Originally Posted by
GagaPilot
I’ve wondered the rationale behind this as well. My home station, ANC, has DL staff with as few as 3 flights a day in the middle of winter to as many as 15 during peak summer. My other home, ECP, has Unifi with about 5-7 flights per day depending on the season. I’ve noticed over the years at ECP (Unifi) a decline in friendliness and honestly professionalism - basically just doing the bare minimum to get by. And honestly more rule sticklers. However at ANC with actual DL I’ve started to notice a decrease in training with employees having no clue how to assist with rebooking or use DL Term, etc. Or even through check bags when the system tries to default to short checking. I used to think being at a mainline station would be better in the event of IROPs, but now not as much. To me the only real perk of status anymore is being able to (hopefully) get through on the elite phone lines to someone who can help solve your issue before options dry up.
It isn't surprising that they are rule sticklers. They get audited like crazy. Even a decade ago, I know of one airline that would have auditors at its hub stationed at the transfer point for connecting bags and randomly pull bags to weigh them. If they were 51lbs, they'd take a photo of the bag on a scale and look up the PNR to make sure the field station charged the passenger the overweight charge. It usually got back to the field station same day. Probably makes an agent less inclined to bend rules when they know they could get asked before they go home today why they didn't charge you for something (and the company who is their actual employer - the vendor - may get assessed a penalty).
I had a horrible experience last week with Delta in Atlanta. Basically my flight was late to ATL... pushed back from the origin and then because we were late, we were 27th in line for take-off behind the incumbent hub carrier's mid-morning push. Got to ATL to miss by 5 minutes, and Delta auto-rebooked me for 24 hours later (only 2 flights a day to where I was going). My trip was only for 24 hours. So I wanted trip in vain to turn around and go home. SkyClub agent refused to help saying that "we don't do ticketing or rebooking... you've been rebooked already... you gotta call the 800 number." Long story short, got put on a flight that was about to start boarding back to my origin, went to gate, agent said she didn't have time to check me in (turns out she'd already given up all open seats to nonrevs and my getting put on oversold the flight by 1) and told me to go to the service desk. While dealing with a red coat there (who called the gate, and whatever that agent said to the red coat pissed him off so badly he got up and walked with me back to the gate), he was instructing the other agent at the desk "tell them to call res... you're gonna have to reissue and do a credit and it's just best if res does all that." They aren't teaching how to do more than the basics anymore.