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The Not-So-Friendly Skies



 
 
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  #1  
Old August 15th, 2012, 04:08 AM posted to rec.travel.air
Sancho Panza[_1_]
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Posts: 552
Default The Not-So-Friendly Skies

United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

My colleague Huggy Rao and I have been reading and writing about
something called "felt accountability" in our scaling book. We are
arguing that a key difference between good and bad organizations is
that, in the good ones, most everyone feels obligated and presses
everyone else to do what is in their customer's and organization's best
interests. I feel it as a customer at my local Trader Joe's, on JetBlue
and Virgin America, and In-N-Out Burger, to give a few diverse examples.

Unfortunately, one place I have not felt it for years -- and where it is
has become even worse lately -- is United Airlines. I will forgo some
recent incidents my family has been subjected to that reflect the depth
at which indifference, powerlessness, and incompetence pervades the
system. An experience that two of my friends -- Annie and Perry Klebahn
-- had in late June and early July with their 10 year-old daughter
Phoebe sums it all-up. I will just hit on some highlights here, but for
full effect, please read the entire letter here to the CEO of United,
as it has all the details.

Here is the headline: United was flying Phoebe as an unaccompanied minor
on June 30th, from San Francisco to Chicago, with a transfer to Grand
Rapids. No one showed-up in Chicago to help her transfer, so although
her plane made it, she missed the connection. Most crucially, United
employees consistently refused to take action to help assist or comfort
Phoebe or to help her parents locate her despite their cries for help to
numerous United employees.

A few key details.

1. After Phoebe landed in Chicago and no one from (the outsourced firm)
that was supposed to take her to her next flight showed up. Numerous
United employees declined to help her, even though she asked them over
and over. I quote from the complaint letter:

The attendants where busy and could not help her she told us. She
told them she had a flight to catch to camp and they told her to wait.
She asked three times to use a phone to call us and they told her to
wait. When she missed the flight she asked if someone had called camp
to make sure they knew and they told her “yes—we will take care of it”.
No one did. She was sad and scared and no one helped.

2. Annie and Perry only discovered that something was wrong a few hours
later when the camp called to say that Phoebe was not on the expected
plane in Grand Rapids. At the point, both Annie and Perry got on the
phone. Annie got someone in India who wouldn't help beyond telling her:

'When I asked how she could have missed it given everything was 100% on
time she said, “it does not matter” she is still in Chicago and “I am
sure she is fine”. '

Annie was then put on hold for 40 minutes when she asked to speak to the
supervisor.

3. Meanwhile, Perry was also calling. He is a "Premier" member in the
United caste system so he got to speak to a person in the U.S. who
worked in Chicago at the airport:

"When he asked why she could not say but put him on hold. When she came
back she told him that in fact the unaccompanied minor service in
Chicago simply “forgot to show up” to transfer her to the next flight.
He was dumbfounded as neither of us had been told in writing or in
person that United outsourced the unaccompanied minor services to a
third party vendor."

4. Now comes the most disturbing part, the part that reveals how sick
the system is. This United employee knew how upset the parents were and
how badly United had screwed-up. Perry asked if the employee could go
see if Phoebe was OK:

"When she came back she said should was going off her shift and could
not help. My husband then asked her if she was a mother herself and she
said “yes”—he then asked her if she was missing her child for 45 minutes
what would she do? She kindly told him she understood and would do her
best to help. 15 minutes later she found Phoebe in Chicago and found
someone to let us talk to her and be sure she was okay."

This is the key moment in the story, note that in her role as a United
employee, this woman would not help Perry and Annie. It was only when
Perry asked her if she was a mother and how she would feel that she was
able to shed her deeply ingrained United indifference -- the lack of
felt accountability that pervades the system. Yes, there are design
problems, there are operations problems, but the to me the core lesson
is this is a system packed with people who don't feel responsible for
doing the right thing. We can argue over who is to blame and how much
-- management is at the top of the list in my book, but I won't let any
of individual employees off the hook.

5. There are other bad parts to the story you can see in the letter. Of
course, they lost Phoebe's luggage and in that part you can see all
sorts of evidence of incompetence and misleading statements, again lack
of accountability.

6. When Anne and Perry tried to file a complaint, note the system is so
bad that they wouldn't let them write it themselves and the United
employee refused their request to have it read back to be fact-checked,
plus there are other twists worth repeating:

We asked to have them read it back to us to verify the facts, we also
asked to read it ourselves and both requests were denied. We asked for
them to focus on the fact that they “forgot” a 10-year old in the
airport and never called camp or us to let us know. We also asked that
they focus on the fact that we were not informed in any way that United
uses a third party service for this. They said they would “do their
best” to file the complaint per our situation. We asked if we would be
credited the $99 unaccompanied minor fee (given she was clearly not
accompanied). They said they weren’t sure.

We asked if the bags being lost for three days and camp having to make 5
trips to the airport vs. one was something we would be compensated for
(given we pay camp $25 every time they go to the airport). They said
that we would have to follow up with that separately with United baggage
as a separate complaint. They also said that process was the same—United
files what they hear from you but you do not get to file the complaint
yourselves.

7. The story isn't over and the way it is currently unfolding makes
United looks worse still in my eyes. United had continued to be
completely unresponsive, so Annie and Perry got their story to a local
NBC TV reporter, a smart one who does investigations named Diane Dwyer.
Diane started making calls to United as she may do a story. Well,
United doesn't care about Phoebe, they don't care about Annie and Perry,
but they do care about getting an ugly story on TV. So some United
executive called Annie and Perry at home yesterday to try to cool them out.

That story was what finally drove me to write this because, well, if bad
PR is what it takes to get them to pretend to care, then it is a further
reflection of how horrible they have become. I figured that regardless
of whether Diane does the story or not, I wanted to make sure they got
at least a little bad PR.

I know the airline industry is tough, I know there are employees at
United who work their hearts out every day despite the horrible system
they are in, and I also know how tough cultural change is when something
is this broken. But perhaps United senior executives ought to at least
take a look at what happens at JetBlue, Virgin America, and Southwest.
They make mistakes too, it happens, but when they do, I nearly always
feel empathy for my situation and that the people are trying to make the
situation right.
--http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/08/united-airlines-lost-my-friends-10-year-old-daughter-and-didnt-care.html
  #2  
Old August 15th, 2012, 04:15 PM posted to rec.travel.air
irwell
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Posts: 758
Default The Not-So-Friendly Skies

On Tue, 14 Aug 2012 23:08:29 -0400, Sancho Panza wrote:
--http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/08/united-airlines-lost-my-friends-10-year-old-daughter-and-didnt-care.html


Save your crocodile tears for the real missing kids of this world.
  #3  
Old August 15th, 2012, 09:08 PM posted to rec.travel.air
Terry Long
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Posts: 1
Default The Not-So-Friendly Skies

ANY ONE WHO SENDS A 10 YEAR OLD ALONE TO CHICAGO IS NOT A PARENT- DO
NOT BLAME THE AIRLINE TAKE A LOOK IN THE MIRROR-- YOU DO NOT DESERVE A
SWEET LITTLE GIRL - SHE IS NOT A PRIORITY IN YOUR LIFE-- IN TODAY'.S
WORLD YOUR NUTS. M
MAYBE IF HER DESTINATION WAS PODUNK, BUT CHICAGO------DUH

  #4  
Old August 15th, 2012, 10:07 PM posted to rec.travel.air
Sancho Panza[_1_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 552
Default The Not-So-Friendly Skies

On 8/15/2012 4:08 PM, Terry Long wrote:
ANY ONE WHO SENDS A 10 YEAR OLD ALONE TO CHICAGO IS NOT A PARENT- DO
NOT BLAME THE AIRLINE TAKE A LOOK IN THE MIRROR-- YOU DO NOT DESERVE A
SWEET LITTLE GIRL - SHE IS NOT A PRIORITY IN YOUR LIFE-- IN TODAY'.S
WORLD YOUR NUTS. M
MAYBE IF HER DESTINATION WAS PODUNK, BUT CHICAGO------DUH

So you and the OP approve of United's charging $99 for a clearly
unreliable and incompetent service that so easily and unrepentently
endangers vulnerable customers:

"Service fees for children traveling alone
Children traveling unaccompanied pay a full adult fare.

An additional service charge is collected to cover extra handling
required when an unaccompanied child travels. Please confirm this charge
when placing your reservation.

There is a $99.00 service fee required for all unaccompanied children
traveling alone on all flights to any destination.

The unaccompanied minor service charge may be paid at the time of
reservation, or prior to departure at a United check-in counter. Travel
agents may also collect the unaccompanied minor service charges.

That pretty well sums up the damn-them-all attitude and the hell with
our customers and their business."

 




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