Open Letter To The Airlines

SKY HIGH

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May 22, 2004
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An Open Letter to the Airlines

An open letter to the chief executives of the big six airlines.

Dear Gerard, Gerald, Glenn, Gordon, Douglas, and Bruce,

As we approach the holiday season, I want to wish you all a wonderful holiday and extend my most sincere wishes for your survival. I realize that the past several years have stressed you out in the ivory towers and I am afraid that you may have lost sight of the big picture.

So as a favor - call this an early Christmas present - I'll help you put the big picture into perspective.

You fly planes.

You are not in the direct to consumer sales business.

You have a ready willing and able sales force to handle your distribution. Remember travel agents? Carlson Wagonlit? American Express? ASTA? Home-based? The thousands upon thousands of independents? Orbitz? Travelocity? Expedia?

Just pay them something for the effort and they will reward you with full flights and, what's more, customer service. America West has done it and the last time I checked, their balance sheet was fairly healthy.

Besides, travel agents have already demonstrated that they are survivors - they're still here despite your best efforts.

You are not in the restaurant business.

Stop trying to convince your passengers that you are. Your catered food, when available, is horrible and the real restaurants have plenty of options in the airports. Save your meals for the really long flights, save some money and offer some prepackaged snacks. Sit down, shut up and eat your peanuts.

You are not the mafia.

Stop acting like it. People are willing to pay you good money to use your planes. Stop trying to extort more money from them with fee upon fee upon fee. You are not charged a penny when you return to a retail store for a price accommodation because your goods were just put on sale. Why do you think it is fair for you to do this to your customers? If you want to operate a cartel, why not just shake everyone down at the gate and collect all their loose change?

But be careful, a horse head in the bed is worse than cabin lights coming on after a red-eye.

You are not in the cruise business or the hotel business.

Stop trying to meddle in that market. If you guys could get your own house in order, I might understand the push. But first things first. It is bad enough that your customers hate to fly on your planes (and travel agents deal with your clients every day and trust me, "hate" is not too harsh). Now they might get a chance to hate a perfectly good cruise line.

You are in the people moving business. You know, as in elevators, escalators, moving walkways, mass transit. You move people from point A to Point B. You employ tens of thousands of bean counters to tell you how much it costs to operate your business.

Price yourself accordingly. Do not play games. They do not work and one would think that after the past four or five years you would have seen that they do not work.

How many harebrained schemes have you devised that have failed?

Douglas, remember the GDS "sharing" - this is not the sharing you learned in kindergarten. What about those "use-it-or-lose-it" tickets that you all, dare I say colluded, on implementing?

Instead of trying to figure out ways to land the golden parachute, concentrate on landing the planes - preferably on time and safely, but if it needs to be late, not that much, and please let your customers know what is going on.

Gerard, there is nothing special in the air. Gerald, we don't love the way you fly. Glenn, your skies are anything but friendly. Gordon, the proud bird with the golden tail is molting. Douglas, some people really know how to fly - unfortunately, it seems their names are Kelleher, Neeleman, Leonard, and Parker. And Bruce, while US Airways may begin with me, you need to remember it may also end with me.

Gentleman, fly your planes, price them fairly, and treat your employees, agents and customers as you would want to be treated yourself.

:up: You do have some outstanding talent out there - look at your pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, gate agents, ground crew, management, travel agents, caterers, cleaners…they want to earn a fair wage and they want to work for you. Treat them and pay them fairly and soon you will reap the rewards. :up:

Happy holidays.
 
SKY HIGH said:
You fly planes.
[post="227389"][/post]​

Actually the only one who flies is Gordon (757/767)

SKY HIGH said:
You have a ready willing and able sales force to handle your distribution. Remember travel agents? Carlson Wagonlit? American Express? ASTA? Home-based? The thousands upon thousands of independents? Orbitz? Travelocity? Expedia?
[post="227389"][/post]​
Can you say internet, you know the one Al Gore invented. WN has used this very well and the big guys are moving in that direction quickly. TA's should realize, just like the airlines are starting to, that things change. Sell more Disneyland Adventure packs if you need to make more money, the days of high commissions for airfare are gone.


SKY HIGH said:
Your catered food, when available, is horrible and the real restaurants have plenty of options in the airports.
[post="227389"][/post]​

I guess you don't get out to much if you think "Real Restaurants" are McDonalds, Wendys, Taco Bell, and oh yes, Dunkin Donuts. Your probably the first one to complain you only got one bag of peanuts.



SKY HIGH said:
You do have some outstanding talent out there - look at your pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, gate agents, ground crew, management, travel agents, caterers, cleaners…they want to earn a fair wage and they want to work for you. Treat them and pay them fairly and soon you will reap the rewards.

[post="227389"][/post]​
I'll agree with you on this (Treat them and pay them fairly). The only problem is in order to pay them fairly we need to raise revenue and cut expenses. Everyone has their hand in the pot. The government and Travel agents look at this industry as a cash cow. Airlines have figured out how to sell their product without TA's, bye, bye. Now if we could get the gov't to take a little less cookies from the jar, it might be possible to "Treat them and pay them fairly"
:mf_boff:
 
An interesting diatribe, but I would point out, IMHO, a few foibles of the arguement.

You are not in the direct to consumer sales business.

Yes they are now. The internet has produced a fundamental change. Price is king, because, now, anyone with a computer can easily do comparison shopping. You don't have to have access (i.e. travel agent) to a Sabre terminal. Travel agents useful when they add value to the consumer's purchase. In many cases that may be good, but I can sit at my computer and buy an airline ticket faster than I can call an TA, and get it cheaper as well. For complicated vacation packages a TA might be worthwhile. Since Travel Agent services are a value added service, they should be priced accordingly and openly and paid for honestly by the consumer, not hidden in hotel and airline ticket prices. The federal government hides huge amounts in hidden fees in airline tickets already. If travel agents think they're so important, then they should price their product, up-front. The reason a lot of people used to go to them is because it was "free" . . . . . although utlimately in the price of the airline ticket. The airlines aren't trying to kill TAs. They're just can't subsidize another middleman with their hand out with air fares in the basement. The gravy train is over, TAs. Airline fares are below the bone now . . . . . thanks to SW, JetBlew and other discounters that you touted so much. They were the innovators of migrating ticket purchases to the internet.

You are not the mafia. [/QUOTE

Cartel???? You're kidding right. I guess that's why all the airlines are cutting each other's throats with fare wars. That's the most idiotic thing I've read in a long time. I understand why you hate the airlines . . . . i.e. no more gravy train. Try lobbying the governments to cut the fee after fee after tax after tax on airline tickets. I won't defend pricing policies by the airlines . . they are entirely too estoteric to be understood by anyone other than a marketing insider. Pricing needs to be simplified greatly and a lot of the restrictions lifted with other routine costs (minor intererary changes, etc) factored in. However, right now, the prices are so low that if you want to reserve that seat from Wichita to NYC, I'm not going to be able to turn away another customer and let that seat go empty because your car wouldn't start that morning. I know I'm going to make my intinerary and I don't want to pay for other people's inability to plan. If ticket prices provided a reasonable profit, then maybe we'd have more leeway. Airline seats are perishable. It's Walmart now, baby. That's what the American public wants now. If you use up a can of hairspray, even the purveyors of cheap Chinese junk (Walmart) isn't going to give you your money back on it.

As you say . . . . with 25% too many airline seats in the national inventory right now, it's strictly suppy and demand. Failed companies like UAL and U need to be allowed to liquidate for the good of national system. Airline seats are a commodity. Kelleher, Neeleman, Leonard, and Parker are filling that void with various combinations of draconian buisness models (point to piont service to large markets only and to heck with small cities), low-wage low seniority employees, paltry retirement plans, and foreign made aircraft.

The industry is changing very fast. The salad days are over. It's the Greyhound Bus now . . . and I doubt many people use a travel agent to book bus travel. Travel agents are no longer a significant factor in airline travel for the general public anymore, and will be a declining one in corporate travel as well. I used to use travel agents, but not anymore. I can do everything I need to do on the internet, faster and cheaper.

Like technology eliminated the third piilot (flight engineer) in the cockpit, technology is eliminating a lot of other jobs . . . like some travel agents.
 
That was well said :up: Travel Agent should open internet cafe's. At least they might be able to recoup some of the lost revenue. :up: :up:
 
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  • Thread starter
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usairbear said:
Why don't you give credit to the person who originally wrote this?


The following was a letter that Mr. Frenaye wrote to the chief executives of the big six airlines. John Frenaye owns a travel agency in Arnold, Md. He writes about the travel industry as an insider with an outsider's perspective.
 

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