The Unfriendly Skies.(The Talk of the Town)(airline management)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 03-SEP-07

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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

In the summer of 1999, after a series of highly publicized customer-service debacles, the nation's major airlines collectively promised Congress that they would revamp their operations, offering a "service commitment" that they dubbed "Customers First." Eight years later, airline passengers are waiting in vain for any sign of that promise's being kept. They're also waiting in vain, period. This summer, nearly a third of all flights have been arriving late, more flights have been cancelled, many planes are overbooked, and, in June, reports of baggage problems were up twenty-five per cent from last year. A service commitment like this should probably be called "Customers Last."

The airlines' explanation for the sheer misery of flying is that the important problems--bad weather and an antiquated air-traffic-control system, resulting in overcrowded runways--are out of their hands. But those unavoidable difficulties have been exacerbated by the...

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