Delta Air Lines sends frontline staff back to charm school

by Scott Carmichael on

We’ve all been there – standing face to face with an airline employee that has the customer service skills of a can of beans, completely unwilling to provide any form of assistance in a time of need.

According to the Vice President of Delta, his airline completely fit that description when they so badly failed at customer support last summer.

To fix things, he’s sending 11,000 of his staff to be retrained. Everyone that is directly involved with customers, from gate and baggage agents, to ticket agents and supervisors will be sent to charm school.

One of the driving forces behind this speedy retraining project is the number of complaints about Delta Air Lines sent to the Department of Transportation. Delta beat every other airline in the nation – a first place hardly worth bragging about. Add to that scoring second to last in on-time arrivals and baggage handling, and you see why they are spending $2 billion on improving things.

With role-play games and other hands-on lessons, the staff will be retrained on how to deal with complaints, how to explain baggage fees to customers and tips on how to put the focus back on the customer.

According to the Wall Street Journal, these are the core elements of the retraining plan:

  • Make it personal. Focus on the person in front of you, not the long line of people. Greet each one memorably.
  • Be empathetic. Put yourself on the other side of the counter.
  • Listen, ask, listen again. Customers tune out routine announcements. Agents tune out customers.
  • Solve together. Involve customers in solutions by offering choices.
  • Be there. It’s a lot easier to check out than check in. ‘If you don’t remember your last three customers, you are just processing,’ said Delta facilitator Michael Hazelton.

To me, these are all things staff should have been doing all along, and retraining them in such basic things seems rather odd. Also, retraining staff to greet customers won’t help if the policies at the airline are the bigger issue – and without providing staff available options to be empowered and override rules, customers will still be aggravated when things go sour.

Question is – is this all too little too late? Have you switched carriers because of lousy service from Delta Air Lines?

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[Photo: AP]

Delta Airlines kills another pet: kitten dies of cold in cargo hold

by Scott Carmichael on

After a pet death earlier this month, you’d expect Delta Airlines to inspect and improve its protocols for transporting animals.

Sadly, another pet has died after a flight on one of their jets – Snickers the (hairless) kitten was just eleven weeks old when she made the trip from Utah to Connecticut.

Her owner, Heather Lombardi paid just under $290 for the pet ticket, which included a $50 surcharge to have Snickers removed from the hold immediately upon landing.

Unfortunately, someone screwed up, as Snickers was left in the hold for 50 minutes in 10 degree weather. When she was reunited with her owner, she could not move her head or paws, and was rushed to a vet wrapped in a coat. Upon arrival at the vet, she had passed away. Because of the cold, Snickers was bleeding from the mouth and nose, a symptom of hypothermia.

A Delta Airlines spokeswoman had the following to say:

“We are turning our attention now to offering our condolences and discussing how we can provide some kind of restitution to support her during this time”

Sadly this is just another tragic incident that shows the need for better regulation of pet transport. The US Department of Transportation does track animal deaths, but only of pets that die in transit in the cabin. No numbers are recorded for deaths of pets in the cargo hold.

Click here to learn all about “a day in the life of a pet in airline cargo” from our friends at AOL Travel

[Photo: AP/Heather Lombardini]

How pro athletes travel: Chick-fil-A sandwiches and 60 inches of legroom

by Scott Carmichael on

Once you make it big in the world of pro-sports, traveling suddenly becomes a much more enjoyable experience. While most of the world stuffs itself into tiny seats hoping for a bag of pretzels, the world of chartered sports flights means a whole different level of luxury.

In the US, one of the largest operators of private sports charters is actually an airline you and I have probably flown in the past year – Delta Air Lines.

Delta flies a fleet of eight Airbus A319s in VIP configuration, capable of seating 54 passengers. Seats have 60 inches of legroom, can swivel and some rows feature private card tables.

The crew members on these planes have cheat sheats telling them the preferences of their athlete passengers – from their favorite snacks to what kind of soda they prefer. In addition to this, they’ll even provide special treats like Dove Ice Cream bars and Chick-fil-A sandwiches. Even the top tier elite members on commerical flights don’t get that kind of treatment.

Then again – with flights costing up to $1.3 million, you really should expect a certain level of luxury. The total bill for a sports team is up to $3 million a season, and most of that goes to Delta Air Lines.

[Photo: Bloomberg]

Delta Airlines turns the game of voluntary seat bumping into Ebay

by Scott Carmichael on

Marginal Revolution posted this photo of a voluntary bump screen on a Delta Airlines automated kiosk. Instead of offering bump vouchers to anyone interested, they now ask in advance how much you would be willing to accept for a bump.

Genius.

Pay close attention to the “Delta accepts lower bids first” text – which is a great way for the airline to pay much less than they’d normally hand out.

Inexperienced fliers may be tempted to settle for $100, or even less – just for taking a later flight. But keep in mind that a “normal” bump entitles you to much more. Normally with voluntary bumps, the airline may start at $150, and keep going up. Once they can’t find volunteers and start switching to involuntary bumps, they will have to pay a maximum of $400 ($800 if they can’t rebook you a different flight).

In other words – if the airlines gets enough suckers to settle for $100, they’ll make a fortune. Don’t be one of those suckers. The terminal apparently only settles for numbers under $400, so make sure your numbers are always around that amount. Sure, be competitive with others, and go for $398 (folks on the Price is Right do that all the time), but don’t spoil the system with low-ball offers.

[Via: Consumerist]

Airlines, airports and passengers: nothing but gains this year [INFOGRAPHICS]

by Tom Johansmeyer on

There are a whole lot more of us flying this year: 4.3 percent more, to be exact. That’s the increase in domestic air traffic from September 2009 to September 2010, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Transportation. In that month, U.S. airlines had 57.3 million passengers, leading to the largest year-over-year gain since September 2007. Meanwhile, international passenger traffic on U.S. flights surged 9.4 percent year over year.

For the first three quarters of 2010, scheduled domestic and international passengers were up 1.5 percent, suggesting that the recovery has gained momentum throughout the year. Domestic passengers gained 1 percent, with international passengers up 5.3 percent. Relative to 2008, though, passenger traffic is off 6.8 percent.

So, who wins? Of course, the airlines have had a relatively fantastic year, especially the worst of them. Delta, considered bottom of the barrel, surged from #3 in September 2009 to #1 in September 2010, with more than 9 million enplaned passengers, up 68.6 percent year over year (but don’t forget that the Northwest merger plays a role in this. Delta‘s also the top dog for the first nine months of the year for the same reason, followed by Southwest, American Airlines and United Airlines.


Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport remains the busiest in the United States by a considerable margin. Close to 32 million passengers passed through in the first nine months of 2010, an increase of 1.1 percent year over year. Atlanta led Chicago O’Hare, which came in second, by more than 9 million passengers so far this year. For the greatest gains, look to Charlotte: it was eighth on the list but posted a growth rate of 6.5 percent YTD.

Las Vegas was the only airport in the top 10 for the first nine months of 2010 to post a year-over-year decline. The number of enplaned passengers dropped by a rather substantial 3.6 percent year over year, hardly surprising given the fact that the Las Vegas tourism business has been slammed by the recession. Also, outbound traffic from Las Vegas is likely constrained by the local economy, which has been battered pretty badly (as real estate prices indicate).


Even though the number of passengers increased for airlines and airports, the number of flights operated slipped 1.2 percent from the first nine months of 2009 to the first nine months of 2010. Likely, the airlines were tightening up their flights, making better use of available seats and cutting expenses.

[photo by Yaisog Bonegnasher via Flickr]