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Global Traveler Magazine airline of the year

Old 12-03-2014, 07:49 AM
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Default Global Traveler Magazine airline of the year

Leading travel magazine announces winners Global Traveler names Airline and Hotel of the Year - ...

Guess who it is? Who knew?
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Old 12-03-2014, 10:19 AM
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My impression after 16 years is the service, courtesy, and professionalism have improved overall. Gate agents are the wild card; some are great, and some barely speak english. The boarding by zone, with the lanes, is good, but the velvet ropes are usually not oriented at the best angle, so the lines spill out in to the concourse...and no one can get around them. Traffic jam.

F/As in particular are showing a much more service-oriented face. When there is food on board, some of it is actually quite good....the kind I think to myself "I would actually pay the asking price for this and not feel gypped."

I think where we lag is:

a. Stuff the competition offers for free, and we charge. Some is baggage, some is on-board entertainment. The fact that half the overall fleet doesn't seem to have wifi isn't helping. (Getting better, but won't be done until the end of 2015).

b. Flight-Connection help. Plane late at the gate? Lots of people running, while the privileged few get a ride in the airport golf cart. I see this in IAH.

c. Saying we are after the Premium player, but domestically, way too much of the flying is on a 50-seat RJ with none of the amenities the premium passenger paid for, like first class, wifi, or the ability to stand upright without knuckle-dragging.

d. Facilities. SFO's 60-gates are nice. IAH revamped the RJ gates (B-Concourse), and it is an improvement, but still too much walking in an empty corridor to get to the planes.

Not where I'd like it to be. But it's got an upward vector.
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Old 12-03-2014, 06:13 PM
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Can we include this in our arguments in the SLI hearing when the next merger occurs?

I hear a lot of the LCAL guys lamenting the terrible state of the current airline and waxing poetic about the days of Gordo... I also heard them citing a long list of awards to demonstrate just how great they were... So -- what is the difference between that list of past awards and the ones that we're getting now???
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Old 12-03-2014, 07:03 PM
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Originally Posted by UAL T38 Phlyer View Post

a. Stuff the competition offers for free, and we charge. Some is baggage, some is on-board entertainment. The fact that half the overall fleet doesn't seem to have wifi isn't helping. (Getting better, but won't be done until the end of 2015).
All my dead head/pass travel has been North America/Carib, and thus on the guppy and bus (and a few 757's), but the last few times I've been on the bus the wifi/entertainment setup has been really nice. Tons of TV and movies to choose from, all for free via wifi. If we could just get that system on the super gup for the 5+ hour flights I think the passengers would be much happier.

Originally Posted by AxlF16 View Post
Can we include this in our arguments in the SLI hearing when the next merger occurs?

I hear a lot of the LCAL guys lamenting the terrible state of the current airline and waxing poetic about the days of Gordo... I also heard them citing a long list of awards to demonstrate just how great they were... So -- what is the difference between that list of past awards and the ones that we're getting now???
Flew with a LCAL captain a few days ago, and he actually mentioned this. His stance was completely opposite (though I've heard what you mention from a lot of FA's.) His position was that GB left CAL with $50M that the employees basically gave up or left on the table, and his pay is better now than it's ever been.

I've not gotten the "I got screwed, it was better when..." from many. Just my opinion but it's the old adage of 10% of the people making 90% of the noise. The first year was a lot of fun, although I will say the United crowd was always a lot more excited about seeing the half wing. Wear it with pride!

Congrats to all for the award.
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Old 12-04-2014, 08:34 AM
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Originally Posted by AxlF16 View Post
Can we include this in our arguments in the SLI hearing when the next merger occurs?
I also heard them citing a long list of awards to demonstrate just how great they were... So -- what is the difference between that list of past awards and the ones that we're getting now???
No we can't use them in the next SLI argument. Because "travel awards" is not one of the mandatory factors. We should stick with the pre-defined union policies for merging to make our next SLI case.

Unless none of these mandatory ones are in our favor, then we should argue things like "travel awards" and other superfluous factors.
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Old 12-04-2014, 11:06 AM
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Grumble:

Concur. All the Buses are done, and it works well. For whatever reason, it is the L-UAL planes that are all modded (except 757s, just the p.s.).

Unfortunately, the Newest jets (737s and 787) came from the factory without wifi. Half of the Super Gupps have it now, but only the 787-9 has it for the Sparky fleet. Boeing offers it installed from the factory on the -9, but not on the -8 (unless that changed recently; my understanding was there was no approved STC to install it).

That means the jet that Jeff loves to brag about for long-haul premium markets, and the most numerous jet in the fleet, have limited entertainment options.
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Old 12-07-2014, 04:31 AM
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Originally Posted by AxlF16 View Post
Can we include this in our arguments in the SLI hearing when the next merger occurs?

I hear a lot of the LCAL guys lamenting the terrible state of the current airline and waxing poetic about the days of Gordo... I also heard them citing a long list of awards to demonstrate just how great they were... So -- what is the difference between that list of past awards and the ones that we're getting now???
Just to be even handed; A little checking shows this "magazine" to be one of those little industry publications that get's mailed to industry officials (usually for free). This one was incorporated in Oct 2006 and has a stated circulation of ( gasp) 105,000 WOW. It is run out of a travel agency office (Trazee Travel), in Morristown, PA


The awards you heard about at CAL came from JD Power, Forbes and Fortune. The Fortune award was 6 years on the best 100 places to work list. Different leagues I think.

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Old 12-07-2014, 06:17 AM
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Originally Posted by BMEP100 View Post
Just to be even handed; A little checking shows this "magazine" to be one of those little industry publications that get's mailed to industry officials (usually for free). This one was incorporated in Oct 2006 and has a stated circulation of ( gasp) 105,000 WOW. It is run out of a travel agency office (Trazee Travel), in Morristown, PA


The awards you heard about at CAL came from JD Power, Forbes and Fortune. The Fortune award was 6 years on the best 100 places to work list. Different leagues I think.
And all of them are subjective and meaningless.

Jet Blue has won the J.D. Power award for 10 straight years now as the "NY area hometown airline". It just means that Jet Blue is giving the guy responsible for picking which NY based airline the most upgrades or free trips for him and his wife. A different guy picked CAL to be the "Traditional Airline Customer Service" winner in 2009. United, Delta, American, all win awards (even Jet Blue, Southwest, and Virgin America)

J.D. Power itself ranks airlines by Worldwide (which it usually gave to Delta or United), Traiditonal (which was CAL, Alaska, US Airways) and Low Cost (which are Jet Blue, Southwest, Virgin America). I've seen years where numerous airlines all win awards for numerous things like Customer Satisfaction, Financial Performance, and Operational Performance.

None of them mean anything, and there are hundreds of awards given out by meaningless entities.

The "Best places to work" is also meaningless. Anyone not in the industry thinks airlines are great places to work because of the free travel benefits, which all airlines give their employees. More subjective awards that really don't mean anything.

The biggest flaw with JD Power is that while they do occasionally read blogs and poll consumers, MOST of the data they get is based data submitted by the COMPANY ITSELF. So you can submit anything you want to them, and if you are really making an effort to give them data, and show great data, then they rank you high. Remember when SWA used to brag about being #1 on time departures, but then it was found that there were just self reporting to the FAA because they didn't have ACARS and got busted for it.

Oh and you want to advertise that you won a JD Powers award. You have to PAY THEM. And their ISO 2001 certificate has expired which means they are not held to account to any standard themselves for quality.

Industry awards are all smoke and mirrors and its all paid self-promotion and nothing more.
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Old 12-10-2014, 04:15 AM
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So cynical! It must be tough to get out of bed in the morning with such an outlook.
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Old 12-10-2014, 07:22 AM
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Originally Posted by BMEP100 View Post
So cynical! It must be tough to get out of bed in the morning with such an outlook.
Its not cynical, its how that industry works. Those "award companies" are marketing companies. They make money by giving awards that companies can then use to market themselves. The companies getting the awards pay for them. They don't really mean anything.
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