A Personal Case Study - Airlines: USAirways vs AirTran

I recently have had a lot of business in the UK and Atlanta. We all have our airline stories, but this experience is a little more "special" if you will.

Let's start with an absolutely miserable experience with USAirways. I have been in the UK and traveled on USAirways. When I made the reservation, I noticed that they did not offer me a particular connecting flight home that I could easily make, given the landing time of my flight from Manchester, UK. The web didn't offer it to me and when I called to inquire, I was not offered it either.

I was like, okay, I will take my chances when I arrive. Sure enough, my flight got into Philadelphia 20 minutes early, not to mention the additional time I had because of the buffer that flights have built into their schedules.

I arrive at the gate of the earlier flight and tell them my story. Flight wasn't offered, I am flying first class (of which this leg didn't offer first class), the plane is only 3/4 full, can I please get on.

I then discover there is a $50 fee to fly stand by. I thought the concept was ludicrous in my particular case. First, flying early when seats are available gives the airlines yield management and customer experience positives. Secondly, given that the flight was not offered to me based on their own constraints, policies, and schedule sandbagging, it really wasn't fair.

The first agent tells me to call USAirways to avoid any fees, because she agrees with my point. I call the 1-800 number and the agent not only doesn't want to charge me, he wants to charge me $150 to change my flight. I decided this was going nowhere, so I go to another agent who also agrees with me and gets a manager for me to talk to.

The manager also agreed with me, but said there is nothing they can do, but charge me and then put in the additional effort of complaining about it to see if I get a refund. The manager then went on of how these situations happen to her all the time and how frustrated she is in that she can't help customers and do the right thing. I said, "companies that are unable to treat unique customers uniquely are doomed to fail." She couldn't have agreed more.

I had been on the road for nearly two weeks and I missed my family and I didn't want to wait around for 2.5 more hours, so I said go ahead and put me on standby.

So they charge me $50 and put me on standby. However, the plane has a maintenance problem and is delayed. When I approached the agent, I asked, since I'm just standby, I can still get on my original flight if this drags on. She said, "No. After I enter you in the system, you forfeit your other seat."

Now, I have to go through another level of effort and charges to get back on my original flight.

I won't even bring up the Philadelphia Airport and how they are unable to manage capacity, other than to say just that. That is another story, another experience, another cost of complexity to the airlines, tax payers, and the environment.

The bottom line is that I was caught in a circle of failures by policies (charges), processes (time tables), and people (agents) and was charged more and arrived home later and received service below the level for which I paid and expected. Why would I have expose myself or my friends to this again?

Let's now get to a positive story. When I go to Atlanta, I fly AirTran. First, I love XM Radio. Second, I like the last second upgrade options if I've had a long week and want to stretch out a little. Third, they now offer Wi-Fi. This can save my clients a lot of money. I can now leave the day of engagement and work effectively via internet, rather than fly in the night before at the cost of a hotel and time away from my family. Fourth, it's pretty easy to change flights. In every other instance, they are just another airline, but they have perqs and satisfiers that are hard to duplicate, that lead to a better and more valuable experience. Many companies have rewards systems which are easy to duplicate and quickly become entitlements. AirTran has created features that are satifiers that are difficult to change to dis-satisfiers. They have created experience advantages that will take a while to become mainstream.

I would love to hear other airline stories, so please share them with me.