Fly the Fiendly Skies

Last week I wrote about my less-than-satisfactory experience as a customer of a major airline that shall not be named (it was Delta). What that experience came down to was that the airline (Delta) basically told me that they had my money, and they dared me to try to get anything in return for it.

The amount of feedback I got on this one suggests that I am far from the only traveler who has been cast adrift in what one reader called the "parallel universe of airline logic." For instance, I learned that most airlines will not pay a travel agency any commission for selling a seat on one of their planes, but they will send them a bill if they should make a mistake doing it. 

So after my less-than-satisfactory experience with that one airline (Delta), we booked last month's New York trip on a different unnamed airline (Spirit) - and we discovered a whole new way to think about the words "customer service."

This new airline (Spirit) has adopted a sort of "water torture" method of extracting money from customers, one drip at a time. They sell you really a cheap ticket, then charge fairly stiff fees for everything involved in actually going on your trip; checked luggage, carry-on bags, pre-selected seats. They even charge about three dollars for one of those little bags of nuts. 

Now please don't think that I completely lack sympathy for the airlines. As I pointed out last week, their top executives make just over three million dollars a year on the average. This means that these people shockingly live in an income bracket where they have to think twice about ordering the solid platinum shower curtain rings for the vacation place in Maui, and many of them end up making do with the 24K gold ones.

To help these poor suffering executives keep their basement mini-fridges stocked with Beluga Caviar, I decided to come up with a few suggestions to help them boost their profits:

1. Charge extra for not getting a seat between a hippie with a head cold and a 350 pound guy named "Snake" who believes that personal hygiene is for sissies.

2. How about a "Seat Belt Surcharge?" You could ding each passenger a dollar or two to buckle up. Then when you land, you could charge them ten bucks to get out. 

3. Take the lap belt concept to the next level; in the unlikely event of sudden loss of cabin pressure, an oxygen mask would drop down from the overhead - just as long as you have a valid major credit card on file.

4. Charge a fee to use the rest room. This would be especially effective if you were serving a population who might be inclined to, say, drink a few beers.

5. Replace those decadently luxurious coach-class airline seats with bar stools. You could cram twice as many people into the same space, plus you would achieve a festive "happy hour" mood that could seriously boost restroom revenues. 

OK, I admit that it might be sort of dicey hanging onto a bar stool while the plane accelerates to or stops from 200 miles per hour. But as long as your credit card holds out, you could invest in that optional lap belt.

6. To heck with bar stools - go ahead and pack those planes with standing room only!

Interestingly, as you read these words, some real airlines are actually trying to implement those last three ideas. In Ireland, an airline called Ryanair is working on both pay toilets and budget bar stool seating. It's bound to work; who ever heard of an Irishman sliding off a bar stool?

Guinness anyone?

And Spring Airlines in China is just waiting for  regulatory approval to start offering a discounted fare for standing room service. Spring officials say that an important aspect will be a safety belt fastened around the passenger's waist. It is not clear to me just how this is going to work, but I think I would pay a whole lot extra to not have old Snake strapped in behind me.

When we were coming home from New York, the flight attendant told us how she had been trained to think about her employer (remember Spirit?). She said that her boss told her, "Don't get all excited about the job. We are nothing more than a Greyhound bus attached to a 7-11."

Does anybody besides me think that represents a pretty nasty insult to Greyhound?

Copyright © 2010, Michael Ball

Mike Ball is the Erma Bombeck Award-winning author of "What I've Learned So Far..." and the book What I've Learned So Far... Part I: Bikes, Docks & Slush Nuggets.