Rant

Once upon a time I was a loyal American Airlines customer (with few other choices since I lived in Dallas), and even made it to Executive Platinum in my traveling heydays. I’ve heard people complain about AA’s service versus other airlines, and always thought, oh, it’s not that bad. Now that I have flown with more than 20 different airlines during this trip, I think I can safely say that American Airlines has consistently outperformed its peers in providing the worst customer service. The consultant in me would love to go inside AA to see how it fosters a culture where people just don’t try very hard and seem to hate their jobs. Here’s one story of how an individual employee who just made my day a bit more miserable by only doing the bare minimum.

I’ve been buying mostly one way tickets on this trip since I’m not sure where I’m going next and when I’m leaving. When you buy a one way ticket into a foreign country, you must show proof that you are leaving the country when you check into your flight. It’s a simple concept, the country wants to make sure you are not planning to stay there for good, or at least make sure it’ll cost you a bit more. I’ve encountered this a few times, and as long as I show people that I have a ticket out of the country, no problem. My AA check in person obviously did not grasp the reason for this procedure, or she was just lazy. Here’s our conversation, as she already printed out my boarding passes to Lisbon and about to hand them out.

AA Lady: Here you go.. Oh wait, it says here that you have a one way ticket, do you have a flight booked back to the US?
Me: No, I’m planning on continuing my traveling, so I have a flight booked to Greece.
AA Lady: But you live in the U.S., so you need to have a flight booked back to the U.S.
Me: Well, I’m probably going to Shanghai after that, so I’m not coming back to the U.S.
AA Lady: Do you live in Shanghai?
Me: Er, not yet, it’s complicated, but that’s not the point…
AA Lady: I can’t check you in unless you have a flight booked back to the U.S.
Me: OK, look, I’ve been traveling for a while and I’ve done this a few times already. The reason they ask you to check is to make sure I don’t stay in Portugal, they don’t care where I go afterwards.
AA Lady: I’ll check your bags all the way through and give you the boarding pass to Houston. You can check in again in Houston to get your boarding passes for the connecting flights.
Me (processing this information and thinking silently): But you already printed out my boarding passes, and if I check in again in Houston then I have to get out and go through security again, and do you realize that if it were in fact a problem and I don’t get my boarding pass, I would be stuck in Houston while my bags get sent to Lisbon? You know what, never mind, perhaps the Houston people will be more reasonable.

I was willing to accept my fate at that point, but then made the mistake of asking her to put in my frequent flyer number and reprint my boarding pass so I can board earlier. To which she replied, well you can just show your AAdvantage card. Um, who carries their frequent flyer cards around? She begrudgingly reprinted my boarding pass, and as I said thank you with some bitterness as to why I, as a customer, need to endure her attitude for such a simple request, I tried to give her an excuse: maybe she was trying to save a tree.

The moral of the story is, you should always understand the purpose for your process. Without knowing why, it’s hard to do the how well, not to mention improving it. But then again, I guess the concept of process improvement doesn’t apply to people who are just waiting for a paycheck. -_-