In yet another sign that exactly one airline is completely out of touch with customer-reality, the Twitterverse popped up a story today about media consultant John Battelle, who was recently stopped, on a wifi-equipped aircraft flying between New York and San Francisco, from using video chat to say “good night” to his wife and daughters.

Which airline is it? Here are some clues:

•  Citing terrorism concerns, a too-controlling flight attendant told Battelle that use of iChat with a laptop camera was a breach of aircraft security.
•  As “proof,” the FA trotted out an un-updated, pre-wifi policy manual declaring prohibitions against two-way air/ground communications by passengers.
•  This airline is SO serious about controlling wi-fi chat aboard its aircraft that it configures routers to block packets from Skype, Google Voice, and other popular services, but apparently didn’t think about Macs and iChat.

Figure it out yet? I thought you would. In the meantime, I’ll let John Battelle tell his own story. Please have a look; it’s a good read.

What to make of this, as a customer service phenomenon? Is it a typical case of 1) onboard bad-attitude, 2) poor service implementation or training, 3) rush to market with an incomplete product, or 4) some combination of all three? Is it really possible that United Airlines sees video chat as a potentially more sinister terrorist tool than say, email or text-messaging from a laptop while in flight?

Honestly, I think that this event is just a foreshadowing of more customer annoyance to come; i.e., yet another “unbundling” of a service that flyers expect to be free. My guess is that United is planning a “two-tier” wi-fi offering in its onboard services. Low-cost wi-fi for basic web browsing and email; premium wi-fi for video chat, and probably other interactive apps as well. (Gaming, anyone?)

I’m sure United didn’t want to be last out of the gates with wi-fi, but turned off telephony while its revenue wizards figure out how to over-control it, meter it, and then charge exorbitantly for its use. That iChat & Macs weren’t blocked was probably just an unintended oversight during roll-out of the service.

Hey, we can’t have those pesky Mac users creating a perception that certain things will be free, can we?

Dave relates an almost unending stream of emails, phone calls, and contacts with United, including a later meeting with no less than three inept VPs of the company, who assured Dave that changes in customer service policy were coming, but then were either unable or unwilling to describe just what those changes were or are. (Typical United: They’ve laid off thousands of customer-facing employees and mechanics, but they’ve got a surplus of well-paid executives available to face off with a lone Canadian guitar player.)

For more entertaining and witty insights into Dave’s ill-fated journey with United, the making of UBG Song 3, and Dave’s humble rise to social media/social responsibility stardom, please take time to read his wonderfully-written blog post accompanying Song 3’s debut.

For now though, just enjoy the message-music, which takes the form of bluegrass this time around. For this final UBG song, Dave enlisted a couple of powerhouse “roots” music performers: Jerry Douglas of Nashville is probably the most accomplished player of the dobro guitar to be found anywhere; Ray Legere is one of Canada’s premier acoustic and bluegrass artists on fiddle, guitar, and mandolin.

(And don’t leave early: The music peaks at the end with a dance-off that includes the sublime Ms. Irlweg, tap-dancing as only a well-trained United customer service rep can!)

Enjoy!

While airlines like to promote free tickets with their mileage programs, the award that many even semi-regular clients want is an upgrade. These are the very awards that are getting harder to get.

At a time when flying has increasingly become an ordeal, an upgrade can often make the difference between a very pleasant and a miserable, cramped experience. Personally, give me a good book and an occasional glass of wine and I find flying in business class a mini-vacation.

Over the years, I’ve often had to waitlist upgrades for clients at the time of booking; generally, with enough advance notice, they clear. At least they used to.

These days, I have had clients waitlist 10 months in advance with no luck. Even elite fliers with 100,000 mile a year haven’t been upgraded on flights with over 40 business class seats left at the time of booking. Especially on transatlantic and transpacific flights.

Now this doesn’t mean upgrades never happen. But they’re a lot harder to count on getting. So what’s happened?
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What drives such extreme differences in customer perceptions of Southwest and United?

I’m tempted to write a thousand words here on the overwhelming importance of both employee relations and service culture in the airline business, but I’ve already done it. Please read Southwest Airlines: “Put Your Employees First.” Here’s the important gist:

Southwest Airlines is … renowned for the efficiency of its route network (point-to-point flying using secondary airports), the leanness of its aircraft inventory (one aircraft type — the Boeing 737 — in just three configurations), and its ability to hedge fuel prices (purchasing options on fuel at lower prices years in advance) in order to control costs. Southwest pioneered the low-fare segment of the airline industry, has the most fanatically loyal customers of any airline, and has been profitable every year since 1973.

Not bad for a smaller, non-union, domestic airline, eh? Well, it wouldn’t be, except that Southwest is now the second-largest airline in the world, by number of passengers carried; has the world’s fourth-largest fleet of aircraft; is heavily unionized; and will soon undertake international carriage.

So just what is the secret of Southwest’s success?

The answer to that question, which is so simple that it might easily escape you, is a four-parter: 1) Southwest, from day one, is not trying to be like any other airline; 2) the DNA of Southwest’s corporate culture is in the building of relationships; 3) the airline very deliberately puts its employees first; and 4) Southwest practices servant leadership.

Quite simply, Southwest innovates, Southwest serves; Southwest is different. From the top down, every interaction between leaders, employees, and customers is an opportunity to relate, to respect, to serve, to solve problems. (For an in-depth treatment, read The Southwest Airlines Way, by Jody Hoffer Gittell.)

There is no one better than Colleen Barrett to explain the inner workings of the “Southwest Way” and servant leadership. A long-time associate of SWA founder Herb Kelleher, Barrett worked at the airline for over 30 years and retired from roles as president and chief operating officer in 2008. Here is Herb Kelleher, on Colleen Barrett:

“Colleen is primarily responsible for the humanistic culture that we have at Southwest today, where people really look out for one another. One of the really significant things she did was give our people on the front line a lot of flexibility. Basically, she ascertained that we could not anticipate every situation that would evolve in a given station at a passenger terminal. Therefore, she told our employees — and meant it — that as long as you are leaning toward the customer, you are OK. Our employees quickly learned that Colleen is sincere in everything that she does and that they really could go out of their way for the customer.”

The list of awards and accomplishments that can be attributed to Colleen Barrett are many. Here is just a sampling:

•  One of only a small handful of women to have served in top leadership at a major American airline (2001-2008)
•  Only female recipient of the Tony Jannus Award for leadership in commercial aviation (2007)
•  Horatio Alger Award (2005)
•  World’s 100 Most Powerful Women: Forbes Magazine (2005, 2004)
•  Top 50 Leaders: Fast Company Magazine (2003)
•  Best Managers: BusinessWeek (2002)
•  America’s Most Powerful Business Women: Fortune Magazine (2001)

Colleen Barrett is clearly a most unusual, and perhaps unlikely, airline executive. She is not likely to be one of the usual suspects you’ll find running operations or “customer experience” at the likes of United, US Airways, or Continental. Perhaps that is a big part of the problem with regard to the current customer crisis at the legacy carriers — that someone like Barrett is not in charge.

Here she is, in her own words, talking about a very different kind of airline leadership at the 12th annual Wharton Leadership Conference in 2008:

If you’re a loyalty marketer and look at my United profile, you find something that would make you 4.5 on a scale of 5.0 when it comes to warm and fuzzy. You’d see hundreds of thousands of United Airlines frequent flier (FF) miles; a pattern that suggests that I fly exclusively, including client bookings by their travel agencies on United for me; you’d see signing up for dozens of promotions; you’d see using hotel loyalty cards to get United FF miles in the place of hotel points; you’d see me flying United partners Star Alliance airlines whenever I can’t fly United. You’d also see about 50-75,000 miles per year over the past few years. I’d look like a very loyal United flyer.

[ ... snip ... ]

In any case, as late November 2008 rolled around, I received a letter in the mail from United Airlines. In effect, it said:

“Hey, we see that you only have 36,000 miles this year which will make you a Premier rather than a Premier Executive flyer. Tell you what, you give us $2300.00 and we will give you the additional 14,000 miles that you need to be Premier Executive. How about that?”

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