Deleted - Dupe
cable is acting weird today.

[This message has been edited by A Flygirl (edited 03-05-2001).]

That is definately Concierge office. I dunnow what got under her skin then - did you get a name?

I am a transplanted Canadian expatriate living and working in the former Soviet Union - I travel back and forth to Canada a few times a year, during which time I visit family and friends which takes me from one end of the country to the other.

While I can't remember the exact flight number, last year I flew YYC-YYZ on a brand-new A330 and had the pleasure of riding in the jump seat for about half the flight, plus the landing. For a frequent flyer, it was a treat. I disembarked and carried on my travels.

About two months later I received a letter from the captain of that flight, expresssing his thanks for flying Air Canada and hoping that I enjoyed the ride up front.

It was a very nice touch, and I always look forward to my next flight on AC.

I think that often we do interpret negative experiences caused by individuals as examples of "policy" when really we are are just getting the brunt of that individual's frustrations that may have been building up over the course of a workday. The problem is that we always put our own spin on what happens to us. And it's also the case that we tend to emphasise negative events that deviate from what may be company policy rather than the positive deviations. We tend to accept the fact that sometimes agents bend the rules in our favour as somehow 'natural' and appropriate, while considering the negtive deviations as reflecting the corporate attitude. In a company as large as Air Canada you are bound to get a wide range of attitudes among employees that are independent of corparate policy.

Having said that, I do think that the issue runs deeper and comes back to what several people (After Burner, fewmiles?) have said -- consistency between policy and practice. With respect to making announcements or making staff available to deal with problems when there are delays, this seems to be a policy that is honoured mainly in the breach. As you point out, A Flygirl, even a 4 hour plus flight from LGA-YYZ can be made tolerable if handled in the right way. Often the small gestures are the ones that make the difference.

I'm not sure how one resolves this issue. Being in the front-line and dealing with siutuations that are not of one's own making (and often not resolvable quickly and easily) is a guarantee to increase stress levels. And that leads to all of the other behaviours. I assume that AC does not have any policies that are specifically directed towards frustrating the customer, but I do get a sense that part of the atttude problem starts at the senior management level and spreads down. Despite the 180 day promises, there was I think there was some cynicism among the FF community that this was more a public-relations effort than a whole-hearted change in corporate ethos.

As I said at the beginning of this thread, my recent experiences have mostly been pretty good, but I know that I could get clobbered with abuse on my next trip. I am grateful that there are a lot of dedicated staff out there who do their best to serve the travelling public, and I recognise (but don't condone) that occasionally some individuals will take out their frustrations on passengers. All we can hope is that eventually the message will get across that if people enjoy the product they'll come back for more, rather than looking towards perhaps more friendly alternatives.

[This message has been edited by Academic (edited 03-09-2001).]