Now, in fairness, operating a company that transports tens
of thousands of people for billions of air-miles aboard complex machines that
can be rendered completely inoperable in seconds by a single mistake by a
single employee trying to park one of them is harder than it looks. To make
matters worse, in recent years it has become increasingly difficult to
differentiate one airline’s service from another, which has left many of the
major carriers competing entirely on price. There was a time when it was
possible to charge more for higher-quality food and drink, better services, or
even (it has been done) more attractive cabin personnel, but today most
carriers have to cut back on everything to remain competitive, which includes
lowering expenses for recruiting, training, and especially salaries. What is
less clear is how far one can lower staffing quality before the resulting
lawsuits begin to eliminate any resulting savings…
Take, for example, the case of Angeline O'Grady, who was
attempting to transport her late husband’s ashes to England for burial on a US
Airways flight, when a TSA idiot insisted that since ashes aren’t a solid they
had to go in her checked baggage. A competent airline might have tried to accommodate
a customer during a difficult time, but US Airways gave away her seat
reservation and forced Ms. O’Grady to pay for a business-class seat since she
was delayed checking in by the aforementioned TSA idiot. That would merely be
callous; however, when Ms. O’Grady landed in England she discovered that at
some point during the flight, someone had opened her suitcase and stolen the
urn containing her late husband’s remains…
As I have noted in earlier posts, a failure in operational
security this severe has a very real chance of destroying the entire airline
(as well as any aircraft that somebody manages to sneak a bomb onto because no
one was paying attention). Here again, a competent airline might have
considered apologizing for the theft, launching a serious investigation,
calling on law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic to help them
find out what happened, firing everyone who had access to the relevant baggage
facilities during the time when the urn was stolen, or having all of the
employees who could have stolen the urn arrested and letting the police/FBI/Scotland
Yard figure things out from there. I’m not sure I have an adjective appropriate
to describing an airline refusing to so much as explain what they think
happened, and claiming they have no responsibility for the theft and did
nothing wrong; calling this “stupid” would be an insult to stupid people. And
that doesn’t even consider stonewalling the customer and attempting to tie up
the case in court once the customer finally got a lawyer…
Here in one story we’ve got criminal negligence (leaving the
baggage vulnerable to theft), criminal malfeasance (assuming it was a company
employee who committed the theft), incompetent customer service (charging a bereaved
widow for a more expensive ticket? Really?), incompetent public relations (saying
things like “we’ve done nothing wrong” after losing someone’s mortal remains),
incompetent operational management (letting things escalate to the point we
found out about it) and incompetent senior management (not just quietly
settling the case and moving on). And the company isn’t done yet; a few weeks
ago attorneys representing US Airways filed a motion to move the case to
Federal court, since this outrage took place on an International flight. That
will hold up proceedings, make the whole case harder and more expensive to try,
and might cause Ms. O’Grady to give up, but is almost certainly going to make a
bad situation even worse for the airline…
To quote the late Frank Zappa: “It’s not getting any smarter
out there, folks…” Keep watching the skies, everybody, because there’s no
telling what kind of shenanigans will be going on up there next…
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