Airline PR

[Gadget World]

All we ever hear about airline travel is bad news!

Whay dosent't the industry hire a creative PR firm to invent some good
news?

Gadget

[Jeff Hacker]

"Cyrus Afzali" <pns...@lnubb.pbz> wrote in message
news:r0mhj551d5mebmv2o...@4ax.com...

> Every major airline in the world has a PR team internally and has
> other agencies helping them. I'm in the PR business (though not for
> airlines) and can tell you good PR isn't about "inventing" news, for
> starters and unfortunately the airline business, which I covered for
> many years as a journalist, is too boring most of the time to merit
> much interest from the news media. Obviously, as we've all seen, they
> will gravitate toward more negative incidents like people being held
> "hostage" on taxiways, etc.
>
> Finally, the airline industry could have done a lot more to be
> proactive. Instead of letting things get to the point where
> legislators were looking at requiring them to do things, they could
> have taken those steps on their own proactively and aggressively
> marketing that fact. However, they and their major industry groups
> chose not to.
>
> In many ways, airlines still think as if it's pre 1978 and they don't
> have to compete on service. If they thought like business people, they
> wouldn't give stupid explanations like "we don't have gates at airport
> X, so we can't let you disembark." Instead, they'd negotiate
> agreements with other mainline and commuter airlines to handle these
> situations at a given compensation rate when they happened.

I disagree with this. Pre-1978, the ONLY means of diffentiation was
service - fares were regulated. That's why you had airlines like Braniff
International (RIP) promoting "Flying Colors" and "The end of the Plain
Plane" and Continental with "Gold Carpet Service," United with "Red Carpet
Service," Pan Am (also RIP) with The President Special, a standard 34" pitch
in economy class (vs. 30-31" today on most airlines), and food in economy
class.

[Jeff Hacker]

"Cyrus Afzali" <pns...@lnubb.pbz> wrote in message

news:31h0k517oeruig6na...@4ax.com...

> My main point is and has always been that the airline industry has
> NEVER behaved much like a business; it's just as true now that they
> have to more actively compete than before deregulation. Passengers
> don't give two flips that different companies employ the jetway
> drivers, baggage handlers and handle other things, which play into
> whether or not they can get off planes during holds, etc.
>
> The whole industry should be ashamed of the fact that the government
> has to threaten legislation to get them to do things they can do
> already. There are ALWAYS empty gates at airports; just because a
> particular airline may not normally have access to them during a
> particular time doesn't mean an agreement can't be struck with another
> carrier to allow them to use any empty gates they have to allow people
> to get off the plane rather than wait out a hold for 2 hours. Doing
> that would be a whole lot easier than the negotiations cellphone
> carriers have to do with multiple other carriers around the country to
> handle traffic in areas where they don't have towers of their own.
> It's really just not that hard.
>
> Yes, it's true that reloading a plane is often more complicated than
> it needs to be since people can't seem to just board, stow their stuff
> and sit down, but the airlines bring a lot of the ire on themselves.
>
> Finally, Americans have voted for years in favor of lower prices/fares
> and reduced service. The reason tech support is so crappy, for
> example, is people aren't willing to have the prices of their products
> adjusted to pay for better-trained staffs. Specific to airlines, the
> typical passenger doesn't realize that the airline may not even be
> making a profit on their seat or that their revenue is just "gravy" on
> top of the cargo and first class.

Absolutely correct. Unfortunately, the airlines did it to themselves, IMHO.
They conditioned people to expect really (and unrealistically) low fares -
$99 US coast to coast, for example. And people expect the same level of
service as before.