The ash cloud is on my mind more than yours, I’ll bet, because I outran it and because I’m concerned for my friends at re:publica and elsewhere who are still trying to get home by tortured combinations of planes, trains, and automobiles (and boats). It’s a big deal, a profound crisis with profound implications.
But I don’t see government, the airline industry, and media responding that way. They can’t see past their noses and the ashes right ahead of them.
In media, I’ve seen next to no stories looking at the long-term impact and implications; that’s what Richard Sambrook — ex BBC newsman — asked for this morning. The best I’ve found is Robert Paterson asking whether the volcano presents a Black Swan event. All over Twitter and blogs I see the big questions being asked; I don’t see media trying to answer them. I fear it’s not built to.
The airlines are, understandably, engulfed in crisis. But I’d like to see them get dispensation from governments, airports, and other airlines to ferry passengers out of other airports: Get yourself to Rome, Lufthansa could say, and we’ll use a jet stuck in America to get you back (and not have to refund your ticket).
Governments are issuing edicts about safety, which is, indeed, their job. And now they’re going to face fights from airlines: KLM is sending up test flights and making noise about the bans being overkill: “We are asking the authorities to really have a good look at the situation, because 100 percent safety does not exist,” the spokesman said (how comforting; how good for their band; KLM becomes the Toyota of the air — safe enough). But others are testing, too, and are finding gunk in jets: see this and this (via Suw) and this (via Rob Paterson again). So government will have its work cut out protecting us.
Meanwhile, we, the people, are taking our fate into our hands — organizing without organizations, as Clay Shirky would see it. @calaisrescue organized a Dunkirk-like flotilla to take people across the Channel until French authorities stopped them. Friend Heather Gold, stuck in Berlin on her way to Finland, is sending people to ride-sharing and couch-sharing services to help. Friend Micah Sifry, who left Berlin for Zurich and next Rome, says Twitter — the people who use Twitter, of course — has been a Godsend, as it was for me, along with the Google Maps that navigated me and my rescuers to Munich. We’re doing the best we can.
What’s failing us, all in all, is our power structures, which aren’t built to think big and fast at the same time. They should be bending rules to get planes and people to where planes can fly to get people home. They need to be thinking about and taking action about the bigger implications for the European and then world economies (more on that later). Companies of all shorts should be standing up to provide relief (Skype and Cisco offering video conferencing; pharmacy companies offering to help the people lost without prescriptions I’m seeing in Twitter; airlines should let us use their sites to book seats and work out the refunds later, promising not to rip us off; bus and train companies moving mountains to move people — instead of ripping them off, as is unfortunately happening in some cases). They are treating this is a short-term, one-time event. It may well not be. This piece in the Times of London explains why and how this could go on for sometime — and repeat itself.
I am in Tampa waiting to fly back home to New Jersey and, thanks to the snowicane but rather than sitting in the usual information vacuum to which airlines subject us, I am watching as Continental shows us the status of the flights that were supposed to bring our jet in from LA to Cleveland to Newark to Tampa. I saw the flight to Cleveland canceled, then the one to Newark canceled, and I figured we were doomed when I saw the aircraft number for my flight erased. But then I saw us assigned a new jet, one that flew into Tampa from Houston last night.
That’s simply amazing. Continental is practicing operational transparency. It opened up information is already has to us, the customers, so we can be informed and empowered. This way, I’m not cursing the airline and its employees. I’m well aware that our flight might be canceled and that’s entirely out of Continental’s control, so I wouldn’t blame them. But every time this has happened in the past, I hated being in the dark; I hated being lied to by airlines; I simply want more information. And now an airline is giving it to me. Bravo for Continental.
What information does your company have that you can and should share with your customers?
The essence of Google’s value is that — though it’s opaque about its algorithms and ad splits — it turns around the information it gathers from us and feeds it back to us (that is, our aggregate links and clicks inform its search results for everyone). OpenTable lets us know when tables are open in restaurants so we can plan on our own. In What Would Google Do? I suggest that a Googley restaurant should share data on how many people order each dish on a menu so we can use that to choose what we want. A manufacturer should expose the provenance of the component parts that go into its products. A newspaper should footnote its work so we can know the provenance of its information and we can judge the sources. A store could reveal its inventory so we know there’s only one left (better hurry). I say we should expect doctors and hospitals to reveal data about the patients they treat. What else?
On this blog and in my book, I speculated about the social airline. A Dutch reader points me to Bluenity, a social network for AirFrance and KLM passengers. Neat.
I’m late to discovering Richard Branson’s plans to have entrepreneurs make video pitches, which he’ll then show to his captive audience: passengers. One wonders whether the ticket conditions should include giving Virgin a carry.
But seriously, it’s a way in which an airline can become a content publisher (one of the ideas in What Would Google Do?, which came from here). It’s a way to give his passengers extra value (hey, I discovered the next Google on my last London flight). It establishes a unique relationship with a valued demographic.
The next step should be putting cameras on the backs of seats so the VCs on board can give their critiques back to the entrepreneurs: round-trip content.
Well, damn, my beloved Silverjet is grounded. Great idea, great service, terrible timing, what with record oil prices, a credit drought, a recession, and a sucky dollar. There goes the last hope of an independent example of a service based on the quality of service in the air.
And flying today is pure misery, which is proving to be very bad for business:
Some air travelers prefer to stay home rather than suffer through flight delays and cancellations, a loss of about $9 billion in potential revenue for an industry desperate to offset the soaring cost of fuel, a new survey showed Thursday.
In a survey of 1,003 travelers by the Travel Industry Association, more than half said they were fed up with flight delays and blamed airlines for the deteriorating state of U.S. air travel. They also prefer to stay home, or take alternative transportation such as a bus, train or car.
“Many travelers believe their time is not respected and it is leading them to avoid a significant number of trips,” said Allan Rivlin, a partner at Peter D. Hart Research Associates, which helped sponsor the survey. “Inefficient security screening and flight cancellations and delays are air travelers’ top frustrations.”
The TIA estimates that more than a quarter of U.S. air travelers cancel about two trips a year to avoid dealing with security, delays and cancellations. That translates into a loss of about 41 million passenger tickets at an average roundtrip price of $700.
When lost revenue for hotels, restaurants and taxes are factored in, flight delays are costing the U.S. economy about $26.5 billion, the survey showed.
Bad service is bad business.
Unimaginative business is also bad business. Rather than trying to make the business work charging us for every breath, maybe the airlines should be looking at alternatives: advertising or gambling on the plane and even this.
I was going to write a post after returning from my latest trip to London urging anyone who could afford to to fly Silverjet, the last remaining independent all-business airline (after the death of Eos and Maxjet) because I want this one to stay in business. Today, there was some bad news as Silverjet is having issues with getting cash out of its latest line of credit. They say they are still flying the usual schedule between New York-Newark, London-Luton, and Dubai. But clearly things are at risk. Damn. Damn. Damn.
I’m telling you: This is the way to fly. That was the conversation among passengers in the lounge going over and in the line for U.S. Customs coming back. It’s no nonsense: Arrive at the lounge, hand them your passport, sit down and have a drink, they bring you your boarding pass, you get on the jet, you have your own space, you can lie down and go to sleep, you arrive at an uncrowded airport in London — no Heathrow madness — and head easily into the city. The food is good, the service wonderful. Everything I hate about other airlines today, I love about Silverjet. (And I’m not getting a thing out of saying this; it’s a happy and frequent flier’s endorsement, pure and simple.)
BA is about to start its mostly business-class airline, OpenSkies, but it’s flying only from New York JFK to Paris CDG*, two nightmare airports, and it is maintaining three classes (business seats recline only 140 degrees). Drat. And Virgin is supposed to follow. But I’m afraid their prices will be high so they don’t cannibalize their regular services. Silverjet’s prices are reasonable considering the level of service.
I don’t fly Silverjet to get free wine. I fly so I can lie flat, take my Ambien, sleep through the night, arrive in London in the morning full of my dreaded vim, and get a day’s work in. It’s worth the money to me to save the lost day. And on the way back, I can plug in my laptop and get a good seven hours’ work done (with a little free wine).
If you have a chance and if it stays afloat, please fly Silverjet. You will thank me. And I will thank you.
* CORRECTION: OpenSkies will fly into Orly, not CDG. I’ve not flown into Orly but it has to be better than CDG. Also note that OpenSkies objects to my calling the highest of three classes on the plane first class; they call it business class. I’d say this is rather like fighting with Starbucks over small, medium, and large — a fight I obnoxiously continue to the death. But duly noted. (I’m sure they call it that so company accountants will not object to expense reports.)
Ed Cone tells a story of an airline’s exquisite stupidity. He shows a picture of the jammed seats behind his jammed row 11 and the empty seats ahead and says:
What’s going on? An industry that has forgotten about customer service.
Almost nobody opted to pay $30 bucks extra to sit in “economy plus,” which promises a few inches of extra legroom. When it became clear that the flight would be packed six across from row 11 back while row after row sat empty in the front, people asked if they could move up. The flight attendants said no, you have to pay for those seats. Not very customer-friendly or situationally aware, but comprehensible.
So a guy asks if he could pay on the spot. Nope. People were laughing at the United’s cluelessness, but it wasn’t very friendly laughter.
When the drink cart came by I bought myself $5 worth of stress relief and asked the flight attendant (politely) why she could sell me a drink but not a seat. She looked at me like I had two heads and said they are in no way set up to take reservations, you have to do that with a service representative.
I started to say I didn’t want a reservation, I wanted to hand her $30 and move up one freaking row, but it felt like I was on the phone with Bangalore and couldn’t get a supervisor, so I just shut up and drank.
To recap: They don’t know how to allocate their seating categories, they aren’t going to let people spread out across a half-empty plane as a courtesy, and they turn down the chance to upsell on the spot, even though they do commerce in the aisles all the time.
What a stupid industry.
They’re so stupid they think their business strategy is to imprison passengers. They’re so stupid they don’t know how to take passengers’ money. They’re so stupid they don’t realize — or apparently care — how stupid they are. Too bad the all-powerful internet couldn’t give us all wings.
Eos, the great all-business (all-first, actually) airline to London is shutting down after something snagged its $50 million in financing, forcing it into bankruptcy. This pretty much leaves Silverjet, which I fly every time to London (and which offered Eos paassengers tickets at the same price). I can only hope that with the reasonably priced all-business market to London pretty much to itself — even though Virgin and BA are going to bring in all-biz flights, they are sure to be much more expensive — this will help Silverjet. If I had to fly one of the big, old guys at their big, old prices, I think I’d become an American isolationist. Man, the airline industry is a mess and with the price of fuel doing what it’s doing and the credit crunch, it’s only going to get messier. Damn.
Over at Seeking Alpha, where they reposted my recent rant about airlines, there’s a classic example of industry insiders in denial bitching at me: How dare I expect decent, civilized service. Water? You want water? Sit down and shut up. This is exactly the same reaction I get from whining real estate agents every time I dare to question whether I get 6 percent’s worth of value for the service they don’t provide. Head, meet sand, insert. It’s going to be fun watching them self-destruct. Couldn’t happen to better industries. Except perhaps cable and other protected monopolies and oligopolies. Bye-bye now. Bye-bye.
If there ever was a tipping point for an industry, headed down, surely the airline industry has reached that unfortunate metaphor. They’re fucked and their passengers with them.
On NPR this morning, I heard an old lady in a wheelchair forced to come to the airport to change her canceled American tickets — she wasn’t allowed to do it online or on the phone, not even after she said she was disabled and her daughter had seven children and a newborn and couldn’t take her to the O’Hare’s hell.
She is Customer Omega, the last screwed consumer.
You simply can’t treat people this way and survive. We all hate the airlines. We hate the experience on the plane and in the airport. We should fear for our safety, given American’s shoddy (and, one wonders, fraudulent) maintenance work. (As the Times said this morning, at least the FAA is doing its job.) The airlines never see themselves as our advocates, friends, servers; no, they are our prison wardens and enemies as they fight down legislation that mandates they should give us the crudest amenities a prisoner would get: clean water, air, and a toilet. The economics of the industry as it is being run today are unsustainable. And apart from the all-business-class airlines I try to fly every time I can (Eos, Silverjet, and there are more coming), there is not one visible bit of innovation — not one attempt to get out of this mess — visible in the industry.
Here are a few of my earlier posts thinking about a different future for the airlines. See also Chris Anderson on a new, free business model. What would you do to bring this industry back from the cliff? I think the essence of their future is there: They have to explore new value by having a decent relationship with us, using that new value to improve the experience so they can have a decent relationship. Screwing your customers is the least sustainable business model.
Today’s NY Times writes about travel publishers still trying to figure out the web (they’ve been trying and failing to figure it out since the web’s start; I worked, frustratingly, with Fodor’s back in the ’90s as it tried to find a strategy). It says that among their tactics is licensing book content to airlines to display on their seat-back entertainment systems.
But that should be a two-way exchange. Airlines should capture the knowledge of their wise-about-traveling crowds. Imagine if, on return trips, the airlines asked us the hotels where we just stayed and ate and invited us to rate and review them. Imagine if they asked natives to share some inside tips on eating and shopping in their towns. They have a currency to pay for the information: They could reward us with frequent-flier bonus miles. Because they know who we are, they could even start to anonymously aggregate other data around this: ‘American Express Platinum customers recommend….’
The airlines would gather an incredible data base of live knowledge of real travelers with fresh knowledge. They’d outdo TripAdvisor over time. Or they could license their content to TripAdvisor or some of those travel publishers. The airlines could themselves become publishers by listening to and capturing and sharing the knowledge of their customers. But first, the an airline needs to think of itself as a platform for travel and of its customers as networks.
This should be a basic question of any company or industry in the internet era: ‘What do my customers know and how do I help them share that?’
What if a plane flight were networked and became a social experience with its own economy?
For part of a book I’m finally starting to work on, I’ve been thinking about how companies and industries can be remade with Googlethink and social smarts (note how I’m not saying Web 2.0). It’s harder to reimagine some than others. The benefits of tearing apart and rebuilding cable companies are obvious. But I just about gave up on airlines, dooming them to their status as the new buses. What can one do with such a commodity service, and one that has deteriorated so badly?
Then I was inspired by Steve Baker at Business Week, who asked, “Why hasn’t aviation benefited more from Moore’s Law?” Maybe it’s not Moore’s law that can reform airlines but Jarvis’ First Law — give the people control and we will use it; don’t and you will lose us — and Zuckerberg’s commandment — give your people elegant organization — plus a bit of Googlethink about networks, platforms, and wise crowds. For Burda’s upcoming DLD event, one airline, Lufthansa, is asking what they should be in 15 years. Here’s one scenario of how they can change in far less time….
Start here: Most passengers on airlines today are connected to the internet on the ground and soon we will be in the air as airlines return to the idea of adding wireless internet to jets (see an AP roundup from yesterday here — I can’t wait). Getting us connected will be good for the airlines, not only because they have something new to sell — if they don’t try to gouge us — but also because we’ll be busy — engaged, entertained, connected — and less likely to grumble and revolt at delays. Busy passengers are happier passengers.
Once airplanes’ passengers are connected with the ground, that enables them to get connected with each other. It would be easy for the airlines — or, failing that, the passengers themselves — to set up social networks around flights and destinations. The possibilities are endless:
* At the simplest level, we could connect while in the air to set up shared cab rides once we land, saving passengers a fortune.
* We can ask our fellow passengers who live in or frequently visit a destination for their recommendations for restaurants, things to do, ways to get around.
* We can play games.
Note that this requires not only wifi internet access at a reasonable price but also electric plugs at every seat. The first airline to do this will gain the loyalty and appreciation of a huge number of wired road warriors.
* Now think back to the earliest 747s with their lounges where you could socialize with fellow passengers, something that still goes on even in the cramped quarters of today’s jets, though every inch is filled with a seat and though the cabin crew is less often the object of the flirting. The idea is coming back on Virgin and in the 787 Dreamliner and A380. So now imagine if on this onboard social network, you could find people you want to meet — people in the same business going to the same conference, people of similar interests, future husbands and wives — and you can rendezvous in the lounge.
* This is the key to decommodifying the airline: What if you chose to fly on one airline vs. another because you knew and liked the people better? What if the airline’s brand became its passengers? What if the airline even found ways to encourage more interesting people to fly with them because they knew that would attract and retain passengers (they could offer discounts and benefits to people who are active and popular in the social network)? Right now, all you offer is seats and miles: commodities. How much richer this would be if you offered small societies. Yes, we could still get stuck next to a talkative bozo — but not if we could meet people and arrange our seats before the flight thanks to the social network. Next to the right person, I might even tolerate a middle seat.
So these social networks should be opened before the flight. And that enables not only these on-flight connections but also a new economy:
* The airline can set up an auction marketplace for at least some of the seats: What’s it worth for you to fly to Berlin next Wednesday? You could bid and buy a seat from a passenger who already holds one. This could solve some of the airlines’ overbooking problem and reduce the cost of bumping customers if late-booking passengers can buy seats from fellow passengers in an open marketplace. You can bet that once a social network around a flight exists, we’ll compare what we paid. So why not be open? Yes, speculators could arbitrage seats, but so long as they’re nonrefundable, what problem is that for the airline? They become market makers. Besides, this sets a new market value for seats that in some cases will be higher than the airlines’ existing fares.
* The airline could also use this to predict and maximize load. What if there’s a sudden surge in demand for a destination the airline can see because bids appear in an auction marketplace for a certain route around certain dates (because of a new conference or festival or good media coverage for a new getaway or bargain)? The airline can add capacity, which keeps the airlines in control over arbitrageurs; the airline is always in control of supply and now it would know more about demand. Similarly, what if a flight is light and the airline starts offering passengers alternatives at great discounts to enable the airline to cancel a flight and reroute the equipment long before departure? The airline increases efficiency and profitability; the passengers get a dividend; and the environment gets a break. These things can be done in an open and flexible marketplace.
* While you’re at it, why not turn frequent-flier miles into an open market? In miles, the airlines have created a virtual currency with far greater reach and value than those on Second Life or Facebook. But they’re essentially illiquid. The airlines make it impossible to get frequent-flier seats with them unless you’re flying to Krakow on Christmas Day a decade hence. And the other deals they offer us — use your miles to buy a TV — are bad deals. This, in turn, devalues the virtual currency to the point that it offers an ever-decreasing incentive to choose one airline over another; it no longer acts as the decommodifier the airlines intended. So open it up: Let us bid on frequent flier seats with our miles. Let us trade and barter our miles with each other — I’ll sell you this iPod for miles I want to use to get my vacation. This will again add value to the currency.
* The main reason we go for miles today is to get silver or greater status so we can jump lines and board first. But I’m not in control of how much I travel; my employers are. So what you really want is my loyalty; you want a large marketshare of me. So let me earn privileges in other ways. Open this up, too. Let me bid miles or money for these benefits: create a market value for boarding first.
* The airline should find ways to involve employees in the network. They can also offer tips. They are the airline’s representatives to the community. And the airline should want to learn more about its employees through the network. Those who make the flight more pleasant and more social are an asset and should be rewarded. Besides, it’s hard to get nasty with cabin crews when you feel as if you know them.
* The airlines can also learn a great deal about their service from the network of passengers. We’ll tell you about the food and what’s worth paying for. I’ll start a movement to save my knees from the bozos who slam their seats into them. You’ll see which employees are your best marketers.
There are many subtleties to this. For example, in some cases, I won’t want to reveal my true identity (telling people I’m out of town), for others I will (doing business). If seats are being traded, real identities and credit cards must be in the system for security. And so on. But this would be easy to pull off with existing social software (Ning, Drupal) and links to existing social networks (Facebook, Linkedin) and existing auction markets (a walled-in eBay). The beauty is that no marketing is required; you’re simply serving, connecting, and organizing the customers you already have. Yet this act alone rebrands you as the social airline. (Better get there quick, before Virgin does.)
So brainstorm with employees and passengers. Imagine what it takes to be the open, social airline — a platform for travel — and then imagine the good that comes of it. Your customers will give you value if you trust them and let them.
: LATER: Ross twitters: “the social airline already exists, try the last flight to Vegas on a Friday night.”
