I’ve been checking out flights from U.S. to Europe (London/Frankfurt mostly) for a trip next year, and the fees seem to have absolutely skyrocketed recently. Just 3 years ago I could easily get a flight for $600. Now the fees (I think the airport fees) are higher than that. When/what/why did this happen? Any way around this?

Look at something like Pittsburgh to Philly and Paris to Amsterdam. They’re similar in distance, but there is only one train a day from Pitt to Philly and it takes over 7 hours or you can connect through Washington once a day for 10 hours. Paris and Amsterdam aren’t well connected and require a stop in Brussels, but trains run all day long and take about 4 hours even with the connection. There are countless cities in the US that don’t even have rail at all. Look at Phoenix, one of the largest cities in the US. Trains don’t even go to Phoenix but rather stop 50 miles south of town in Maricopa, on rare occasions. The option just isn’t there for much of the US.

As for weather, Europe does not have the same kind of severe weather we have here in the US. I’m talking about thunderstorms, tornadoes, the kind of things that are normal from spring through summer throughout the central and eastern US.

I’m not saying that these are the sole reasons for it happening, but there is also a lot more air travel in the US in general. Considering how infrequently someone gets stuck for that long on the ground, it could just be a simple issue of volume.

The distances in Europe are no different then those in the US. London to Istanbul takes 4.5 hours. London – Paris about 1 hour (same as say NY – Boston). We have rain (England!), snow (Scandinavia, NW Europe), ice (see snow), fog (Milan!!! North of England!), wind (NW Eu, but possible anywhere). We do not have the poor radar system the US has, but we have (I believe) 27 separately managed national air-spaces, each managed by an individual, national air management system.

So the distances are not shorter per se, but most of the travel takes place in West Europe (a little bit like the East Coast). The train systems are OK within most countries, but international hi-speed rail travel is still in it’s infancy. Plus it is about as unreliable as air travel when severe weather strikes: witness the people that were on the Eurostar for (I believe) up to 7 hours with no food, water or even lights during the snow storms of February of this year.

So I think the biggest difference is first of all less of a crazy congested schedule at most airports. Yes, some of them are seriously crowded, which is why we avoid them for connections (Charles de Gaulle, any London airport, Frankfurt). And then there is indeed the Airline Code which has been implemented across the EU much to the chagrin of for instance Ryanair.

Perhaps however the biggest differentiator is more common sense. I have a friend who flies for a Dutch airline (he captains 737′s) and he shakes his head in disbelief about some of the excessive stories we have heard of here in the US. He says that as captain he simply would never let things get that far out of hand. He would, as he puts it, be a captain of the flight and figure out a resolution. Easier said then done of course as he is not in the situation his US counterparts found themselves in. But I do think that “common sense” and “not taking each answer as definitive” has some value.

Anyway, just wanted to add my perspective…

As for passenger rights legislation – that’s unrelated. Europe didn’t have these kinds of problems before that went into place.

European low cost tickets are not actually cheaper – it’s just a different model. The base price is low but the fees are incredibly high so in the end, it all evens out.

“coincidentally”, Europe does have passengers right regulations which are much more stringent than in the US (compensation is mandatory for weather-related delays, even in the volcano case).
Oh, and European low-cost tickets are generally much cheaper than US low-cost ones.
Something is fishy here.

I’ve long thought that the right data is available in the airline business, its just not in the right hands. I had a friend that had a Delta flight that was diverted for mechanical reasons. The airline’s data that was pushed to customers was horrendous. I was actually able to get more information than the front line staff at the airport or the telephone staff. (If you’re interested see The Attack of Terrible Airline Data!. I know dispatchers themselves might not be able to generate this data, but I think a small team that had access to their data could generate intelligible explanations for customers that’d meet most of their needs.

As ELN mentions, you’re not going to make them all happy, but you can get 98% of them happier, which would be a great help.

By providing *no* information, you are unwittingly playing directly against human psychology, which generally causes more irritation. People like to know that they are in process, and that there are professionals in charge that are working on a solution to their problems. They do not like being left in limbo as they then feel that they need to either take matters into their own hands or are helpless to do anything, both of which lead to more anger and irritation.

There will always be the outlier that will be furious no matter what you do, but you should not base your customer service on satisfying all outliers. You just need to serve most of your customers to an adequate level.

In determining how much or how little information needs to be conveyed, this is not as hard as it may sound. There are many marketing and customer service models/techniques that can be applied (in fact, many people within the airline marketing and communication departments probably possess this knowledge and only need to be leveraged) that are common best practices in communication and customer service. Surveys, interviews, customer profiles, conjoint analysis, etc. can all be used to determine what the best message is to give to customers to target the best consumer response for the most people.

Honestly and realistically in the few recent incidents the only things the airline could have done was pop the slide and have the onboard crew walk the passengers to the terminal. While I think at about 6 hours or so on a diversion the captain should be empowered to make this decision, and supported when they do.

I am of the opinion that the airlines do a poor job of communicating in situations like this, and that is how they brought it on themselves.