what the DOT says they need. But what’s the chance they can even raise that? The only institutional investor that would be interested in this is one that is institutionalized.

I thought it would be fun to try to get Family Airlines’ take on this letter, so I called the number on the website. I was informed that “due to technical difficulties” my call could not be completed as dialed. Would the technical difficulty be that they don’t actually have any phones? I also sent them an email on Tuesday, August 11 but I haven’t heard back.

Methinks Family should look at an alternative business. If their website is any indication, they may be trying to get in on the healthcare game. Take a look:

It was just a couple of months ago that the TSA started requiring you to use your exact name as it appears on your ID, and now, they need more. As of last Saturday, August 15, you’ll have to give your birthdate and gender as well.

Ok, so it may not be exactly on August 15. Airlines had to start implementing it on that date, and full compliance will be required in 2010. That means that every time you book a flight, you will have to provide your full name as it appears on your ID, your gender, and your birthdate. Annoying? I suppose. But they do have a reason for doing this. You can decide if it’s a good reason or not.

The reason is that it’s required for the ridiculously-named SecureFlight program to take off. We’ve talked about this before. Airlines currently handle the task of matching passengers to the watch lists. In this program, the government will be taking over that role, and they don’t want to deal with all the potential false positives.

Now with gender and birthdate, they can stop searching the 1 year old girl who just happens to be named Osama bin Laden and focus on closer matches instead. Sounds great, in theory. But we’ll see how this actually works.

What about the Dominican baseball player who forged his age as a youngster? Or what about the many refugees who may not even know the day they were born? What about the poor transgender folks who now have absolutely no idea which box to check so that the TSA doesn’t harass them further? The TSA put out a great Q&A with answers to these questions. In short, they just care that what you submit matches what’s on your government ID. So accuracy isn’t as important as conformity.

This information won’t be used at the checkpoint but rather before you ever arrive at the airport. Once you make a booking, they’ll run the data against the government watch lists to see if you need to be flagged. If not, then you’re fine. Everything will look the same at the airport as it does today. If there’s a problem, you’ll be flagged and they’ll deal with it at the ticket counter. Nothing changes at the security checkpoint.

It does appear that the TSA can share some of this information with other agencies, but supposedly only for purposes related to the watch list. Here’s the System of Records Notice (SORN) (pdf) describing that policy.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. We just have to go along with this if we want to travel. If we don’t, well, there might be more strip searches in your future. Of course, things could change now that it looks like we may be getting a new TSA administrator. I wouldn’t keep my fingers crossed.

I certainly didn’t see this one coming. Thanks to a greatly increased bid and Southwest’s unwillingness to do a deal without labor’s buy-in (read BNET for more on this), Republic is the one walking away with Frontier. But I don’t want to talk about the deal. Let’s talk about what this will mean for Frontier and Southwest.

First of all, it means the animals live. Frontier will keep flying under its own name for now. I suppose it’s possible at some point that Republic will decide to merge Midwest and Frontier under one name, but my guess is that won’t happen.

See, Republic is a pro at flying airplanes under all different kinds of brands. So it wouldn’t surprise me to see them merge the operational side of the house along with back office functions while still keeping separate brands. Why bother? Well, Midwest still has some fleeting value in Milwaukee while we know Frontier has value in Denver.

Republic’s chief Bryan Bedford has already signaled that airplanes will start moving around. At the very end of an article talking about job losses that will hit Midwest because of the merger (100 out of the 1,000 left in Milwaukee will go), there was this nugget.

Also, Republic on Thursday emerged as the winning bidder in a bankruptcy auction for Denver-based Frontier Airlines. Bedford said some of the 138-seat Airbus A319 jets used by Republic will likely be shifted into service for Midwest flights to West Coast destinations.

So, Chautauqua flies Embraer regional jets for Midwest, Republic flies larger Embraer jets for Midwest, Midwest still flies some 717s for itself but that’s ending, and now Frontier will be flying A319s for Midwest (which have 136, not 138 seats, by the way)? I guess so. There’s no reason to change certificates here – they can use Frontier as their Airbus operator and have it operate for anyone they feel like. So we’ll see if that’s the plan.

Meanwhile, what does this mean for Southwest? Well they have to be pretty bummed right now. They had a cheap and easy way to test out international flying and a regional operation. Plus they were going to make Denver a profitable place. Now none of that is likely to happen. I’m really interested to see what will happen with Denver. Now that Frontier doesn’t look to be going anywhere, it isn’t looking good for Southwest’s operation there. Even if United fails, I would bet that a legacy would step in to pick up the pieces. So Southwest has to make some hard decisions now. Will they want to keep flying a large unprofitable operation in Denver?

There are a lot of interesting questions to answer now that the bidding is done.

Why is Allegiant’s Load Factor Dropping While Others Increase? – BNET
Allegiant’s load factor dropped more than anyone else last month, but I’m not too concerned.

Southwest’s Bid for Frontier Raised to $170 Million – BNET
Southwest’s final bid for Frontier has been released.

American Exits the Orange County – San Francisco Market – BNET
I guessed this would happen awhile ago. American is pulling out after competition increased.

JetBlue offers a buffet of flights for one price – The Press Enterprise
We talk a little about JetBlue’s new $599 pass for unlimited travel for a month.

What US Airways Stands to Gain From Its Slot Swap with Delta – BNET
The title is pretty self-explanatory, no?

What Delta Stands to Gain From Its Slot Swap with US Airways – BNET
Let’s look at this slot swap from the other side.