Plunder Hound

The Author makes some good points.

What Nonprofits Can Learn from Southwest and United Airlines - Yahoo Small Business Advisor

Jaded N Cynical

When you outsource your brand to the lowest bidder, quality will never live up to what mainline can deliver. The brand name suffers every time management outsources a job that a mainline employee could do. Do they really believe the outsource provider employees care as much or have an invested stake in the success in the United brand?

Why is Southwest Airlines so consistent??? Because only Southwest employees represent Southwest Airlines.

I wonder when the last time management actually experienced the product delivered by some of our regional partners.

oldmako

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Obi Wan speaks the truth.

I'd bet they've only walked down to the F Con gates (ORD or other hub equivalent) once or twice in the last three years. They certainly didn't stay long enough to become imbued with the stench, or get a flavor for how we treat our pax every day, all over the system.

This airline has become one giant slow leak. Save your money.

Plunder Hound

Going down to those gates makes me feel like I'm at a bus terminal. As a hub terminal, that experience should be better.

Delta's feeder gates in Detroit are very nice. However, Delta converted all the CSRs to a contract company.

flybynuts

I couldn't agree more with all this and I see it as a two part failure. One is that our Regional feeds are killing us. Not a slam on the pilots but the product quality as a whole is a Shakespearean tragedy but I am not enjoying watching this at all. I have never met anyone who likes flying on the RJs. Interesting tidbit, if they raise the outsourced salaries by 20-30%, the outsourced positions become fiscally unreasonable to keep them.

The second part is that we have our share of mainline employees that take out or display their frustration at our inept management to the customers. From ramper to pilots, we stiff arm the customer too. SW employees don't because they believe in the leadership which benefits the company. I try to work to benefit the customer which does help the company but I'm not striving to benefit our executive wing. I just can't beat the customer down due to poor leadership.

Stud7094

Ord is nothing...go to the A concourse in IAD where 1 or 2 agents work 6 gates with flights that all leave in the same time frame...big customer service desks with no one there ever...every time I go to get paperwork at one of those desks a line starts to form very quickly...