Dallas49er

There have been some recent threads that suggest that the in-flight service in J/F internationally ranges from blah to truly substandard to abysmal and worse.

Whether it's due to lack of supervision, lack of discipline, lack of punishment, lack of pride, or the seniority system itself, there is a solution out there.

I pose the question: Why doesn't AA use "Secret Shoppers" to at least try to upgrade a theoretical "upgraded" experience?

My suspicion is that the unions are vehemently opposed to it.

Flying UA or DL transcon at least once a week, plus more, in the '80s, into the '90s, I know both used what the FA's called "Ghost Riders". They were/are a variation of the "secret shoppers" that Nieman-Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom's, high-end restaurants, and other companies currently use today to measure both employee performance and insure employee adherance to company service standards. Perhaps, you can see why the FA'S hated them.

I can speak from experience, that if a UA or DL FA in the late '80s even suspected there was a "ghost rider" somewhere on the plane, there was a truly noticeable uptick in the level of service.

On one occaision, an FA that had been put on warning after being "Ghost Ridden", recognized me from that flight and accused me of being the "Ghost Rider "(I wasn't), and "ruining her life and career." Her service had been memorable in its terribleness the 1st flight, and was text book perfect on the 2nd.

As I said, whether it's due to lack of supervision, lack of discipline, lack of punishment, lack of pride, or the seniority system itself, there is a solution out there to poor, sub-standard, "don't give a crap", (burned-out, should have retired years ago) service.

It's a shame (for whatever reason) that the airlines don't use ghost riders today.

IMHO-AA SHOULD BRING BACK/INSTALL GHOST RIDERS! It would probably assure a PDB, timely meal service, reduced FA to FA pre-boarding chit chat, and a 100% delivery of the total company brand standard, or in other words, FA's at least meeting expectations.

And in a non-union environment, "meets expectations" in a performance review, does not necessarily mean continued employment.

Krysia

And I would volunteer for this assignment...I like to fly , am tired of poor service and am not your stereotypical business flyer!

The job I have been waiting for!

LINDEGR

So what can they do to bad FAs? Doesn't the union protect them anyway?

dartagnan

Geez, they have standard work, but no one audits them to the standard work, so what do we expect?

Why not have a "manager" or head FA on each flight who is then responsible for execution of their duties, with occasional spot checks by higher up managers. Or, heck, even video.

ESpen36

I think that AA Flight Service does have supervisors who fly around the system from time to time to check up on cabin service implementation. But I do not know if it is intended to be surreptitious. It probably is pretty easy for the working FAs to figure out from the manifest which pax are non-revs, and deduce from there.

dayone

Our FT cabin service "experts" will have many opportunities over the next 18 months to suggest inflight standards, changes and improvements to the new AA.

Dallas49er

Me, too!

skylady

Easy answer, money They would have to purchase revenue seats in premium cabins, taking seats out of inventory for our loyal customers.

HNL

Think of the threads of F award travelers on 77Ws being bumped out of their F seat to accommodate the Ghost Riders. Man it sucks to be "ghosted!"

FlyingTrojan

It doesn't even need to be a secret shopper riding aboard. Leverage the customer base.

AA could add a rating feature to their app, three or four questions with star ratings (ie FA service food overall flight) and a comment box. Accumulate enough data and the quantitative trends speak for themselves.

I for one would be happy to do a quick flight survey on the app while taxiing or some such time.

MiamiFlyer

AA used to conduct surveys on how we enjoyed a flight. Used to get them every 10 flights or so, don't think I have seen one this year.

Dr Jabadski

Exactly. Supervisors on board don’t work, everyone is on their best behavior when a boss is around. Perhaps a specific survey, the results of which they pay attention to, to certain elite members (who know best what’s what and what’s supposed to be what). UA pre-merger had a post flight survey, the draw was an entry with each completed survey to win 100,000 miles a month. I seem to recall getting responses to specific critical comments (or maybe it was responses to correspondence I sent) occasionally but overall I think they pretty much ignored the responses. If I knew my responses to a survey would actually be considered, I’d complete a survey every time, good or bad.

How hard in this day and age would it be to create a survey which could be correlated with the performance of the crew? (Flight 123 on Jan 1st from ABC to XYZ, they know who worked the flight.) Many businesses, particularly those that want to improve and increase, rely on Customer Satisfaction surveys. Heck, I’m a doctor and even my patients get surveys which ask if I gave them “service with smile”.

(Do Federal Air Marshalls still do random flights? Maybe they should add Crew Evaluations to their responsibilities? Flights must get pretty boring once it’s decided there are no bad guys aboard. )

CloudCoder

It would be a huge waste of time and money for AA to pay people to ride on their airplanes. They should pay those same people to monitor the internet boards and/or contact recent customers instead. They'll glean far more information at a much lower cost.

george 3

We us secret shoppers, including video shops in our rental apartment business to monitor our leasing staff efforts (adherence to Fair Housing rules, marketing efforts, etc.) It costs about $150 for a regular shop and $250 for a video shop. It is done twice a year for every staff person who leases, and the cost is incorporated into our marketing budget. The product we receive is the vid (for vid shops), and a written assessment which includes a scoring of the leasing effort. It is extremely helpful as a training tool, and the staff knows we do it.

This would be very helpful to AA in all cabins.

idainc

+1. Although I have to add that given AA's decline I'd have to say that management really doesn't have any interest.