Today I was talking with Tucker Max (author of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell) of all people this afternoon and we were talking about how incredibly unpleasant air travel is, the way people take so much time to move down the aisle and get out of the way.
The fact is that people seem to have gotten increasingly rude in airports and on airplanes, at least in the US, and I am not really all that surprised that the flight attendant slid down the emergency chute a couple of weeks ago with two beers because he just couldn’t take it anymore.
But having done some rethinking about this, I shared an idea I had with Tucker, and he liked it so I am sharing it here.
The key to this idea is that it doesn’t cost the airline a thing to implement, except for a little bit of training, and maybe a minor computer change.
What if the airlines let it be known that at the end of boarding, a flight attendant would award the best behaved passenger with a free upgrade. Consider it like a lottery ticket. They airlines save one of their first class seats for this program, so people are very motivated to get the free upgrade. My bet is that is enough to get people to be much more considerate and efficient in boarding (which also helps the airlines with on time departures).
I think it’s at least worth a shot. Air travel is so unpleasant these days, they are going to have to do something, right?
While I am at it, I have two other ideas for the airlines to consider to make the experience better:
1) Full. When the flight is really full, don’t announce that. That’s almost like shouting “FIRE!” in a theater these days because we all know there’s a shortage of overhead space, unless we are in a special mileage club or first class, we might not be able to get all of our stuff into the overheads. So don’t create the panic. Don’t say anything.
2) Delayed. for people who want to upgrade or who are on standby, the standard rule is that they won’t release those changes until 15 minutes before scheduled departure, and that includes if the plane has been delayed, which makes no sense to me. First of all, with so many of us checking in hours before departure via the web, they probably have a really good sense of how full the plane will be, but when it gets delayed by say an hour, they should unlock those seats 15 minutes before the originally scheduled departure – that would give them a full hour to manage all of the seat juggling.
That’s my $.02 on how to make flying better.
-Ric
P.S. If you want to know why I was talking with Tucker Max, I would be happy to explain.
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