For fun, I registered More Than Points with www.quantcast.com to understand who the readers of this blog might represent.
The results were not surprising as frequent fliers:
- a largely male audience
- an older age group
- no kids
- above-average income
- graduate degrees
Older males without kids in households with good income, and a good education. Traveling is apparently not conducive to having kids, but you can make decent money if you’re willing to make the sacrifice. Most folks who currently travel have also had the time and money to spend on a higher education - perhaps we are doing it to pay off the loans :-)
Data is good.
This isn’t exactly recent news but worth calling out because I think it’s good for frequent fliers. Delta sent the following email to a co-worker:
The co-worker had this to say:
”Basically, I had 70,406 MQM (qualifying miles for status) in 2009, which qualified me for Gold status (50k) but short of Platinum (75k). To ensure the 20,406 MQM I had above and beyond Gold status weren’t wasted, they rolled the miles over to give me a head start for my 2010 status.”
That’s pretty sweet, anyway you spin it. Nice job, Delta.
Courtesy of the Economist, J.D Powers has surveyed more than 12,000 passengers who took round-trip flights last year (2009) to develop its North America Airport Satisfaction Study.
The Economist notes:
The top-ranked airports in the large, medium and small segments were, respectively, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County, Kansas City and Indianapolis. Overall, though, the company found that satisfaction with airports was "considerably" lower than in other travel segments such as hotels and rental cars. That’s largely because the essentials—prompt baggage delivery, good seating and clear signs—are not being consistently met in spite of technological improvements in many areas including Wi-Fi, parking-lot management and online check-in.
That's not surprising since we are truly a captive audience.
Here’s a disturbing article from the LA Times which digs into how pilot fatigue is a big problem with airlines.
Some interesting quotes:
"Seven of the last nine airline crashes in the United States have involved regional carriers, and pilot fatigue was likely a factor in at least four of those incidents, according to federal safety investigators."
"Critics say the situation has been exacerbated by the airline industry’s long slump, putting pressure on airlines to cut costs by forcing pilots to work longer hours."
"A 2008 study by NASA found that about 80% of regional pilots said they had nodded off during a flight."
"One recent bulletin reviewed by The Times noted an upward trend of pilots taking off without knowing their aircraft’s weight and balance figures – numbers crucial to the way stabilizers are adjusted on a plane’s tail. Improperly set controls have caused crashes."
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This article does not make me a happy flyer.
Fellow road warrior, Josh, recently pointed me towards this interesting page on FltOps.com. It aggregates annual pay based on guaranteed pilot hours for the major airlines.
Josh comments, "The article from which I pulled this link stated that the pilot involved in a regional airline crash last year (maybe it was the Buffalo flight) was making around $16K per year."
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Another road warrior commented, "…if you drop down to the smaller regionals (American Eagle, Mesa, Colgan, Wisconsin), it can get really ugly where a first year co-pilot on a smaller craft is only at $20 per hour flown (only guaranteed 75 hours/month) with a $1.40/hour per diem for time away.
I have a friend who flies for Colgan who would have qualified for food stamps in his first year (if he wasn’t married to a doctor)."
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I’m not sure you can draw any conclusions on this information alone but it does give some insights into how much (or little) a pilot makes depending on their experience and plane size. Unless I’m mistaken, many of the recent airline crashes involved smaller planes and inexperienced pilots.
Does knowing the pay scale change how you think about flying on certain flights?
Google offers free wifi at select airports from now until January 15th, 2010. In addition, you can give back in appreciation of free wifi towards several non-profits and Google will match your donations! Very cool.
Spread the cheer!
Here are the participating airports:
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As a road warrior, I live by my EVDO card. Anytime access to the Internet is a godsend. If you haven’t jumped on the EVDO bandwagon you should seriously think about it. In the meantime, enjoy the free wifi - compliments of Google.
Today, British Airways announced it was planning to cut 3000 jobs by the end of the fiscal year due to falling passenger numbers and yields. I will guess that most airlines are going through similar challenges.
In an economy as bad as this one, customer service makes all the difference. Flyers may not have as many choices as we are a "semi-captive" audience due to the constraints of available flights and routes by airlines, but bad press is bad press. Don’t kid yourself as the next generation of frequent flyer will read stories like this and wonder what kind of business United is running.
The title of the article says it all:
Man denied first-class seat on United for wearing track suit
If you want to run your airlines into the ground what better way to do it that humiliate and embarass your best customers? The weak response in which United claims to have mistaken the passenger as a employee only adds insult to injury.
Nice try, United. How about admiting you have customer service problems and make amends. That’ll get you a lot farther than trying to tactically address every customer service blow-up that happens.
United, time to wake up and smell the coffee.
This is pretty big news. I recall this used to be customary on certain airlines back in the late 90’s and early 2000. It’s somewhat indicative of the traffic in this economic downturn for United to make an offer like this, but its a big bonus for frequent flyers who have elite status.
United plans to launch this in the 2nd quarter of 2010 so you’ll have to wait a little bit, but if you’re thinking about getting elite status this year, this might be the extra incentive you were looking for.
All the details can be found here (http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6867,53216,00.html).
From the website:
Upgrades. They’re complimentary. They’re unlimited. They’re yours. When Unlimited Domestic Upgrades are launched, we’ll be transitioning all of our elite members to the new upgrades, replacing 500-Mile Upgrade certificates. Elite members can still use their existing Regional Upgrades during their full 12-month validity period. However, new certificates will no longer be issued. If you’re not an elite member, don’t worry – you’ll still be able to use your existing certificates any time during their full 12-month validity period, just like you do today. Further details on Unlimited Domestic Upgrades and other exciting enhancements will be available on Mileageplus.com in early 2010. Stay tuned.
We know how you value the ease of travel being an elite member brings to you. Now we’re making it even easier. In the second quarter of 2010, we’ll automatically request an Unlimited Domestic Upgrade on behalf of all elite members and up to one companion when they travel within the Continental U.S., Hawaii, Alaska, Canada, Central America, and the Caribbean.
Happy flying.
We’ve all seen the attempts at helping reduce waste at the hotel chains. At the Marriott, they have a nice placard explaining how much water is wasted due to laundry and politely ask customers to re-use towels by hanging them up.
A few fellow roadwarriors have noticed Starwood’s spin on green when they received a door tag on their desk with the following:
“You have the option to decline housekeeping service for the day. For helping us conserve natural resources, we are happy to offer you a $5 gift card for use at participating food and beverage outlets within our hotel or 500 SPG Starpoints redeemable at checkout”
At the W in San Francisco they are offering to purchase $5 worth of carbon credits for each day you forgo the housekeeping. Gift cards, carbon credits, and points are great incentives. More hotel chains should take note and offer something similar.
Seth Godin makes a great point in a recent blog post titled, “We don’t compare ourselves to other airport restaurants”, but his quote, “Regardless, it’s better than we have been taught we should deserve” really stuck out for me as a road warrior. We have been trained to expect bad (and worsening) service in the frequent flyer world. Uncaring airline representatives, devaluation of frequent flyer points, additional service fees, more points to buy free nights, terrible customer service, bad airport food, more time away from home – we accept these things as “part of the job”. At one point frequent travelers felt free flights, free nights, and credit card points were the “benefits” which offset having to deal with all the crappy things about flying, but…
Is that still true anymore?
In most industries, bad customer service means you don’t last very long, but not for industries who serve frequent travelers. We are captive customers at airports and we pay more for bad food and bad service. We are limited to certain airlines by when and where we need to fly. We are limited to hotels by distance or cost to clients. We have limitations placed on our ability to choose. Then we get attached to “loyalty programs” and a currency which is controlled by folks who believe we are mindless point-addicts who only care about racking up enough miles to be treated with “ok” customer service (because a special 1-800 number is supposed to make us feel elite). We just suck it up. That is sad.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to change that? I don’t know the solution, but I bet it starts with us – the frequent travelers.