For ten and a half hours we were held hostage in the waiting area of Gate C37 and C16 of Houston International Airport by promises of answers at 30 and 60-minute intervals, and were given nothing at the end of those deadlines except more empty promises that answers would be forthcoming at the end of yet another designated time period.
At 11:00 we were given access to a cart full of assorted airline junk food. At 12:30 we were given customer care packets that consisted of a 10% discount coupon for our next Continental flight purchase, an inflight drink coupon, and a customer service postcard addressed to Continental's Chairman and CEO, Larry Kellner (who hasn't been Continental's CEO since January 1, 2010) .
At 2:00 the 200-something passengers that had been waiting without any concrete news or plans were finally offered meal vouchers, even though most of them had already eaten since it was well past the standard American lunch time. It's a good thing that most everyone had lunched already because the $4.00 voucher that Continental provided barely covered the cost of more of the same kind of junk food that had been carted in. It certainly didn't cover the cost of any real food that was available at airport concourse prices.
After the fifth hour had elapsed in the Continental Flight 686 Passenger Hostage Situation, an authoritative Continental red coat customer service representative was finally brave enough to state a "worst case scenario," which would be that the leaky plane would be scrapped and all passengers would be scheduled for a 7:30 p.m. departure. The reality was actually worse than the worst case scenario after Continental transferred all 200-something passengers onto the existing 7:30 flight that departed from a gate on the opposite end of the "C" terminal, only to change their minds, find another plane, undo and redo all of their previous reassignment work, and finally get 200-something passengers on their way to their Orlando destination at 9:00 p.m.
"Ironically," the first officer said with a lilt in her voice over the plane's intercom after the flight was finally airborne, "we will be arriving in Orlando at 10:30 p.m." And that's how I, and two hundred something of my new best friends, spent twelve hours of our day under the care of and at the mercy of Continental Airlines.
Yes, I realize that Continental Airlines is not part of the U.S. retail industry. But I would have thought it would be equally as obvious to the airline industry that people are people, service is service, and disrespect is disrespect. The low standards of customer service that I received from Continental yesterday is no different than the low level of customer service I received from Michelle at the 7-11 on my way home from the airport, when she decided it was more important to pour herself a cup of coffee than it was to ring up the caffeine purchase of the customer standing at her cash register.
In both cases it was disrespectful of my time. In both cases the customer was a secondary consideration. In both cases, in both industries, there was a demonstration that a company and its employees thought there were other things more important than the convenience of its customers.
Is "success" in a post-recessionary economy defined as "profit without disaster?" Is that the best that customers have the right to expect - "Nobody died, so what do you have to complain about?"
Since Larry Kellner is no longer the CEO of Continental Airlines, and therefore, I doubt that the Customer Care postcard with his address that I was provided will be arriving on the desk of anyone important, I'll provide my customer service feedback to CEO Jeffrey Smisek here.
Maintenance should be done on YOUR time, not mine. What I experienced yesterday with your airplanes was the same as if I had called for a taxi to take me to the airport, and then waited while the cab driver did an oil change in my driveway. When you're in the transportation business, it seems to me that the maintenance of your equipment is your responsibility, and forcing your customers to sit and wait while you fix your vehicles should not be considered an acceptable alternative, much less a standard operating procedure.
How is it that we could be sitting in one of three major Continental Airlines hubs and not have access to one spare aircraft for more than ten hours? That is either proof of the worst operational planning imaginable, or the worst ground crew leadership imaginable. If there was a replacement plane available at 7:30 p.m.,why wasn't there a plane available at 12:00 noon? Why weren't passengers re-booked and re-routed? Who was responsible for making the decision that it was acceptable to hold passengers hostage for more than ten hours rather than find workable alternative solutions immediately?
I can only assume that the decision to fix the plane instead of replace the plane or reroute the passengers immediately was a financial decision. Somehow it was better for Continental's bottom line to disrespect the time of a plane full of passengers than it was to invoke service recovery options that would have been infinitely more customer-centric. Why weren't any Flight 686 passengers offered the option to rebook onto the Continental 1:30 or 3:40 flights to Orlando? Why didn't Continental invoke the favors of its Star Alliance partners to get passengers to their destination in a reasonable amount of time?
There might be perfectly logical explanations for... read more >>
