Cranky Concierge – and how it can make your travel day – MakeTravelBetter.com
A client of ours wrote us up after having a great experience with one of our concierges.
How to handle weather delays and flight cancellations – JohnnyJet
Johnny was kind enough to include Cranky Concierge in his tips for dealing with flight problems.
In the Trenches: The Yelp Conundrum – Intuit Small Business Blog
We get a referral or two per week from Yelp and most of them are pretty bad. Maybe I’m just doing something wrong.
Forms of identification: Brett Snyder – BBC Passport Blog
I did a little interview with BBC about some of my travels. We talked about more obscure things, like my most unique meals and souvenirs while traveling.
American Airlines to Let Employees Pick its Paint Job – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
Another take on American’s latest efforts in choosing its livery.
16 comments on “Cranky on the Web (December 16 – 20)”
I hope the AA workers select the much nicer and easier on the eyes AA logo. That flag thing is just ugly.
If the new AA/US paints aircraft for PSA,AirCal,RenoAir, TWA will they also add the tag line ‘we bought them so we could kill them’. I know that’s tacky, but living in the west and having worked for TWA, that’s just what AA/US did to those carriers, so it’s a sort subject.
Agree. Every time I see one these new paint scheme planes, I think: “OMG, there’s Evil Knievel (or is it Captain America) about to take his whatever and jump the Grand Canyon!” How about a little sophistication, AA/US?
For TWA that just isn’t fair. AA had plans, and this little thing happened on September 11, 2001 that sort of put a wrench in the plans.
PSA, AirCal, RenoAir.. Maybe. Although they also had WN to deal with. WN was much scrappier and lower cost back in those days.
I agree with Nick that American didn’t buy TWA to kill them. But I disagree that it was 9/11 that got in the way of the plan working. It was just a bad plan in the first place, but then again, TWA was probably toast on its own anyway. Sad but true.
I really don’t mind the new American livery. I’m not enamored with it, but it’s okay. The alternative tail offered in the survey (not a vote, from what I’ve read elsewhere) is even worse than the flag tail, in my opinion. It’s as boring and bland as boring and bland can be. But … there’s no accounting for taste.
DesertGhost – It is not a survey but indeed a vote. Whatever the employees choose will go on the airplane. I link to the newsletter in that Conde Nast post so you can see it from them directly.
From The Dallas Morning News:
UPDATE,10 a.m. Tuesday: Is it a vote or just an opinion poll? Here’s the wording that employees see when they go to the survey:
“This survey contains a question about the past, present and future of the American Airlines livery. We appreciate your honest feedback. (Note: This isn’t a ‘vote’ on the new livery … rather it is a way to get your thoughts before we make a decision on how we are going to paint the planes in the future.)
ORIGINAL ITEM, Monday: Doug Parker, the new chief executive officer of American Airlines Group, told employees Monday that he’ll let them decide what the tail on AA jets should look like.
Above is the story on which I based my comment.
Well that is interesting. Hadn’t heard that and it’s not what I was told by the company. If they let employees vote and then go against them, that would be bad. My guess is this is some sort of legal disclaimer.
Sounds plausible.
FWIW, I think the old tail doesn’t work because you have two brand identities showing for American Airlines. IMHO they should take the new AA livery and put the US tail on it. Seriously. That’d work nicely.
I had similar thoughts about mixing the A*A logo on the tail and the new logo on the forward fuselage. The US tail might work, though I think you’d still have a bit of a brand identity problem mixing the new AA logo and the US flag logo.
My thinking would have been to work the new logo into a tail design; something like this: http://www.cardatabase.net/modifiedairlinerphotos/search/photo_search.php?id=00015567
I like that design a lot.
I like it, too – good, clean look. Personally, I’m not a fan of the new eAAgle, but if USAA is going to keep it, I’d much rather have this than either the new tail or just slapping on the old logo, where the dueling eAAgles look clunky.
I have three questions re Cranky Concierge – 1) Is Cranky Concierge only really set up for US based travelers and US domestic travel?
2) Why and how would infrequent travelers benefit from Cranky Concierge, as per the MakeTravelBetter.com post? My experience, living in and flying from New Zealand, is that most of the cheaper fares are very inflexible, such that one couldn’t change their originally booked flight to get a better connection etc. even if we wanted to, as you would forfeit the value of your ticket.
3) How good is your Cranky Concierge team at knowing those ‘special places to eat’, ‘key facts to know’ etc. for International Airports?
Adrian – I’m happy to answer your questions.
1) No, we help people all over the world. We have a small business client in Cairo that we help regularly. We have clients in Asia and Australia in addition to Europe. The only issue for those in Europe/Asia/Australia is the time difference of when we staff the office for flight planning. But for flight monitoring, our concierges follow people whenever they travel.
2) It depends on the service you’re talking about. Our flight monitoring service isn’t about helping you make a change because you want a better connection. It’s about helping if something goes wrong. So if your flight is canceled or you’ll miss a connection, then we can help get you back on track. For flight planning, we can help with the purchase of the ticket itself, and that can sometimes mean finding better options that you might not have known about. If you’re flying domestically within NZ, then it’s unlikely that we can add much on the flight planning side since options are few. But for travel beyond, that’s where we can start adding more value. (And of course, flight monitoring adds value on any itinerary.)
3) Our specialty is in getting you where you need to be and not in knowing every eatery in every airport. That being said, our concierges are well-traveled and we take notes when we get them from our clients. So we are always happy to help steer people in the right direction.