Think part of the problem isn't just poor customer service but lack of enough people, quality or otherwise. About 3 yrs ago I was flying from VA Beach to South Korea on United. Showed up at the airport 2 hrs early and there was a huge line. Turns out the flight was delayed getting in the night before, crew had to get rest and takeoff time was delayed by 1.5 hrs. Ended up waiting 2 hours just to get to the front of the line because only one agent was on duty. By the time I got up to the front I was so mad I didn't care how nice the agent was, all I saw was red. They ended up screwing me anyway with bad advice and stranded me in LAX.

Bottom line is, even if I had poor customer service and moved on w/in 20 mins I'd still have been a lot more satisfied.

I wonder if one of the reasons that customer service hasn't deteriorated so badly in the airline industry at least among ground personnel, is the sheer volume of customers with whom a limited number of customer service reps must deal. In certain settings the organizational science and business school nostrums about "getting to 'yes'" and all the rest are fairly easy to make work provided the employees are decently trained and rewarded, regardless of whether they are unionized. And lets face it, in most instances the reward people want is money. Flight attendants are not members of a religious order. The reason the clerk in Safeway says "hello, can I help you find something" is because his union negotiated work rules specify that if you've come within a certain distance of him or her, he or she has to recite the script, not because they actually give a rat's ... about you. In order to avoid falling afoul of the secret shopper, the clerk recites the script. (It kind of creeps me out actually; I generally don't have a problem asking "where's the salami" unprompted.)

When you've got hordes of people trying to get on an oversold flight to Duluth, a weather delay and god knows what else going wrong and there are two of you checking in coach passengers, time and other very real constraints make it close to impossible to turn everybody's bad attitude around in the time that you've got.

And lets not kid ourselves, we've had a palpable decline in civility and decent behavior, not over the last 50 years but over the last decade. Stand at an intersection in any busy city and count the cars that gun their engines on the yellow light and speed through the red, or watch as drivers ignore screaming emergency vehicle sirens, or as a customer stands and chats on the cell phone as a clerk is trying to assist them.

And we all want to fly for free or close to it. I'm not an expert, but I imagine that there is not a lot of fat in most airlines these days to pay for top flight - excuse the pun- and recurrent training experiences for their customer service staff, or to offer anything other than a crowded, uncomfortable travel experience with no amenities overseen by sullen, despondent flight attendants. There are exceptions of course, both individuals and companies. But If the unions were gone tomorrow, paying someone $7.50 an hour means you're going to get someone who is not invested in the success of their employer. Fire that person and you'll get someone else at a low rate who is not invested in the company's success. I've had countless instances of badly trained call center people give me what I in my limited knowledge knew to be the wrong information just to get me off the phone and had to call back a few times until I've gotten someone who understood some complex fare rule. But can you reasonably expect expertise at these wages and limited training?

I've gone on way too long when all I wanted to say is that their is not a single source for the problem. There are many convergent sources.

I don't think that most of the "problems" encountered by travelers are the "fault" of the airline. However, the response and care taken by competent employees who realize that their role is to "serve the customer," can create a customer experience that lends itself to a profitable business relationship.

It's when things go wrong that you have the opportunity to exceed customer expectations. Will some people take advantage of you? Of course - but they're not really your customers. Think of that cost as marketing. It lowers your ROI a little, but the ROI with those real customers makes an actual impact on bottom line.

Look at the examples I mentioned above. None of them reflect "free." People will pay for a genuine, positive customer experience. It's why people buy a BMW (aside from status, you pay for the experience).

I stand by my assessment that the root cause of all that is wrong in the airline industry (and for many similar reasons - the auto industry) is the unions. They breed complacency, mediocrity, and incompetency.

Look at the examples I mentioned above. None of them reflect "free." People will pay for a genuine, positive customer experience. It's why people buy a BMW (aside from status, you pay for the experience).

----------------------------------

Yes, but as a percentage of cars on the road, there are way more Kias,Fords, Chevys and Toyotas than BMWs. Sure, a segment will pay for a genuine, positive customer experience, but the majority either can't or won't.

Take my parents: Both retired professionals who travel fairly regularly. They just pick the cheapest fare on expedia, and all their friends are the same.

My siblings are the same.

Cheers,
Geoff Glave
Vancouver, Canada

yes, I know these types as well. Not to dis your parents, but some people are among the hundreds of thousands of sorry souls who later find it to be "normal" or like, "cool" or "OK" to sit in some coffee shop or on lunch break and talk about all the problems they have with friends all day and not ever consider that they can and should do something about them, like: dont pick expedia. It can alter or cancel your reservation and you could get SCREWED if you dont know better! "how was your flight?" "ah, well, you know... they got delayed, I had to call for a change, got charged for it. It sucks, you know..." "yeah, I know..." (they dont ask: is there a better way and can we do something to CHANGE things instead of just live with them? and yet, this in itself slows THEM down in the long run, and we all pay for it)

But some people find it too difficult to learn more about travel and just go with what they think is easy, imaginging that since they did enough research to find out about Expedia, that they are now DONE with learning more about computers and online purchasing. It does change but they are stuck in the mid-90s and companies like the airlines who go thru expedia know this market is out there falling for their crap.

Some types of people come from a time or place where they think the system will or should or can fix things and if it does not, that's too bad but they still seem to bicker about it internally. They dont know that these days, with travel, it is slowly withering away and we are the ones who have to make them stop now! If we dont, we are kinda to blame for its demise... And by that, I quote the Sprint thing... where if a complaining customer calls too many times, they cancel your account! now, some people complain too much, but doesnt the acceptence and allowance of this set precident for future worse obtuse treatment on customers by companies who do not nor cannot care less about your needs?

It's a tough nut to crack. Another reason I thought about is laid at the airline's feet. They have no extra capacity built into the system. If a plane breaks or it delayed, there's no 'spare' plane to plug in and fill the hole. So the ripple is felt system-wide. To include customer service because there are less CS agents to deal with the increased displaced passengers who get mad when they can't get resolution to their problem caused by the delays because the airlines want to get out of the red.... It's a bizarre self-licking ice cream cone.

that statement is genius!!!!

Again, though, it's all about the SHORT MONEY with airlines! Having backup would cost less in the end, but NOoooooooOOOOOoooOoOoOO!

Over the past year, I have flown NW twice to Asia. Once SEA-NRT-SIN, another time SEA-NRT-PEK. Both times, the FAs from SEA-NRT were typical of my domestic experience. Not rude or anything, but just indifferent. They look like they would rather be somewhere else, doing something else.

Leaving Tokyo, the Asian FAs took over, and they just seem more caring and love their jobs more. They took care of my requests with a smile and made me feel welcomed and valued.

Again, this is just one airline (NW) throughout the entire trips. Why the big difference?

The problem goes back to that there is still way too much unprofitable capacity in the system. Even if bare bones Skybus flies you from CMH to FLL for $80 one way it losses money on you, buying a few diet cokes and a tube of sun tanning lotion notwithstanding. And while many FTs may loathe the Ma and Pa Kettle crowd who muck up the system (like standing at the security checkpoint looking totally clueless to the world), you can't blame them for the cheap fares. To all of those FTs that want to castrate those of us flying on the cheap (I fly about 75,000 miles a year always on AA's web fares), if you need tiolet paper and you go into your nearest grocery store and see that Charman is on sale, do you think "no I should not by this, the grocery chain will lose money on me."

The downside of cheap fares is lousy service along with pay cuts and extra job stress that leaves airline personnel often haggard and burnout. When a 757 full of paxs are displaced and there is no place to put these paxs for days, and this is occuring time and time again, what can you expect from GAs tired of fighting a losing battle (like the war in Iraq).

The solution would be an industry that is built on profitable capacity. But given the ongoing state of this business, this will not be happening anytime soon. And as much as Americans want to get on CNN and b..h about their terrible experience, they don't seem willing to stop flying until it the system gets better.

And of course, there are severe issues with FAA (ATC) that are complicating the problem even more.

Nope, the problem goes back to the unions. If you suck at your job, you should get fired. If you're really good at your job, you should get a raise - or a promotion. You shouldn't just get paid more (or less) because of the terms of some contract. Where is the motivation to be really good at your job?

If you provide lousy customer service, you should find another job. Why is that so hard for people to get? Do we really think that we are "entitled" to have a job - even if we hate it and cause misery for the people around us?

While yes I agree that unions have some role in this with pay strictly based "upon time on the job" and often unflexible work rules, unions per se are not the main culprit. Just look at what is happening with most of the airlines. Spending money to upgrade F class section, improve F class food menus, and rennovate clubs/lounges. But when was the last time that an airline made an announcement about making major upgrades to Y. If the airlines were charging fares that covered their operating costs because capacity allowed them so, there would be improvements being made.

And yes there are some exceptions. WN is all coach and has remained fairly steady when it comes to customer service and is unionized (albeit many hard core FF dismiss WN's product as inferior), B6, the Valentine Days debacle not withstanding, tries to deliver a consistent product, and the new VX at least for now appears to be creating a new level of service in this industry.

I think that the reason service at legacies and some lccs is so bad is because employees get a cue from management that those paxs traveling in Y are just expendable commodity with no real value to the bottom line, and to a certain extent, I think that airline management looks at Y paxs this way. And the ground employees are often thrown in to hopeless situations, again like telling a 100+ passengers on a displaced 757 flight that it will be 2-3 days before they can them onto another flight. Would you want to be the one standing behind that podium getting screamed at by 100 plus hysterical people.

>like telling a 100+ passengers on a displaced
>757 flight that it will be 2-3 days before they
>can them onto another flight

This got me to wondering... Is this something you can purchase insurance for? i.e. if WhizBangAir has one flight per day in and out of HNL and it goes mechanical, do any insurers sell packages that would get you home on another carrier, as opposed to waiting 2-3 days until WhizBang has the required capacity to get you home?

And as the next step, could WhizBang sell that insurance as part of the ticketing process?

I realize if four feet of snow shut down an airport, then no one would have capacity, but it might help...

Cheers,
Geoff Glave
Vancouver, Canada

great idea! I posted your genius idea here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...=1#post8281297

Very interesting thread with especially thoughtful comments. I thnk that, as in plane crashes, there are several forces at work in the deteriorating state of customer service. Ascribing it to one cause (e.g. unions) is merely to shape the problem to fit an ideology. Remember, those union contracts were signed by management people who claim (and are paid accordingly) to have vastly superior knowledge of the market environment.

Poor customer service is the rule more than the exception and it occurs in many non-union environments. Low pay, failure to delegate responsibility, some corporate cultures, etc. all play roles. On the other hand, anyone who has a job dealing with the geneeral public can testify to the astounding stupidity and focus on "me" which an increasing number of people suffer from.

I have a theory which I am convinced is overlooked in the same way that dots are often not connected in other situatons. Airline employees accept, along with the vast majority of the population, two ideas which cannot be reconciled. Virtually everyone applauds efforts by businesses to be "lean and mean", to take steps to be competitive, and, especially, to insure that numbers are produced to affect short term stock prices. We are all happy to see the value of our 401k's and other investments go up and up as a result of these stringent policies by corporate executives. Yet, we don't seem to see that these policies produce effects which distress us so much when we encounter them in our daily lives.

Notice how a company's stock price goes up when layoffs are announced. We applaud the increased stock price and what it means for our investments, but we don't see that (aside from the folks who lost their jobs), there must be a negative morale effect on the surviving coworkers. In the same way, the fact that we no longer get meals on most flights means that some invstors are seeing increased profits in their own portfolios. Perversely, some airline emplyees have a more comfortable retirement because their colleagues are laid off or have benefits reduced.

Some companies, with enlightened management, seem to be able to juggle this inherent contradiction better than most. An increasing majority however focus on the next quarter and most of us suffer as a result.

Lastly, I find it interesting that the countries with whom we supposedly must compete (leaving aside the Third World in textiles, etc.) are those which seem to be able to have vastly more enlightened and "liberal" employee benefits.

customer service has been just plain dead in the USA for a while.

and it seems commercial airlines, even F products in countries where service is normally very high, can routinely have problems regardless.

Blame the worker
 

When an agent is rude, she is at fault, not the airline. Her moral character is low.

Part of the problem is that giving good service requires tack, good people skills, and knowing all those codes while typing the keyboard for what seems to be hours (not quite!) at the ticket counter. Paying those people more will not help but it could attract better replacements when the old agents quit. They are liable not to quit because no where would they be able to find better salaries (if raised to attract new talent) and still allow bad service.

Finding good people to work for you is difficult. It's much harder when you have to find thousands of those people.

Singapore Airlines' stewardesses don't get paid much but many of them give good service. I wonder why? Good work ethic?

Singapore Airlines comes from a whole different culture. Plus Singapore is a benevolent dictatorship. But they also happen to have one of the classiest airlines out there and I am certain those who work on board are treated as such. It's like being a waiter at a black tie establishment vs. working for Joe's Burger Shop on the boardwalk in seedy Atlantic City, NJ.

Some people are just fine working for Joe's burgers, but I bet that airline employee with the low morale sometimes has this attitude because he or she was told she'd be working for a place like Singapore Airlines when in fact it was a failing small minded business stuck in the past. Sure some airline employees are the problem but where do you think they learn to be this way? I have known people who work as CSRs. Many gave up long ago on trying to actually help people because the places they work do not empower them to do so. We feel as though we should be empowered to some extent in this country. To work at today's airlines instantly shuts that off within us and it makes us bitter. In places like Singapore, working for an airline--especially one that happens to be very good--is enlightening, empowering and downright fantastic, if not high-end in appearance to others. That's kind of like it was to work for one here back in say, 1960 or so. I dunno. It just seems like our system is beginning to fail and people who work there know it too.

culture and society play a huge part. in the USA right now it seems like culture and society say "do whatever the heck you want, take no responsibility for anything, nothing is your fault" not exactly good concepts for employees in any field where they would interact with customers.

from a very shall we say "quick/cursory" perspective, it seems like many countries with imperial traditions in addition to any cultural/historical components can do very well with regards to customer service. and im not talking about what some call "formal/stuffy" im saying in general, because if youre capable of good service, you can do it either way - formal or invisible.

exactly, except id say its way past the beginning. IMHO the down slope started in the 60s.

I'll argue for people who want to join a union here. They (unions) provide a voice for people who don't have any say in the organisation. Unions were/are formed in response to poor management. As has been mentioned here when mgt is progressive and supports their workers then there is less need for unions.

My theory is that poor CS is due to mgt not allowing people to work as hard as they can. How many times have you been the victim of a CS who refuses to do anything other than follow the company line?

Dare I suggest that the CS person has previously tried to do the right thing and been excessively penalised/abused by their mgt and now understands that under no circumstances are they to deviate from the company guide under threat of more abuse possibly even dismissal.

It is learned helplessness and encouraged by mgt because they can more easily control their staff rather than look after their customers.

Even worse is the poor CS person who tries to help and makes a mistake. If that mistake is treated as the worst thing on earth and punished rather than treated as a learning experience (ie do it once and learn from it) rather than an opportunity for mgt to demonstrate their power to chastise and punish, then the CS has learnt that trying is bad and will only be met with abuse from mgt with real and ongoing consequences rather than abuse from pax with no ongoing consequences.

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=729053

unions may have been necessary and great originally (hazardous conditions, child labor, etc) but IMHO you cannot have any less contempt for them than "evil corporations" nowadays, for example >

http://unionfacts.com/

I agree that that's the current message from management. If you read books on excellent customer service, they stress "empowering" the people who face customers to resolve problems, even if that means supporting them when they bend the rules a little or make extra concessions for important customers. While Elite fliers may get priority in rebooking when flights are cancelled (and sometimes I doubt even that since as an AA Plat they could do no better than put me on the same flight 24 hours later in March of this year), I really don't think the gate agents or the FAs can do much with the constraints they've got. How can you offer food after 3 hours on the tarmac when no food was loaded to begin with?

Having conceded above on one of your points- So what are the unions doing to ensure that their members are empowered to treat the customer right and resolve problems as they arise?

in my grandfather's day, Unions were what saved employees. Today it's in the opinion of many that they stop progress and hurt both business and employees!

>They (unions) provide a voice for people
>who don't have any say in the organisation

I agree - But I also feel the unions harm employees, but not giving a 'voice' for good employees.

My sister, for example, quit her union job once she saw there was no opportunity to excel at her job in order to progress. "Slackers" (her word) with seniority got promoted above her strictly based on seniority, regardless of how hard she worked.

If the union is looking out for the employees, why wasn't it looking out for my sister and putting a mechanism in place where her hard work could be rewarded?

Another example: My wife's assistant is in a union. My wife would like to be able to give her a raise, improve her vacations etc. in compensation for the fact the assistant works harder and smarter than her colleagues. My wife can't, due to the collective agreement.

If there's a wildcat strike, my wife's assistant is expected to walk out and lose a day's pay. How does that help her out?

I'll speak from an Australian perspective here, I think they trying to maintain worker's wages and conditions. The 'race to the bottom' (wages and conditions) currently occurring in many CS roles means that the focus is on preservation of these benefits with empowerment issues a poor last. This is to the ultimate detriment of customers who, ultimately are the reason that a business makes money.


In AUS seniority isn't as big an issue as the US. Here promotions are generally given on merit, you have to apply and be the best person for that role. Of course cronyism occurs but there is a chance to work hard and get ahead rather than just doing your time.

customer service
 

I work for an airline, and I'm sorry to admit I have had days where I have been less than pleasant to a passenger. No excuses, we're human and it happens. After several days of poor weather and flight delays and passengers who show up with way over the accepted baggage allowance, and come 15 minutes before the flight, can't find their identifcation, and expect a whole plane load of passengers to misconnect while they go home and look for it....lets just say we are only human and can get a little cranky.

I have been treated poorly by passengers, more times than I can even count. I've been called names, threatened, blamed and harrassed for things like weather, mechanical problems with the aircraft, and baggage that was lost or mishandled in a city 1500 miles from here. We're the ones who can help passengers, yet we are often treated like dogs. Sometimes we bark back.

The one comment made in this forum, that airline employees are "no better than fast food workers" may give you some idea as to how most employees in service industries are viewed, and subsequently treated, by the customers they serve. The person behind the counter or checkout stand is somehow not human, or viewed as an actual person with a family or or life, and the assumption is that they are uneducated boobs that cannot do any better. While that may sometimes be the case, I would ask that you not be so quick to judge. Most people do not look at us--they look right through us. Many of us are professionals with college degrees believe it or not, and we do this out of love of the industry or love of travel.

The next time an airline agent is rude (and yes, some of them are just .....es for no apparent reason--just like in any business) look around and see what is going on around that person. Is it chaotic? Maybe she is on her last nerve and if one more person asks her when the fog will lift, she will have a meltdown right at the counter. Maybe you are standing there with way more luggaqe than a normal person needs, or she just got off the phone with someone who wants to know if her flight next Tuesday will be on time, or maybe the guy ahead of you showed up at the counter 15 minutes before his flight that is already boarding and thinks SHE needs to somehow hold the flight for him because he's "an executive miles member" which somehow makes it OK to delay a flight and cause 100 other passengers to misconnect downline....

It is also true that some airlines do not have time to do much customer service training. There are hundreds of hours of complex ticketing training, FAA required training, security training etc. that it takes nearly a year to become even remotely comfortable with this job and at least 3 years to have any kind of proficiency. Many people don't make it that long. It's very difficult.

High pay by itself is not a motivator, but...

Low pay certainly effects the quality of the applicant pool from which you hire. It becomes much more difficult to find those who will excel.

Pay cuts and work rule concessions certainly sucks the enthusiasm out of an employee group.

The real problem that I see in the airlines, and other customer service industries, is that management doesn't provide adequate training and follow up. They expect the employees to provide great services because they wrote a sentence in the employee manual saying that they should. Employees need training, procedures, and resources to provide great service and follow up to identify and correct any problems. Management must create a work atmosphere where nothing less is acceptable. That's difficult to do, especially with tens of thousands of customer contact employees, and few management teams are able to pull it off.

I think that this poster hit the nail on the head. The system is overloaded and cannot properly handl irregular operations. And there is not sufficient staffing to handle operations, again particulary when things go wrong. And most fliers are not on FT and have no or little clue about how the "system works." And many of the ground crew are at breaking points when things go wrong and management just collects their bonus and put out press releases about the millions more in costs they plan to cut (in other words not enough resources allowed in the system to account for irregular operations). It truly has become for many domestic airlines a race to the bottom.

Tarabunga, first, welcome to FT. We hope you stick around! :)

We just had another thread with similar comments from a flight attendant. I'm sorry, but I think you're both wrong. It is never appropriate or excusable to be rude to a passenger because you're having a bad day -- particularly when the passenger to whom you're rude is not the one responsible for it. I'm a frequent flier -- I'm not rude to ground or flight personnel, I know the rules and follow them, I don't demand that others be inconvenienced for my sake. I treat people courteously, and I expect to be treated courteously. I don't care if you're having a bad day -- it's not something I should have to take into account unless I'm the cause.

I've encountered airline personnel who, while polite, seem stressed. I'll always make a sympathetic comment which, usually, starts a brief conversation going in which I empathize, after which the airline person seems a little happier, and I do, too. That's never a problem. However, I've also been barked at, treated rudely, insulted, etc. for no other reason than the person was having a bad day, but not because of anything I did. My response will always be an icy smile, a request for the person's name, and then a request to speak to a supervisor. I am a customer, I am not an inconvenience, an annoyance or an interruption. I've paid a significant amount of money for my ticket, for which I expect to be treated professionally and courteously.

I have bad days too. I would never dream of taking them out on my clients -- that would be professional suicide, as I soon wouldn't have any clients left. Also, remember this. I may be having a bad day because of your airline. I may have had to wait hours for my flight because your airline can't manage capacity controls, or has stretched its fleet so thin that delays in other cities impact my departure, or because, by trying to save money by minimizing staffing,crew has misconnected. This is due to your airline's mismanagement, and not my fault or responsibility. I may have been stuck in a middle seat between two overweight individuals who should have been denied boarding but a lazy GA decided to make it my problem instead of hers. I may have had a broken seat that wouldn't recline because your airline can't be bothered with non-safety related maintenance, or because turn-around times are so short that repairs couldn't be made. I may never have gotten my beverage because a lazy FA was more interested in reading her magazine in the galley than responding to the call button which she decided was "for emergencies only." I may have spent the last three days wearing the same clothes because your airline delayed or lost my bag.

All of this happens. And, because you are an agent of your employer, you are the visible face of my dissatisfaction with your airline. And I still won't be rude to you, though I won't be particularly happy and cheery if, for example, I've been trying for the last 7 hours to get between cities that are only a 1-hour flight apart. However, I absolutely, positively will not tolerate being treated rudely by you. My profession happens to be quite stressful. If I couldn't take the stress, I'd find something else to do. I don't see why your profession should be an exception to this rule.

Sorry if this sounds negative and, of course, when I use "you" in this post, I don't mean you personally. Please remember, though, that virtually all the members of FlyerTalk are experienced frequent fliers, i.e. we are the people who don't cause airline personnel to have a bad day. You need to direct your displeasure to your employer, who has decided to adopt a business model that focuses on attracting the bargain-fare, casual-flying Gomers and Kettles who get in our way as much as they get in yours.

yes I understand that GAs and FAs should not be rude. But it has become a dysfunctional, broken business and to expect GAs and FAs (who are human beings and not perfect) take this in stride is a little naive. My heart goes out to these poor GAs and what they go through and how they are treated. Too many times it is a rude, overbearing pax expecting miracles that start the problem. I find treat the GAs and FAs with dignity and respect, even in difficult situations (like my 11 hour flight from JFK to DCA last Sunday, was suppose to be only 1.15 hours) and you get same in return. I actually made that poor AE flight attendant, how looked like holy h..ll because of the day she had put in, laugh at the end of the long ordeal.

Newyorkgeorge, I sympathize with airline workers, too. The bottom line, though, is the airline industry is a customer service industry. No customer service business will thrive if its employees believe it's excusable to treat customers abusively, particularly when the customer who is the target of the abuse did nothing to deserve it. If that's naive, then I'm naive.

I'm with Tarabunga on this one. I don't think there are too many flight attendants or ground personnel that think it is somehow excusable to "abuse" a customer because some other customer has been rude to them. Its a question of being human, and the airline industry has degenerated into an inhuman cattle call -- especially for those of us who fly steerage more often than not -- that tests the patience of the most customer friendly customer service oriented in the business as well as the customers themselves. Its no use pretending that the circumstances are other than what they are and that under these circumstances someone isn't on occasion going to flip their wig. I know I would if I had some grease ball in a stinking tank top barking at me because he couldn't sit next to his wife. (The counter person exercised remarkable restraint in this instance, if you ask me.)

I'm not in customer service and if I were, the airline business is the last place I would work. I don't know about the rest of you all, but I see nasty, brutish, crude, rude, insensitive, thoughtless behavior every day in the normal course of events and certainly among the flying public. You can assign blame wherever you'd like, but in many parts of this country at least, total self absorption is the norm. I'm from a generation and place where you were taught to treat the janitor just like you'd treat the Queen -- or risk getting smacked in the head. I've come to accept the reality (reality, we all succumb to it sooner or later) that a bargain basement price for a round trip coast to coast ticket doesn't entitle me to too much: not to getting there on time, not to food, not to drinks, pillows and sometimes not even to the relentless blandishments of an impeccably attired air hostess/host. (My very first trip on a jet was age 9 with my family JFK to LAX first class on a TWA 707 where the gate person pulled a velvet rope aside and at the other end of the jetway, the stewardess stood in the door: hat, gloves, one foot behind the other, arms outstretched and smiling- fabulous; but I digress.)

Nastiness is the zeitgeist and we all suffer for it. (Though I suppose if I were paying $10,000 a pop for a ticket, I would indeed want someones lips planted firmly on my buns, discreetly of course.) On the occasion when I've been able to upgrade or used miles to fly in a premium cabin, it is true that American and to a lesser degree European crews and ground staff tend to perform their duties perfunctorily while Asian crews tend to be gracious (though sometimes it feels completely fake).

Of course airline employees should not be rude to customers, paying or otherwise. They should be friendly and solicitous. In years of flying I've only had one real incident of a rude customer service person and of course I got the usual 10,000 miles credited to my account after I wrote a letter. But I suspect the level of customer service we long for is never going to reappear given the way the business is structured now and the culture we're submerged in. Folks want and, more importantly, need cheap travel. So they get cheap, hectic, harried unpleasant travel. Security lines, overbooking, tight margins, low fares. All of the things that conspire in the race to the bottom make the airlines probably the last place you're going to get consistently top notch customer service. I have a better experience when I deposit a couple hundred bucks at Wells Fargo than I do at an airport customer service counter or on a plane. And it doesn't surprise, or particularly bother me. I think the lady at the end of the jetway with the gloves and beatific gaze is gone the way of the dinosaurs.