These are boom times for the airline industry and thank God too! After the recent corona pandemic scuttled any number of airline companies and forever left its mark on our meeting structures and travel habits, it was an open question whether or not the industry would ever recover or even be as relevant any longer.
All the bankruptcies, fears, and futures, of course, turned out to be a bigger load of crap than Jeff Goldblum famously commented on in the original Jurassic Park movie. Take this quote for example:
Travel data company Cirium found that 43 commercial airlines have failed — completely ceased or suspended operations — in 2020 so far, compared to 46 in all of 2019 and 56 throughout 2018.
CNBC article “Over 40 airlines have failed so far this year — and more are set to come” from October 8th, 2020.
Sounds bad, doesn’t it? 43 so far and it’s only October! But wait a minute. October 8th was already a little more than three-quarters of the way through 2020. If you extrapolate those 43 bankruptcies over the course of the full (leap) year, it comes out to 56 (actually 55.8, but 0.8 of an airline can’t go bankrupt) or dead on the value from the very non-corona year of 2018. And, if you take an actual look through the data, you realize that many of these bankruptcies occurred either before or very early on in the pandemic, meaning that, like in the years before, most of these airlines were going to fail anyway. Corona simply kicked them to their rightful place on the curb that little bit sooner is all.
And, in the end, Zoom, Skype & Co. weren’t all that much of a threat to commercial flying either, despite some predictions that business traffic would never fly above 50% of pre-pandemic levels again. Instead, things were pretty much back to normal and then some by the Spring of 2022. And that’s perhaps not really surprising either for anyone who’s ever done a lot of virtual meetings.
But what has all this got to do with admin? Well, nothing really up to now, but please fasten your (hi-tech) seatbelts for takeoff.
The story is somewhat complicated. My wife and I are flying to Canada for vacation this summer, but whereas I’m starting out from Not-Bielefeld, she’s doing the same from Croatia. We arranged it, however, that we’d meet up in Frankfurt and take the same flight over to Canada and then return to Not-Bielefeld together. Because of the separate starting points, we had to buy the tickets individually (me through an online portal, her directly through an airline), even if we were on most of the same flights together. And, it worked!
Well, up until we had to make the seat reservations that is …
The internet has changed things a lot for the airline industry, particularly in being able to offer bad service in an impersonal fashion at the lowest price possible more efficiently than ever before. Up until a few years ago, I didn’t mind buying my tickets online. Although the foundation of that process is still in place today—I can still see exactly which flights are available and at what price—the pricing policies have changed dramatically. Before, the price used to include a reasonable amount of luggage and usually a seat too. Now, in an effort to show the absolute lowest prices possible, the ticket price barely gets you in the door of the plane. Anything beyond that, like seats or luggage, have become bookable extras.
(And, although I have no data beyond my own paranoia to back this up, I’m pretty sure that this whole system was dreamed up more for the convenience (read: bottom line) of the airlines than for us. Yes, the base ticket price probably is indeed cheaper, but the airlines undoubtedly more than make up the difference through the necessary “extras”. Although some passengers will save money through the new system, most probably won’t.)
In short, for a price, you now need to make your seat reservations ahead of time, which we reluctantly had to fork out for here seeing as how we’d kinda like to sit together for the eight plus hours and not just leave it all to chance.
The problem was the Frankfurt to Canada leg: presumably only one single plane, but code-shared between at least three airlines so that it’s not clear to anyone who’s flying the damn thing in the end. Now, although I booked my ticket through an online portal, I was able to make a seat reservation for this leg through LU. (As I’ve stressed before, the policy of this blog is to not name any names, so I’m using randomly assigned letters to represent the airlines involved to guarantee their anonymity.) My wife, who booked directly with AC, couldn’t. The AC website said that because the flight was being operated by EU, we needed to book her seat through them. The booking service for the EU website, however, forwarded us immediately to the LU website, which even more immediately informed us that no seat reservations were possible for this leg. Huh?
Ok, switch to Plan B: the phone and an actual human …
… even if they’re not in Germany.
First LU, who were the last and seemingly the most direct line in the chain. But who also informed me that only five seats in total were available for allocation for the flight, none of which were close to the seat that I had booked. When I told the customer-service agent that this could not be true because the whole back of the plane was available when I booked my seat a few minutes before (which according to their website was free of charge, but, according to my credit card, still somehow cost me 35 EUR), he got self-righteous and I got a long lecture about how it wasn’t LU’s fault, but EU’s. He then got really self-righteous when I asked him why I was able to book my reservation through LU and how it could exclusively be the fault of EU when they belong to the same parent company as LU. The call did not end well.
And especially not for LU …
Fun fact: it seems like call centres (or at least those for LU) have difficulty ending the phone calls such that it’s usually up to the caller to hang up. I didn’t in this case, expecting that LU would. After about 10 seconds though, I heard the agent saying that the connection was still open and could I please hang up. Which I ignored. Another 20 seconds or so and the same request to which I gave the same response. Another 20 seconds later and I got put on hold. Then after about two minutes, the agent finally managed to drop the call on his end.
Second stop: EU because they were the ones to blame according to LU. Again, the same story about there only being five available seats. (Which I was starting to believe at this point because I don’t trust either EU or LU to be coordinated enough for it to be a well-rehearsed lie.) Same general answers as to how this could be the case (“dunno”, “not our fault”, and even “wasn’t trained for things like this”), but at least without the huffiness.
Last chance: AC. After all, they directly sold us my wife’s ticket and so must have some control over it, right? Wrong. Same five seats but with the explanation that this was a known problem when code-sharing with EU and that no one, not even EU, can allocate seats on their flights easily. Granted, another cop out, but at least not a mindless one. I actually got the feeling that the guy knew what he was talking about here, also because he mentioned that AC was working with EU to try and find a solution that he personally hoped would come very soon because he was tried of explaining this nonsense to the customers all the time.
But wait! Because then it got really, really stupid …
The very next day, I get an e-mail from LU saying that I need to call them back because of some problems with my reservations. The problem? Yup, that Frankfurt to Canada leg. Despite charging me 35 EUR for my free seat reservation and despite the LU website still showing me as having the seat reserved, the LU agent told me that it was really only a seat “preference” insofar as EU blocked the actual reservation. “Very sorry” and all but “Not our fault.” And what about the website and my 35 EUR? No answer to the former and the refund, like refunds to credit cards always seem to do, will take up to one to two weeks.
Sigh …
But back to EU and their five available seats. Maybe now we could get a pair together???
By now, of course, you realize that the answer to that pipe dream was hahahahaha. Despite only an entire day having gone by and the flight not being for another three months, the five seats had vanished so that there was nothing left at all. Not for me, not for my wife. Probably not for the pilot either. (Part of this, however, was my fault. When I asked about my old seat “preference”, I was told that it was already booked by someone else, which the LU website confirmed to still be me.) After about a half hour of this, I finally asked to talk to a superior only to get put on hold for at least 25 minutes. It was pretty obvious that they were trying to get rid of me (remember, they don’t seem to be able to end the calls from their side), but didn’t calculate with me being stubborn.
Now, I say “at least” because at that point, I called up the call centre again, but in parallel from my landline to request that the first agent take me off hold and actually deal with the situation. No chance, of course, but the new agent was able to cancel my previous preference and reserve a seat for me in the row behind it. Forget five seats or no seats. For some mystical reason, the whole back of the plane was available to me again. (All to the tune of another 35 EUR on my credit card, but at least I had a real reservation again.) And for my wife? Nada. As in nada even on my lap, under the seat in front of me (which had been mine), or in one of the overhead bins.
And guess what? As soon as I got off the phone with EU and checked the LU website, the new seat reservation was already in place! Together with a unpaid bill for 35 EUR for this new seat reservation. Or, more likely, preference again. (Which it was. One week later and LU removed the preference together with another, paid reservation for another leg of the journey.)
It’s crazy. Think about it: would you trust an airline that can’t even allocate seats on its own plane (and (much) time on the phone has revealed that it physically is indeed an EU plane) to actually be able to fly the damn thing?
In the end, even the seat reservations (not preferences) that we could make online were, like the airline seats they’re associated with often are, a pain in the ass. For instance, to book my seats for the other legs of the journey, I had to go through two separate airlines to do it. Why? Why can’t it be like the tickets? When my wife and I bought our tickets, we each bought all the tickets for all the legs at once. There was no warning that we couldn’t purchase the tickets for some of the legs because they were with a different airline. Now, if the other airline can automatically get its money for the legs of the journey that it’s responsible for (which is by far the biggest chunk of the ticket price), it surely can also get the cash for the bums that are on those legs. Where’s the problem? The connectivity is there: as I said, as soon as I made the seat reservation with the one airline, it showed up for all the others as well.
But, as I was (repeatedly) told, it’s all down to the difference between code-sharing and interlining. Or perhaps, just perhaps, maybe a lack of will on the part of the airlines? The repeated message I heard after spending 25+ minutes on hold with EU made it abundantly clear that they were giving preference to customers that booked directly with them rather than with ones foisted upon them by their code-sharing partners. Although the message claimed that it was because of “technical restrictions”, it seems quite clear that someone ordered those “restrictions” to be put in place.
People love to complain about Ryanair and their money-grabbing antics. But at least the system works there. Instead, looks like the pandemic missed out on a few choice candidates for bankruptcy here …
The Blog About Fog 