An Open Letter to United Airlines

September 17, 1995

Dear United Airlines Employee-Owners,

Listen, I'm really sorry that I flew your airline today, and I really apologize for harassing several of your colleagues in New York and San Francisco all day long. Believe me, it was as unpleasant for me as it was for them, and I'm sure we'd all be happier if I just stayed away from your airline at this point -- which I'll make every effort to do. I'm sure that my presence or absence won't matter to an organization as large as yours, but unless you want every business traveler to react the way I did today, I would suggest that you consider some serious business process reengineering. After all, since you folks own the airline that you work for, you can't blame it on management any more, right?

I have to admit that I was in a somewhat grumpy mood right from the beginning; after all, who enjoys getting up at 4:30 AM on a rainy Sunday morning? And I'll admit that I was even grumpier when I arrived at JFK at 5:45 AM and found that the X-ray security machine hadn't been turned on yet, despite the appearance of half a dozen employees and guards wandering around aimlessly, so that a long line of about 50 of us passengers couldn't check in.

But what really got the day off to a bad start was the United representative who stood waiting on the far side of the security machine that X-rayed all of our baggage. "Where are you going?" she asked me, in an emotionless voice.

"San Francisco," I replied.

"Okay, then get in that line," she said, gesturing off to my left. "It's shorter."

Fine. So I queued up behind a dozen other people, and we slowly shuffled forward, pushing and shoving our bags in front of us. But when I got somewhat closer to the front, I suddenly noticed a group of three newcomers who came whisking up on our left, stationing themselves in front of our line, ready to pounce on the next available ticket agent.

"Excuse me," I said politely to the United X-ray agent, "but you might want to tell these new passengers that they're going to cause a fist-fight by jumping in front of the rest of us in line."

"Well, sir," she said sweetly, "these people are Connoisseur Business Class passengers. They get preference."

"So what am I -- chopped liver?" I asked, peevishly. "I'm a Connoisseur Business Class passenger, too."

"Ah," Miss X-Ray exclaimed, knowing that a 'gotcha' had just occurred, "but you didn't tell me that you were business-class when you came through the X-ray machine. These people did, and so that's why I put them in the special line.

People ahead of me and behind me in the "official" line grumpily observed that they were business class too, and that nobody had told them there was a special line that took precedence over the economy-class folks; by now, the newcomers were thoroughly cowed by this point, and allowed us to move ahead, snarling quietly under our breath.

But, hey! This was just a minor quirk, right? No problem: I finally checked in, staggered up to the Red Carpet club, had a decent cup of cappuccino, and boarded United flight 11 for an on-time 7:00 AM departure to San Francisco, the first leg of a journey that was supposed to connect through Seoul, Korea and finally deposit me in Manila. The pilot made the usual speech, the flight attendants turned on the usual canned safety announcements, and I turned on my Sony Walkman and prepared to take a long nap.

As we taxied out onto the active runway, I noticed a line of what appeared to be a flock (or is it a gaggle?) of geese, flying in a straight line across our path, low in the sky, not more than 50 feet above the ground. I now think they may have been seagulls, and that one of them was the former Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Who knows -- maybe this has nothing to do with subsequent events, but it's nevertheless a fact that I did see some birds. I don't know if the pilot did.

The significance of the birds became evident a few moments later: as we were barreling down the runway and the pilot gently lifted the nose-wheel up for take-off, there was suddenly a loud "Thump!" followed by a long, steady grinding noise and the sound of brakes as the pilot rapidly brought the plane's speed down. "Stay in your seats," he commanded over the loud-speaker, as if we were all going to leap up and begin dancing a joyful jig.

By the time I reached San Francisco later in the day, word had apparently spread through your corporate grapevine, and Flight 11 was known as "the plane that sucked up the bird at JFK." Whether it was one bird or two was never made clear; but within a few moments, it was clear that this form of road-kill on the runway had put the plane out of service. We were taken back to the gate and dumped off the plane.

Now, I realize that in the greater scheme of things, I have a lot to be grateful for. After all, birds could have flown into both engines simultaneously, or the bird-swallowing phenomenon could have occurred after we had lifted completely off the ground. And I suspect that the pilot was in a much worse mood than I was at that point ... not to mention the bird: if was indeed Jonathan Livingston Seagull, it turned out to be a really crummy day for him. But I have to admit that I was focusing on my own selfish little problems at this point: I had previously expected to arrive in San Francisco at approximately 10 AM, in plenty of time to catch a connecting 11:30 flight to Seoul and Manila. The unexpected turn of events made it highly unlikely that I would make the connection; some 250 other people had similar concerns, and they descended upon the three hapless gate agents like a herd of angry rhinos.

What to do? Well, it turns out that I have the Official Airline Guide (OAG) on my laptop computer, so by the time we had gotten back to the gate, I had already discovered that there was no alternative same-day direct connection to Manila via United, and that the only direct flight was via Philippine Airlines at 10:30 that night. Alas, I didn't think to explore the possibility of connecting flights, so I didn't notice the possibility of a United flight from SFO to Tokyo, and then connecting to a Philippine Air flight.

The milling crowd of frustrated Flight 11 passengers in the terminal areas was exacerbated by the existence of an 8:00 AM United departure, which was just about ready to go when our bird-splattered plane limped back to the gate. And there was also a 9 AM flight, for which some early passengers were already trickling in. But none of this mattered much: most of us couldn't get within 100 feet of the gate agents, one of whom spent most of the morning trying to re-route a group of about a dozen Bulgarians who desperately wanted to reach Vancouver in time to make a 5:30 PM cruise departure. I suggested aloud that perhaps they could be dropped by helicopter, but nobody cracked a smile; maybe there were actually Serbs and suspected me of being a renegade Bosnian.

"Anyone going to Hong Kong?" a gate agent shouted at one point, and another group of a dozen split off and went howling after the agent as she scurried off to another computer terminal.

Meanwhile, I retreated to a pay phone and called the American Express Platinum Card travel service. The Platinum Card charges an outrageous premium for the ostensible privilege of having a magical toll-free number to call in emergencies, and this was one of the rare times I was going to be able to use it. Boy, did I feel smug! Boy, did I feel like the consummate road-warrior! Well, listen, dear United owner-employees: if it makes you feel any better, the Amex folks are just as screwed up as you are. The only excuse they have is that their workers can blame everything on management...

Anyway, when I got the Amex travel agent on the phone, her first response was an unanticipated 'gotcha!': since I already had a United flight reserved from San Francisco to Manila, she said, she couldn't possibly reserve a second flight on Philippine Airlines. That would be (gasp!) double-booking! When I explained that the bird-incident made it virtually impossible that I would make it to San Francisco in time to catch my intended Manila flight, she grudgingly backed down and finally consented to make a reservation.

But another 'gotcha!' was in store for me. "Sir," she said, after typing on her terminal for a moment, "we don't have a passenger profile for you."

"So?" I asked, not having the faintest idea what a 'passenger profile' was supposed to be.

"Well, we can't make any reservations for you if you don't have a passenger profile," she explained sweetly.

"So then make a $?&$*#@)@#!!@@ passenger profile," I snarled in a sufficiently menacing tone that she decided not to challenge me any further.

"Ohhhhh-kay," she said. "So ... well ... ummm ... can I have your phone number? And your address? And do you prefer an aisle seat or a window seat?" I swear that she actually wanted me to rattle off the numbers on all my airline frequent-flyer cards before I told her I would throw them all in the trash can if it would help her move the process along any faster.

To a computer person, the obvious question was: why are they asking me all these questions, when they already have all these details on my "normal" American Express record, which I've had since 1968? The answer, as best I could determine it from the anonymous voice on the phone: "Oh, that's a different system; we don't have that information available to us."

Yo! Hey, American Express! It ain't 1968 any more! This is 1995! Get your act together and consolidate your databases! You wonder why folks are abandoning your super-expensive credit cards and switching to Master Card and Visa? If we're going to be insulted by stupid systems and obstinate clerks, it might as well be free!

Anyway, back to our friends at United. What amazed me about the situation was that nobody seemed to know what was going on. There were never more than four United people in sight at any time, and while one or two were frantically writing new tickets and listening to complaints from a dozen angry passengers, the others were shuffling pieces of paper from one pile to another, or whispering quietly to one another; one agent spent a good five minutes carefully tearing a pile of boarding passes in half (good thing, too -- I'm sure that dozens of vile, wicked boarding-pass thieves were skulking about, waiting to pounce on the opportunity). Most of the questions to the agents were answered by statements like, "I don't know, sir," or "I'll have to call a supervisor to answer that question, sir." If there were any supervisors around, they did their level best to hide their identity; I never saw any during the three hours we waited for the airline to sort things out.

Crisis management experts will tell you that "appearances" matter as much in the handling of a crisis as the substance of the actions. Our bird episode was certainly not a major-league crisis, but it caused fairy substantial disruptions for some 250 people. While the two or three agents who actually performed work to re-book people were fairly calm and good-natured under the circumstances, the over-riding impression was that nobody knew what was going on. So much for empowerment; so much for the advantages of an organization where the employees own the joint. So much for the credibility of all your TV commercials, folks -- as far as I can tell, we customers are no better off than we were when your airline was run by the former regime.

One or two announcements finally did come over the loud-speaker, informing us that a replacement plane had been found, and that we would eventually be departing some three hours after we had originally rolled down the runway to meet Jonathan Livingston Seagull. When I finally got to the front of the line to ask whether there might possibly be a slightly better connection than the one I had found on my computer system, the agent looked my ticket and then exclaimed, "Why didn't you come up and talk to me earlier? I called out for all international passengers and all the Connoisseur Business Class passengers!"

"No, you didn't," shouted an apoplectic man behind me. "I was here the whole time! I didn't hear you say a thing!"

Apparently, the intention had been to "take care" of the business class people and the international passengers. But the United gate-agents didn't want to make their announcements too loudly, for fear of inciting pandemonium among the economy-class passengers who would have felt that they, too, deserved to be taken care of. If any of you United folks are thinking of reengineering your processes, here's a simple suggestion: make the announcement while everyone is still on the plane. The business-class people are all sitting together (in case you forgot), and you could have a flight attendant run up and down the aisle and whisper in our ears.

Or maybe (gasp!) you could use your damn computers! Why ask us who's going on an international connection, and who's a business class passenger? You already know! You've got the information in your computer systems! You could bring those people up on a display screen in one fell swoop, and then deal with the situation rationally, rather than asking frazzled gate agents to listen to three dozen people yelling at them.

Or if you prefer the human touch, then wake up the supervisors, get them back from their three-hour coffee breaks, and get them up to where the action is. For the crowd that we had this morning, you probably would have needed four or five alert supervisors. The interesting thing is that even though the final resolution might have been the same as what we eventually experienced, your 250 passengers would have had the impression that you were in charge, that you knew what you were doing, and that you actually cared about the passengers' fate.

Anyway, when the shouting subsided and the apoplectic man retreated back to his position in line, I discovered that if I had elbowed my way up to the front of the crowd, pushing aside the Bulgarian tourists (whose cruise turned out to be a honeymoon trip), then I might have gotten a seat on the 8:00 flight to San Francisco. And if it arrived on time, I would have had 30 minutes to dash over to the international terminal to catch the connection to Seoul and Manila. But of course, who knows if my bag would have made it?

Which raised an interesting question: what had happened to my luggage as a result of all this chaos? The gate-agent shrugged, and offered the guess that either (a) the baggage had all been transferred to either the 8:00 flight or the 9:00 flight that had already left, or (b) it would be transferred onto the new plane which would carry us across the country to San Francisco. She guessed that option (b) was the more likely. And she then returned to the one official conciliatory gesture that you United folks carried out: arranging a $25 travel certificate for each passenger, to be used on a future United flight. Wow! Whose bright idea was that? Have you guys ever heard of pouring salt in a wound?

Alas, the gate agent turned out to be wrong about the fate of our baggage. When I got to San Francisco, my suitcase was nowhere to be found. Indeed, some of the bags from flight 11 had gone on ahead of us, but not mine; as far as I could tell, no bags went on the "replacement" plane with us. It took another hour, and a series of moderately unpleasant conversations with another three United employees in the San Francisco baggage-claim area before I finally discovered that someone (or more likely, some "system") had decided to send my suitcase on a United flight to Tokyo, where it will supposedly be transferred to a Philippine Air flight to Manila. What a system! Nobody asked me if this is what I wanted; and despite the fact that 9 hours transpired between the bird-incident and my eventual arrival in San Francisco (including 6 hours in flight), nobody had figured out that my suitcase and I were not following the same route. The only thing that made me feel better is that several other irate United passengers in the SFO baggage area were complaining that their flight from Atlanta had unexpectedly been routed through Denver, where the infamous automated baggage system (see my September 12, 1995 journal entry) had apparently swallowed their baggage.

Obviously, I would have been better off if I had carried all my baggage with me; but for a three week trip, there was too much to bring. And even if the flight had gone according to plan, it would have required changing planes twice en route, with the strong likelihood that one of more of those changes would have required clamoring on and off the little trolley busses that carry passengers around the airport. I already had 50 pounds of computer equipment that I was carrying on the plane; I didn't feel like shlepping another 50-pound suitcase full of books and clothing.

So here I am in the Philippine Airline business-class lounge in San Francisco, at 11 PM on a Sunday night. God knows where my suitcase is; and God only knows when I'll actually get to Manila. To add insult to injury, my Philippine Airlines flight is 3 hours late, apparently because of torrential downpours in Manila that delayed the incoming equipment. And now I discover that when we do take off, our flight stops in Honolulu en route to Manila; who knows what further adventures await me there?

Have you United owner-employees learned anything from all of this? Who knows? I can certainly tell you that I wasn't the only disgruntled United customer today, nor were the problems confined to the bird-swallowing Flight 11; in the various United offices, gates, ticket desks, and baggage-claim areas of JFK and SFO airports, I counted at least a dozen customers angrily demanding to speak to a supervisor. None appeared -- and now it suddenly occurs to me: maybe there are no supervisors. Maybe you employee folks are not only the front line of defense, but the only line of defense. In that case, you're worse off than I thought...

Supervisors or not, I sense that United is on the verge of falling into the TWA (otherwise known as "The Worst Airline") and Northwest (aka "Northworst") and defunct Eastern Airlines mode of operation. Indeed, the entire U.S. airline industry, with the possible exception of American and Delta, bears a striking resemblance to the U.S. automobile industry in the 1960s: hardly anyone has anything good to say about you folks. We take it for granted that we'll get mediocre food, cramped seats, surly service, and unpredictable departures and arrivals. My choice of airline is far more likely to be influenced by avoiding the last airline that screwed me than by the positive choice of an airline from whom I recall having consistently received good service. On that basis alone, I've consciously and deliberately avoided TWA flights for 23 years, ever since The Worst Airline screwed me out of a very important fight in London in 1972, a flight for which I was ticketed and confirmed, and for which TWA had even given me a boarding pass at the Heathrow check-in counter. I'd like to think that I played some small part in that airline's downward spiral in the 70s and 80s.

As for you United folks: I get the strong impression you'd prefer that I take my business elsewhere. Consider it done.