July - Personal Case Study Follow Up - USAirways vs. AirTran

You may recall in July I posted on my experience with USAirways and with AirTran. Since then my experiences in both cases have been validated.

USAirways did response to my complaint:
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Dear Mr. Corrigan:
Although Customer Relations is unable to process refunds, as a courtesy we have submitted your request for a refund to our Refund Department. Due to the circumstances you have described, as a one time courtesy I have authorized a refund of your move up fee. Please allow up to 30 days for posting back to the original form of payment.
Please direct all future inquiries on the status of your refund to the Refund Department. Customer Relations is unable to confirm the status of a refund inquiry as this department cannot view the system the Refund Department uses.
To check the status of a refund, contact our Refund Department via our website www.usairways.com/contact. Click on the Refund Inquiry link. Proceed to the Check Refund Status link. On following screen input your13 digit ticket number 0372355996569.
Your comments and concerns regarding the agents at the airport not being able to issue the refund immediately have been documented and will be forwarded to the Senior Management Team.
Thank you for choosing US Airways.
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So, let's look at this. Given my situation, a unique situation, I am given a homogeneous form letter. That makes me feel really special. Second, "one time courtesy" really burns me up. What they are telling me is that if I go stand-by again and then I end up on my original flight, that I will be charged regardless. Third, they make me feel like an idiot because I directed my inquiry TO THE PLACE WHERE THEY TOLD ME TO WHEN I CALLED. Total lack of coodination, command, control, and consistency is what this form letter revealed to me.

Let's move to my positive experience.

Same situation with AirTran. The beauty about my frequent trips to Atlanta is that I have developed quite a bit of precision in my time from office to gate. When I discovered after finishing some work early one time that I could make an earlier flight with about 5 minutes to spare, I decided to take my chances and go.

When I arrived at the gate, there was no stand-by fee and because I was so appreciative of the gate agent, he actually bumped me up to first class. I don't know if he did this because he saw how much I fly AirTran, or because he liked the way I treated him with respect, but the bottom line is that (1) he was empowered to do it, (2) he had the resources (available seats) to make my experience better, and (3) guess what? it didn't cost AirTran anything.

In short, I was on first class with USAirways, and felt like I was treated like a coach-class commodity, and with AirTran, I was in coach and was treated like I was the most important person boarding the flight.

I would love to hear your stories about USAirways and AirTran to see if you've had similar experiences. I would also appreciate you forwarding this story to others that fly and in particular these airlines. It will really increase the power of social media and I will track hits to see how much impact a negative and positive experience can have when discussed together.

I will run similar experiments with just negative and positive experiences separately as well.