In the BizSci Spotlight: Airline Service (part 1)
BIZSCI IN
BRIEF
Many U.S. domestic air carriers still
struggle to stay one step ahead of bankruptcy, despite the examples
of standouts like Southwest and JetBlue. These airlines have yet to
fix holes in their service infrastructures that result in frequent
unmet customer expectations. Until these airlines inventory all
customer expectations and ensure they are met at each customer
touch point (ticket counter, web, call center, gate, and aircraft),
their businesses will continue to suffer.
What's
Broken?
It's 11:30 pm. After a two hour delay, I had
finally boarded a commuter plane at Atlanta's Hartsfield
International en route to Dulles and home. Instead of taking off,
it seemed that something was very wrong. Although the passengers
had been asked to take their seats, fifteen minutes had passed with
no one to close the door. Worse still, the flight attendants looked
like anxious parents at a child's birthday party hoping it
really was a good idea to reserve a clown just returning
from rehab.
Lemmings Can Stay Seated
A meticulously
dressed business woman in the isle seat to my right was more than
concerned about the delay. She first asked and then demanded to
know what was going on. I paused my iPod long enough to determine
she was not armed, and continued listening to an audio rendition of
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Twenty minutes later, I noticed
the passenger had returned, her black pumps slightly wobbly and her
matching skirt slightly wrinkled. She was quietly saying something
with an expression that begged attention, so I paused my wireless
headset again. With a tenor that could have been a sob if her tear
ducts were working, she quietly heaved,
"They said I have to leave the plane. ..... Was I
threatening?"
A woman behind her, seemingly fully occupied with the tag team
effort to subdue a two-year old lifted her head and offered, "Yes,
you were rude."
The Entertainment Arrives
Before the
passenger was removed, she had been successful with short words to
gain an attendant's assistance in "allowing" her to remove her
seat-belt and pose a question to a person in-charge. She had then
walked to front of the plane, unfortunately finding the person in
charge was the same efficiently listening attendant. Incredulous
that there was no pilot or co-pilot AND that she was
expected to sit indefinitely without explanation, I surmised that
she began making quiet demands ... first that someone call to find
out what the !*_k happened to the pilots and then that someone tell
the passengers when the !*_k they would be departing.
I didn't hear her directly, but the next two announcements told the
story. Three minutes after she left her seat came the first
announcement,
"This is the flight attendent. As I am sure you have noticed our
departure is delayed. Unfortunately, our pilots have not yet
boarded the plane, but they should be arriving shortly. Thank you
for your patience."
Five minutes later came the second announcement,
"I am pleased to announce that our pilots have arrived! After a
short pre-flight checklist, our plane will depart
momentarily."
Based upon the short time between the arrival of the pilots and the
ejection of the passenger, it seems the pilots must have been
greeted by the same senior attendant, requesting authorization to
immediately remove a disorderly passenger.
On the evening of Monday, August 13, AirTran's flight service to Washington / Dulles was broken. What broke the hour and forty-seven minute flight (scheduled) wasn't the long five hour duration, but the fact that for most of the time prior to take-off, there was little information flow ... between the airline and passengers and even between airline and crew.
Although the flight ultimately landed safely at it's destination, Business Science believes there is more to successful transaction than its conclusion. Beyond an on-time package delivery or landing, a successful service transaction will have these Service Components:
- Service Expectation (you establish a need for a service)
- Provider Selection (you chose who will provide a service and you contract for or purchase the service)
- Transaction Start (you identify when service starts)
- Transaction Status (you are notified if there is any change in scheduled finish or in risk that may impact delivery)
- Transaction Completion (you identify that the transaction has concluded)
- Transaction Validation (you verify that your expectation was met)
In the AirTran example, Service Components three and four were missing.
- Start Time? - Flight departures are often delayed, but typically the airline knows it. In this case, no one at the airline seemed to know where the pilots and crew were. The delayed start was completely unanticipated.
- Status Information? - After the time for scheduled departure had passed and there was neither a flight crew or pilot, the airline continued to report a status internally and at the gate that the departure had been on-time. Airline customers were not able to receive flight status information as a result of the Airline's difficulties. After the flight attendants arrived, the plane was boarded and prepared for take-off without pilots. A US airline cannot complete a pre-flight check without the pilot. Once the pilots arrived on the airplane the pre-flight check was apparently quickly repeated.
Lessons
Communications issues can and will occur, but AirTran may have more fundamental issues with its information infrastructure. Controls should be in place that:
- Set an airplane's departure status as delayed if there is no crew logged in at the gate x minutes prior to departure
- Update an airplane's departure status each time the current status is invalid (i.e. if plane is on ground and departure time is in past, update departure time), and
- Prevent boarding if there is no pilot.
There may also be a scheduling flaw if pilots and crew are scheduled to operate one aircraft and then immediately after a flight, scheduled to operate another.