Can we please have a return to the fun-filled and exciting flights?
Taking the family to picnic in Gravelly Park in Virginia, just across the river from Washington, can be one of the highlights of a young child’s summer. Every 10 minutes, conversation is drowned out, even children’s voices are silenced, stunned by the skin-pounding noise of commercial airliners thundering in and out of Reagan National Airport.
While the noise can be distracting if you’re looking for a quiet retreat, the overwhelming power of airliners thundering just overhead triggers the childhood awe we all experienced when first faced with airline travel. The heart-lifting excitement of getting into an airplane and taking off to a distant city and an adventure far from the everyday.
Sadly the reality of airline travel is nowhere near the romance of our imagination. Every adult attempts to be as positive as their inner child when entering the airport, but by the time the flight takes off we are all so irritated it doesn’t matter what the weather is at the other end of the flight, we just want out.
While a quick search of any travel website will yield a plethora of low-priced flights, we all know that is nowhere near the true cost of getting to another city. Baggage fees, special ticket taxes, fee to print your own ticket, segment tax, change flight fee, and security tax are only the beginning. Random surcharges often appear simply because you’ve picked a popular day to travel. Remember the “fuel surcharge” when oil prices spiked? Now that oil has dropped to near historic lows, have we seen a corresponding — or any — drop in airline ticket prices?
Let’s not forget the headache of traveler comfort. No bringing a bottle of water beyond the TSA security check, so buy that $3 bottle before you get on the plane! God knows the one flight attendant would be happy to give you a thimble-size cup of water, but they’re now so overloaded with flight tasks they can’t help you until the plane has been in flight 45 minutes.
Don’t forget, the airport food court is where you must stock up on snacks or buy a meal now as well! The airlines have chosen to cut costs by not making real food available in flight. If you’re foolhardy enough, you’re welcome to buy a variety pack of junk you don’t want just to get one bag of half-crushed cookies or crackers. While flight attendants do their best, the airline companies give them few abilities to make things better. They can only smile and encourage us to make the best of it.
However, worse than the lack of true customer service by the airlines is the bewildering pricing for the tickets themselves. There are websites, books and newspaper columns dedicated to deciphering what time of year to buy a holiday ticket, which day of the week or even what time of day to buy. Each ticket comes with an encyclopedia of different and seemingly conflicting rules, restrictions and penalties.
“Penalties???” I’m buying a ticket on a flying bus, not VIP access to a closed-door, limited-time exhibition. In the Internet Age, when it takes Amazon and Wal-Mart seemingly nothing to make returning online purchases via the Postal Service, why do the airlines find it so hard to shift a data point or two? Why can’t we change a ticket without seemingly causing a major crisis? If the flight isn’t for two weeks, surely that won’t have any effect on the flight schedule.
And then there are games we are forced to play to discover a slightly better ticket price for the same flight. Do I fly the evening before or the morning of? Do I fly out of the nearby airport or can I save $500 if I drive an hour more to the other airport?
There’s a ready answer for all of these problems. Competition.
Competition, not merely from low-cost airlines like Southwest, Virgin America or Jet Blue, but from opening up the U.S. market to open competition from other airlines. Lufthansa, FinnAir, El Al, Qatar Airways, Emirates or Etihad all fly elsewhere around the globe. Many of these same airlines are frequently lauded in the press and on travel websites. Each review is seemingly full of praise for their customer service, the amenities given to their passengers and reasonable price of the tickets.
It’s enough to make a person prefer to fly wherever those airlines go — just to be able to enjoy the trip.
And the answer is again, simple competition. Countless articles, websites and even a Government Accountability Office study have found that with an increase in competition between airlines comes an increase in flight options for customers and an increase in customer service. All of this leads to a better customer experience and a happier you and me.
