Gary Shteyngart wrote a story for the New York Times titled “A Trans-Atlantic Trip Turns Kafkaeque” describing a 30 hour transit from Paris to New York City that involved maintenance problems, returning to an airport (London), an overnight stay and more trouble getting home.

Any one trip can turn into a horror.  It’s happened to the best of airlines.  There are some telling points to this story, however.  First, maintenance problems (again) start this off with delays that for American, shouldn’t be so difficult to deal with for an airline with substantial operations in both Paris and London.  These problems aren’t happening in Omaha, Nebraska.

Given that they are happening major destination points for American and given that the bulk of the horror took place in London, a place where AA has a major operation and support from partner British Airways, it just shouldn’t happen.  Finding a usable 767 shouldn’t have necessarily been the hardest thing to do.  Nor finding a crew for that 767.  In addition, even if a 767 couldn’t be found for the flight, it should have and could have been possible to take care of a great many of those passengers on flights with AA or BA.

It’s an example of an airline not trying.  Trying counts for a lot.  You’ll never keep all people happy but you can substantially reduce the impact of such events by just trying.   There are 13 flights daily between JFK and London Heathrow if one considers both AA and BA.   There are another 6 flights between London and Chicago (BA and AA again).   there are 4 between London and Dallas and 4 between London and Miami and another 4 between London and Los Angeles.  that’s a total of 31 flights from London to the “cornerstone” cities of American Airlines if one considers both American Airlines and its codeshare partner British Airways.

If every seat on that 767-300 was full (and I virtually guarantee they weren’t), there would be only 225 passengers to take care of.  30 business class and the remainder economy class.  The math here isn’t hard.  If you can’t deal with 225 passengers at your major European focus city, you have a problem that goes far beyond maintenance.

I’ll grant that accommodating international passengers in a foreign city is a touch more challenging than a domestic flight.  Here is what you do:

1. Dispatch multiple agents including a British Airways representative to the gate to meet the flight.  Make sure they have communications with them such as cellular phones that will allow them to communicate with company operations personnel.
2. Get the passengers through customs in a quick and organized manner and collect them on the other side into small groups of about 30 passengers.
3. Ask your reservations center(s) to allocate 6 to 8 agents with dedicated phone connections to the gate agents for fast re-booking.
4. Determine the final destinations of the passengers and start routing them to alternate hub cities where possible.
5. For the very few you cannot take care of, refer them to a final agent who should make accommodations available at a nearby hotel (preferably located on or near the airport) and book them on the first flights out that permit connections to their final destinations.

Flights cancel.  It happens.  Having a contingency plan and some staff on hand to deal with this problem is not hard.  That aircraft turned around 1 to 2 hours away from London.  That’s enough time to call in a few extra staff to help.  It really is.  Again, this wasn’t happening in Kabul, it was happening in American Airlines’ major European focus city where its prime trans-Atlantic partner was located.

Keeping passengers happy and, more importantly, keeping passengers such as a writer for the New York Times happy, pays big dividends in the end.

Filed under: Airline Service by ajax
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