Originally Posted by
nfnsquared
In all fairness, who on this board is a neutral, objective observer as far as customer service is involved? Certainly not any 121 pilots. Easy now, just hear me out.... As a passenger, you're more than likely singled out (as I would expect you to be) for extra attention and you may not experience what the rest of us coach passengers do.
To me, the front end of my customer service experience involves interaction with the check-in desk agents, the gate agents, and the flight attendants. As a military pilot, I always try to say "hello" to the pilot team on the way in and/or out, but I don't particularly interact or see their behavior or attitude displayed as they go about their job like I do with the other airline employees.
In the last two years, I have flown commercial fairly extensively both CONUS and overseas (Europe, Asia, Africa) as part of my additional duty for the AF. In my experiences, the overall employee attitude has dropped noticeably. It's clearly evident that airline employees across the board are not as happy as they once were and unfortunately this affects customer service. Again, please remember that I'm relating my overall experience. There have been some fantastic employees who went above and beyond the call to help me or other fellow passengers.
In addition, I would have to say that the decline in attitude and customer service is noticeably greater among US based carriers than overseas carriers. It's not huge, but it is noticeable.
Due to the amount of flying I've done, now I pretty much get to fly first class. I hate to admit it, but I dread ever having to go back to coach in these current times.
Don't be ****ed, I'm just offering my opinion based on my experiences. Take it for what it's worth or sh!tcan it if you want. Someday I hope to be sitting in the right or left seat with some of you guys/gals, but I'm really dismayed by what's happening to the whole industry. It's sad to me to see this and I hope for everyone's sake that things get better!
You are probably right in many ways, that I do not dispute. I will offer this though. We as US employees not only have to fight our company, we have to fight the government. Example: I was in Italy once (Don't remember which airport.. I think VCE) and there was a huge commotion among the passengers. I heard one of them say "The Alitalia Flight Attendants just called a strike" So all those pax were scrambling for another flight. The interesting thing was that the Italians were not all that ****ed about the event. It is a somewhat accepted occurrance there. We, as US corporations are afforded no such luxury. So... sure the employees are becoming surly. We have no recourse to fight the company on our own because of that damned RLA. If we can get the gubmint out of our business, we can be a little more successful in controlling our own destiny. JMHO