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The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

dustincurtis.com

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Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

#81

Post by clistctrl »

dschobel wrote: post #17
jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #3

I hope Virgin hires this guy and makes a media event out of it. I will now never fly American Airlines ever again in my life. This sincerely pissed me off.

Spare the boycott for a cause which merits it. AA just lost a competent and passionate employee and announced themselves as a lousy place to work for creative people.

They lost me as a customer after 2 consecutive miserable flights. Midwest Express has yet to show me anything less then a fantastic experience. Though I've recently been gaining confidence with Air Tran, its the in flight wifi.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

#82

Post by goatforce5 »

enneff wrote: post #52
Vivtek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, when I flew from Puerto Rico to Florida with my dog this spring, JetBlue not only didn't have facilities to fly my dog, they had no answer to my dilemma at all. And instead of refunding my ticket, they gave me credit, with JetBlue, who ... can't fly my dog. And then they said, "Well, have a nice day." No help, no money back, no nothing. It took them fifteen minutes even to tell me that they couldn'…

Good idea. Let's consign everyone who flies with a dog to a particular airline, so the rest of us can avoid them.

When I flew from the UK to the US with my cat (in cargo) I think the other passengers got annoyed with the flight attendant coming up frequently to reassure me that my cat was (probably) fine. It was a really bumpy flight - worst i've been on. Full marks to Virgin Atlantic for the pet cargo service. They really go above and beyond for long haul pet travel: http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/passengerinformation/tr...

And when said kitty needed to come from Boston to Toronto, it was in AA in the cabin. They were nice but largely indifferent about it. I'm guess they see plenty of pets every day. The normally surly TSA metal detector guys were really patient with me though.

Yay for globe trotting kitty!

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

#83

Post by goatforce5 »

anApple wrote: post #79
davidw wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I missed an AA flight in Munich, and they were complete assholes. Actually, I guess it was their 'partner', BA, but even the people we got on the phone were completely unhelpful. My wife, parents in law, and I ended up on three separate flights to Portland, Oregon. OTOH, on the way back, the nice person at the AA ticket counter saw there were problems with one of our connections, and put us all on a Lufthansa direct…

So why did you miss the plane? Was it your fault or the airlines? If it was your fault, what do you expect to happen? If you travel by TGV in France and miss your train, your place is also gone and you have to buy a new ticket.

I once overslept and missed my NYC -> Australia flight on a dirt cheap lowest-of-the-low economy Qantas ticket. Called them up, fearing the worst, and think I was going to have to pay crazy sums to fly out the next day by buying a last minute ticket.

Because I was calling at a weird hour, my call got routed to Qantas in Australia. Guy answers, I tell him in a panic about my situation and he's like "Yeah, no worries mate. Changed your ticket to tomorrow. How's New York? OMG! Have you seen the Statue of Liberty?!" Ha!

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

#84

Post by davidw »

anApple wrote: post #79
davidw wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I missed an AA flight in Munich, and they were complete assholes. Actually, I guess it was their 'partner', BA, but even the people we got on the phone were completely unhelpful. My wife, parents in law, and I ended up on three separate flights to Portland, Oregon. OTOH, on the way back, the nice person at the AA ticket counter saw there were problems with one of our connections, and put us all on a Lufthansa direct…

So why did you miss the plane? Was it your fault or the airlines? If it was your fault, what do you expect to happen? If you travel by TGV in France and miss your train, your place is also gone and you have to buy a new ticket.

We expected to have to pay something to fix the situation because it was "our fault" (there was a big accident and an hour long wait on the autobahn), but we also expected them to work with us a bit to try and fix things in some way. We did, after all, still have return tickets that we wanted to use, rather than buying a complete new round trip. Indeed, we finally did get a hold of someone on the phone and they managed to patch things up with roughly 100$ each, which wasn't that bad, all things considered, and seemed 'fair' to us. The problem was that they should have done that at the beginning (in other words, the person working at the terminal) rather than basically just telling us to get lost.

The difference really came down to how we were treated - a little bit of sympathy and trying to work with someone goes a long way to take the sting out of a bad situation.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

#85

Post by callahad »

pxlpshr wrote: post #55
jrockway wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Although I do think AA beats the other US airlines on paper, which is why I haven't tried any others. (I have flown on Southwest. Once. I got to the airport two hours early for a domestic flight. Waited in line for an hour and 45 minutes to check my bag and get a boarding pass. The boarding pass was "the wrong one" and security wouldn't let me through. Ticket agent didn't care. Gate agent didn't care. I then…

I've never had that type of experience at Southwest. Ever. It's my choice airline for domestic but I can see how it's not for everyone. I like the early-bird-gets-the-worm approach to their seating, and I print my ticket before I leave because....... And you checked "a" bag in? On a domestic flight? If I can't carry-on on a domestic flight, then I cut down my packing so I don't look like a woman taking my closet. Whe…

> so I don't look like a woman taking my closet.

Could you please reconsider your phrasing? Thank you.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

#87

Post by pyre »

PostOnce wrote: post #77
jfager wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why spare the boycott? It's not like it's difficult to avoid buying American Airlines tickets, and frankly, it sucks to fly with them anyways.

Rickety old planes and charging for things that are free on other airlines (headphones, drinks). What's not to love? Did I mention the competent and attractive staff?

> Did I mention the competent and attractive staff?

I realize that you're just trying to rag on AA, but I don't like the implication that 'unattractive' people shouldn't be airline employees.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

#88

Post by pyre »

marknutter wrote: post #60
drusenko wrote: post #9

A bit off-topic, but Dustin Curtis' site really hurts my eyes reading on my MacBook pro... I have a really hard time reading his text, and when I look away, I have very pronounced stripe patterns in my vision.

cmd+opt+ctr+8 unless you're not on a Mac in which case too bad for you.

If you're using GNOME and Compiz, this feature is buried in the settings (run 'ccsm' aka 'Compiz Config Settings Manager'). It's called 'negative' or something like that. I don't recall off-hand if it is enabled/disabled by default or what the default keybinding is, but it's there.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

#89

Post by pyre »

dtran wrote: post #13

IMHO, any employee not on the customer service team that reaches out to customers should be awarded not punished, given that it's done somewhat reasonably. In most cases filing a complaint with the customer service people would get you nothing - you need to talk to the ux designer.

Maybe AA's customer service or PR team is unionized, and this was just a CYA maneuver? (I realize that this is a huge stretch, just saying...)

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

#90

Post by gvb »

davi wrote: post #2

More interesting to me, the email that got the guy fired: http://dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html An articulate explanation of how good intentions at big companies can often be implemented only slowly.

Dialog from Makers, by Cory Doctorow http://craphound.com/makers/Cory_Doctorow_-_Makers.htm

This dialog comes near the end, Lester and Perry discussing the paradox of working for a big company. According to Cory's bio, he never worked in a big company, but he nails it here.

gvb

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Lester: "They said that they wanted me to come in and help them turn the place around, help them reinvent themselves. Be nimble. Shake things up. But it’s like wrestling a tar-baby. You push, you get stuck. You argue for something better and they tell you to write a report, then no one reads the report. You try to get an experimental service running and no one will reconfigure the firewall. Turn the place around?" He snorted. "It's like turning around a battleship by tapping it on the nose with a toothpick."

Perry: "I hate working with assholes."

"They’re not assholes, that’s the thing, Perry. They’re some really smart people. They’re nice. We have them over for dinner. They’re fun to eat lunch with. The thing is, every single one of them feels the same way I do. They all have cool shit they want to do, but they can’t do it."

"Why?"

"It’s like an emergent property. Once you get a lot of people under one roof, the emergent property seems to be crap. No matter how great the people are, no matter how wonderful their individual ideas are, the net effect is shit."

"Reminds me of reliability calculation. Like if you take two components that are 90 percent reliable and use them in a design, the outcome is 90 percent of 90 percent - 81 percent. Keep adding 90 percent reliable components and you’ll have something that explodes before you get it out of the factory.

"Maybe people are like that. If you’re 90 percent non-bogus and ten percent bogus, and you work with someone else who’s 90 percent non-bogus, you end up with a team that’s 81 percent non-bogus."

"I like that model. It makes intuitive sense. But it’s depressing. It says that all we do is magnify each others’ flaws."

"Well, maybe that’s the case. Maybe flaws are multiplicative."

"So what are virtues?"

"Additive, maybe. A shallower curve."

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