Air travel – what’s the deal? Why are most airline attitudes so awful? It’s as if the passenger is the problem.
Yesterday, we were delayed for more than an hour because we had no pilots. Sure, we need them to fly. But why not keep us informed? Why is that so hard?
We were on the plane for nearly 30 minutes past the departure time before the flight attendant announced, “By the way, we have no pilots.”
To make matters worse, there was no air circulating so the plane was uncomfortably warm.
I need to ask: is it too much to expect just some information, a simple “here’s the deal?” Answering this question would eliminate a lot of stress and tension. Yet most airlines fail to communicate to their passengers.
We all experience poor service, yet most people would be understanding if information was shared. People understand mistakes or when problems occur.
What ticks them off is little or no communication. We call that recognition and reassurance at Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises (LEYE). Recognize the problem and assure the guest it will be handled. Pretty simple.
On the return flight, we took off on time, landed early, but there’s no available gate. The pilot says, “we will park for 10 minutes” to wait for our gate. Then 25 minutes later, still the gate is unavailable but no further updates. It just makes you think they don’t care.
If only there had been some simple recognition and reassurance, all would have been forgiven. Just “sorry, a few more minutes” is all it takes for people to at least feel you care.
