Originally Posted by cepheid
Hi
foxnine, thanks for the info. During my return flight yesterday morning, I told one of the senior GAs at IAD (who was possibly management, since he was directing other GAs) about the whole snafu. He gave me similar information to what you stated. The basic reason they're using contractors is simply because they don't have enough flights to keep a full-time crew busy (and hence profitable), but unfortunately, their training just doesn't seem to cut it. The contractors, not being direct employees, are also not invested in the company and therefore have no reason to care much about keeping customers happy.
You sound like someone who DOES care, and I thank you on behalf of all the frustrated customers out there who are just too irrational to do so themselves.
The guy at IAD said he would pass my comments along up the chain of management... I doubt it'll help any, since they're aware of the problem already, but who knows. Maybe with enough properly-worded complaints that address the real issue, they'll take the time to properly train the other contractors and maybe figure out some incentives for them to maintain good customer service.
Thanks again for your comments... the beauty of FT is the easy communication with insiders.
Great to hear that you were able to talk to someone who actually seems to know what's going on out west. It's surprising that they choose to subcontract even SFO - 3 flights a day can easily support a small station. I've found that the DH crews can be hit-or-miss personality wise, but service is usually very good.
I observed while I was working at a certain NYC based airline is that the success of their customer service systemwide is related to their decision to staff each station with their own crew - fully trained. Like you said, this creates loyalty to the airline and the urge to actually try and do a good job. I observe first hand from my coworkers the lack of concern over Independence customers and it truly sickens me -
"Oh Independence is a cheap airline, these lines are what you get..."
"Independence is cheap, so I'm sorry we can't use these plastic bags for your car seat"
"Oh I tend to treat the Independence customers worse because they're just cheapskate bargain hunters."
"Nah they don't give us a vaccum to clean so the plane will just fly back like that (dirty)"
It's very disappointing to me that my local Frontier management has decided NOT to send my fellow 2 week old new hires (many with no prior airline experience) to DEN for training because of a staffing shortage.
I believe that the lack of training simply results in problems like what you faced @ SFO. Apparently even at Frontier, the SFO operation is cheaper to operate using contracted CO crew rather than our own crew...
I think DH will get the message when they pay out enough Happy Bags claims that people actually use, after all, the SFO/SJC GM was one of the creators of the idea!
The attitude of my station coworkers who handle both Frontier and Independence flights is embarassing - there are few that realize the customer service skills necessary to work at an airline.
I hear Southwest is hiring.... ^