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Airport redux please
By Charles Martin | May 3, 2009
AA Flight whatever – DFW to FLL
Seat 25B — using GoGo Airplane wireless for the first time. Fast. 1.9mps
What the heck is wrong with America’s airports? I’ve been in the swing of this since 4.30AM today and will culminate a 10 hour trip in a few hours. I’ve been taking notes and there are a few below. Ok… sure, call it rants if you want.
I’ve been flying since I was a tot. Both parents worked at a major airline for 20+ years. My sister still hits the tarmac after 30+ years and she’s got stories. I’ve got as many miles as some road warriors do today. That’s not the point. Even if this is your first flight and you just crawled out from under a rock, you’d be concerned and frustrated by what I saw today. This isn’t one of those “I’m not happy, nobody’s happy” situations. I’m not complaining if my in-flight wifi goes down. I’m saying that it seems that no one — absolutely no one — seems to put any simple marketing sense to the airport experience.
Masks to abate swine flu on domestic flights. Get real people. I rest my case.
TSA Mission Statement – Every sentence in the very long diatribe you call a mission statement (I call it a manifesto, with a few typos I noticed) starts with “We are a people…”. My god “people”, you aren’t Choctaw Indians. I take some solace in your personal commitment to be a nice human being but if you graduated from retail training at Apple, I’d be way more comfortable. Net Promoter “people”. That’s all I gotta say.
Velcro shoes on everyone – old and young. Tell me again why we let the Taliban dictate our fashion sense?
Where have you been? A gal today drives up in front of BUR at 5.45AM and leaves her rental car there at the curb. Locked. No keys in side. Trunk open and empty. She was paged and low and behold, she thought it was OK to leave it there at the curb to pick up a delayed bag. She was gone 20 minutes. Where have you been for the last 8 years lady? Scratch that. 15 years. Of course, she told the officer as I stood nearby that she “didn’t know…”
Take her license away.
Water Boarding. The real definition of water boarding is the fact that my $1.00 bottle of Arrowhead has to be a city water bottle (crappy Aquafina) $5.00 behind the wall. You tell me that commerce doesn’t have any influence on the decision to not allow liquids into the TSA line and I have some new FL real-estate to sell you. I’ll give up on capitalism if you just let me have my water from home. And before you send me the long crap about the cool margins and profits on products like this and that I’m just jealous I’m not cashing in, you’re wrong. If I ran the airport newsstand, I would ask cool new companies that don’t have money to run big ads at airports to buy label ads on water I sell so I can keep some nice margins but also sell the water for near that buck. That’s my idea. Don’t try it.
Starbucks discount block. I am very sick and tired of the airport @starbucks not taking my 10% discount card that I so love and keep under my pillow. They can put a man on the moon but…
American (and others) block free wifi. I was one of the folks on an American consumer advisory panel that pushed hard for free wifi in the Admiral’s Club. Now, take that sentiment and move it to your public lounges. I will buy an ad to run for 12 months at a good rate if you do. So will others. Thousands of others if you price it right. See above about Net Promoters. I am basically a 2 right now since you locked me out of wifi in the airport lounge.
A good thing — the McDonald’s golf cart to shuttle you between terminals at DFW. I thought it was smart to pick up stranded passengers, and at the same time give them an offer to stop at the four McDonald’s in the terminal. Seems someone took some time to think that through.
The guy walking to work near the airport. I cannot tell you how many times in Burbank and near LAX, I’ve seen people walking to work a few miles from the airport. They are in their uniform and usually carrying a bag lunch. It really hits home with how little the airports pay to keep us safe. The guy this morning was no different. Living on the edge. No wonder he is disgruntled.
The disgruntled look on pretty much everyone’s face. We’ve known about this one forever. Funny thing is I’ve personally known a lot of nice gate agents in my time but everyone today was tense, huffy, and waiting for you to ask for their first born. Take a breath people. You chose this job knowing the hell it defines.
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