rune87

If you can't keep people, and it's a revolving door of staff, perhaps there is something in the culture that is lacking. But you almost proved my point about this demand for loyalty that the older generation demands. You've put your young business partner on a pedestal, because he has shown loyalty to you and the business and he functions in the same cloth you are cut from. Thats simply not the way the new market functions. It is a job. Employee exchanges labor for wages. End of story. Most businesses have given zero incentive for the upcoming generation to have any loyalty. Your generation was taught if you stayed loyal to a company, you'd get raises, and eventually a pension and retire. Now employees are laid off and discarded at the first sign of the winds blowing different and there is plenty of evidence to back it up. Employees are treated as a commodity. No different than we have been taught that if you want to raise your wages, there only way to do it is to keep jumping every 3-5 years. Businesses need to to provide some sort of incentive now to get the employee buy in and investment that they want. There has to be defined wage increases, businesses need to give COLAs. Costs are going to go up. But if everyone plays along the entire ship rises. Henry Ford had this figured out 100 years ago.

Flyertalker001342

Not that this is germane to this thread, but my "young business partner" is the majority owner of our business by a wide margin, and in fact was the one who engineered its purchase by us 12 years ago. I had no need for this investment (financially) and would never have considered it without his convincing me to participate. He's not some kid I put under my wing and who now has loyalty to me for that reason, he was the one who initiated this whole thing, not me.

rune87

And that's fine. He's in the 10% of folks. Some of us choose to succeed as a personal goal. My overall point is there are plenty of businesses succeeding at the moment. They've adapted. They are providing wages, benefits, and incentives to their employees. The service industry...yea...I would have never worked in it. Low wages, High demands, no real career path. So yea..folks are avoiding it. Which results in what we are seeing now. Pilots got theirs...time for the FAs and everyone else to get a slice of the pie as well. It all comes down to how a business values their employees.

Buster CT1K

This is not really a point about generational change or worker attitudes. The point is that AS management is failing to deliver appropriate levels of service. I did get good phone service yesterday, and we'll see how AS does in F for two transcon flights that I will be on in the coming days.

Kacee

Goodbye, cruel airline.

AKLifetimeFlyer

Treat people well and you get treated well. This is true 99% of the time in my experience. I try to be kind, compassionate, and patient with not just flight attendants, but other AS staff as well, both in person and on the phone. While there is an occasional bad egg, the vast majority of my experiences are positive.

RAD_PDX

I'm a self-declared Alaska "fanboy" but I have been toying with a Delta status challenge. I've only been an AS regular for 5 years, a fraction of the time that many on here have been with AS. Even in that short time, however, I've seen the airline decline in almost all metrics. The new FAs are the biggest drag. When you get them back-to-back with the absolutely exceptional senior FAs, it really shows. No airline is perfect, but I feel like being PDX based (and not doing a lot of PDX-California flying) Delta might be the best option for me. I don't mind an SLC connection or SEA (heck, I do that already ). I'm giving AS until the end of the summer and hope I'm convinced to stay. If DL is bad, I'm sure I'll come back. I guess the only way to really find out is to try.

rune87

I just got done with an 26 month Delta DM challenge that started in COVID. Delta wasn't horrible, they definitely know their brand value and seem to proactively work to address the top tiers, but I had just as many FAs over there that were very....green. In addition their Phone support is horrid. Like...absolutely horrendous. I had the DM line screw up more reservations than I can count. Not to mention the wait times. At least as a 100k I can get through pretty quick to reservations. Rarely if ever on DL. Operational meltdowns? Yep..same 12+ if no longer that everyone else has. I had one reservation they finally called me back after I had already made it home and gone to bed. They have some stuff I like...but the frequent connections everywhere did start to get old. AS at least has directs everywhere I fly.

currentjer

This is a good philosophy - and my general approach to all things. But it is also true that services standards at AS have generally declined - more on the ground than in the air, ime. I have noticed that the new phone agents are not properly trained - and I suspect partly because they are also not empowered to make things right when things go wrong.

Considering all that is happening, AS has not kept my loyalty - and it probably doesn't need it either. So it's a regretful, but amicable mutual break-up. I also think that for my flying needs at this point, both domestically and internationally, using a non-US OW program is more astute.

Visconti

Whoa! GenX has nothing to do with this, we're the sane ones sandwiched between the crazy Boomers/Millennials "do-gooder" and "tree hugging" generations. X is the smallest generation with the least voting power and lowest representation in Congress, so don't blame us!

As a GenX'er, while I have loyalty, using this term very loosely, to AS, as with any business, that loyalty is predicated primarily on what's in it for me. And, based in SFO, what AS offers is still what's best for me; I mean, what, I'm going to turn to UA? Don't think so, unless I can reach GS which wouldn't happen in gazillion years.

Flyertalker001342

Actually, I've found that the AS phone agents are topflight and I don't recall a single situation where I wasn't able to get a reasonable resolution to a problem with a little time and patience. Even if you don't have status with AS, your call will get answered and at the worst they will call you back in an hour or two without the need to remain on hold during this period. In my experience, about 95% of the AS agents are women working from home, rather than people working in a call center. I think this enables AS to hire people who might otherwise be unavailable to the workforce, due to home responsibilities such as child or elder care. I'm quite happy with this aspect of the AS service model.

During the pandemic AS phone agents were a shining light in a sea of darkness; you could actually get through to a human being. BA, with whom I had Silver (Sapphire) status during the pandemic and now have gold, were a cesspool of atrociousness. Even now, when I call them on the gold/emerald line, it's a crapshoot largely determined by where the agent is located. The British agents are generally good, and the Indian ones are very much a mixed bag, although I have had fantastic Indian agents on occasion.

AinthePNW

Ok boomer and wow. I’ve had the exact opposite experience with Alaska with the “young” employees being more competent, nicer, and better at their job. It the mid level (or middle age) employees who seem not to care to me.

manacit

DL cut their phone support down to the bone during COVID and it took them a long time to get it back to even acceptable. As a Platinum Medallion in 2020 and 2021 I was regularly quoted 4+ hours for someone to pick up, and when they did, you might sit there for another hour or two for them to get a supervisor that could actually do anything. In 2022 I sat at the Valencia airport for three hours waiting for someone to get a supervisor to rebook me after a KLM flight cancellation so that I could get home. I had brand new agents rebooking me the wrong day, not knowing how to process an upgrade cert (which requires calling to use!) and many other things.

It's gotten better now, at least.

All of that is to say, the grass isn't really greener anywhere else in my opinion. Either be a free agent, or pick the airline that suits your travel patterns best and get status for whatever it provides on top of flying with nothing, but don't expect a company to show you loyalty.

Kacee

Agreed. AS comes closest to reciprocal loyalty IMO. Otherwise, all of the US majors have issues, and if consistent on-board service and competent phone support are your primary considerations, you'll likely be disappointed with each of them.

Flyertalker001342

Actually, I wasn't writing about my own experiences with AS flight attendants. I've actually had very few problems myself. I was responding to someone higher up in the thread who related HIS experiences with younger personnel.

I only fly 2 routes on AS with any frequency; those are BOI-SAN, and BOI-SEA. Those flights are served sometimes by SkyWest, sometimes by Horizon, and occasionally by mainline AS aircraft, the latter being the minority of times. The flight crews on the shorter flights I take occasionally serve one of those horrid chilled "meals" like the "protein plate," but just as often or more often pass around a basket with chips in it and deliver one, occasionally 2, drink orders.

I haven't received very much bad service on the planes, as much as I have experience next to no service on the planes.