Kevin Drum posts about the latest outrage from the airline industry:
To summarize, then: (1) Airlines spent years hassling customers about their carry-on bags and persuading them to check their luggage instead. (2) After that finally started to work, they suddenly began charging for checked luggage. (3) As customers scurried to adapt once again, overhead space disappeared. (4) So now they begin charging for early boarding to avoid the crush of bags in the overhead bin.
Has there ever before been an industry that’s so actively tried to piss off their entire customer base? You almost have to admire it in a Bizarro-capitalism kind of way.
Airlines are near the top of my list of institutions that need to be completely demolished and then rebuilt from the ground up. There are days when I think that we ought to nationalize them all, deport all their executives to Iran, and then turn them over to a group of ordinary travelers chosen at random from the Boston phone book. They could hardly do a worse job of managing the business.
They rotate through the top spot of the list of industries I’d like to see this done to, along with the insurance industry and the financial services industry. If I had to pick just one to see razed to the metaphorical ground and sown with metaphorical salt, I’d probably go with insurance– I have friends who are financiers, and for all their problems, airlines are the only one of those that provide a concrete and tangible good.
I might well be missing some industry that richly deserves decimation, though, so I’ll throw this out for comment. If you could pick one industry to have all its current executives stranded on a deserted island with a ravenous polar bear, what would it be?
Peak oil with deal with the first part of your desire – the airline industry is already dying (you could argue that this sort of bullshit is a symptom). It just won’t be getting rebuilt any time soon.
I don’t know if they should be as high up on your list, but companies dealing with wireless communication seem to be universally inept, unethical and infuriating. Obtuse pricing plans, obscene overage fees, early termination penalties, mandatory contracts, SIM-locking and differential pricing based on usage modalities (i.e.: tethering costing more). I would definitely love to see a reboot in the wireless industries.
I’d have to agree with insurance companies. Any company with a business model that involves coming up with new ways of denying people life saving medicine needs to go. I cannot fathom how it became so entrenched in American culture that something like that doesn’t trip more folk’s moral outrage alarms.
The whole toss-it-all-out and start over from scratch thing? Some would argue it’s already been done — by Southwest Airlines.
Southwest Airlines didn’t have any legacy routes or legacy airfleets to integrate, unlike all of today’s other major airlines. It was able to assemble a strategy, air network, and air fleet from scratch, adopting several now well-known tactics — use all the same airplane, fly point-to-point routes instead of hubs, charge people one single price that covers everything rather than nickel-and-diming people with bag fees, etc. And has ridden that strategy to not only almost *forty* straight years of profits, but but also to the position of *world’s* largest airline by passengers carried, as of 2009.
That’s right — Southwest Airlines is the *biggest* airline in the world, by number of passengers.
So yeah, if we could blow the other airlines up and rebuild them from scratch, you could construct an airline that could carry a hundred million passengers a year, and make a profit doing it. Southwest Airlines did.
Pick any industry that has high barriers to entry (for any reason) and you will find an oligopoly or monopoly that treats its customers with scorn and derision.
The barriers can be high cost of capital, as with airlines, government regulation, as with utilities, or allowing too many mergers, as with the telecom/wireless industries.
It’s kind of the double-edged sword of capitalism in America. Regulate an industry to the point of allowing only monopolies and you get abuse. Fail to regulate an industry enough and it will naturally migrate to a monopoly as the largest competitors buy each other.
How about the cable/satellite TV industry? Or the ISP industry? They certainly could do with a rebuild-from-scratch.
Telemarketing. Duh.
This is specifically a problem with airlines in the US, although certain European budget airlines (*cough* Ryanair *cough*) are also notorious for nickel-and-diming the customers. I have been fortunate to fly domestic/short-haul routes in other countries, and the standards of service put our airlines to shame. For example, during my visit to China a few years ago I flew from Beijing to Xi’an and back, a distance comparable to NYC-Chicago. These days you are lucky to get peanuts on NYC-ORD, but on the Chinese flights I got hot meals in both directions, and I didn’t even have to pay for them.
As a sad commentary on the state of US airlines, “no-frills” Southwest has actually become one of this countries best airlines. They let you check two bags for free (there always was a charge for three or more), and on flights over three hours they will give you the snack box that most of their competitors charge for. They do have the policy of charging extra to let you board first, which is a bigger deal on Southwest because of the open seating policy (that’s how you get a shot at an exit row seat).
Contrast with United, where the check-in process feels like a shakedown. Pay extra to check luggage (or wait until you get to the airport and pay even more). Pay extra for Economy Plus, which has extra legroom. Pay extra for a shorter line through the security checkpoint (which may not be available at your departure airport). At least they aren’t making you pre-order your meal (at an additional charge, of course)–yet. And now United is merging with Continental, which recently has been one of the country’s better airlines.
1) Health insurance companies.
2) The banking industry.
Both are pioneers of the “Screw the customers” business model, from years before the airlines jumped on the bandwagon.
The whole toss-it-all-out and start over from scratch thing? Some would argue it’s already been done — by Southwest Airlines.
Indeed, Southwest has long been my airline of choice. If they didn’t fly into Albany, my travel would be a lot less pleasant.
Even Southwest has adopted the pay-an-extra-$10-to-board-first scheme, though. I’m willing to pay it partly because the $10 is usually considerably less than what I save by flying Southwest, but mostly because at my height, I need an aisle seat at the very least, and an exit row seat if at all possible. Still, it bugs me.
Recording Industry
The legislators. The legislative environment has been allowed to become bloated and overcomplicated (which suits the lawyers). For the most part, the airlines have more-or-less understandable rules about what you can and can’t take on or off, however much we might not much like individual policies. When they introduce a new rule they don’t usually leave it as “you may not enter the airport until you have purchased a ticket; for security reasons, tickets may only be purchased in person at the airport.” There’s a presumption that rules should be rationalized from time to time. Pruning of the legal and tax codes is too rarely done, so that at this point it requires skills of politicians that to some extent are actively selected against by the voting process. Even more so, imagine trying to prune the constitution — “enjoyment of property” is arguably a disastrous way to enable gravitational accretion of wealth.
The banks and insurance come in second for non-transparency of their rules, which I suggest is why they earn our distrust. Anyone who doesn’t try to cut through it is relying on their expertise with a system they have created to deliberately bilk anyone who isn’t equally expert. Again, the airlines don’t have anywhere near that level of complexity of offerings and legally enforceable regulations.
Having a classicist wife, I point out that “decimation” means putting to death one of every ten men in a disgraced legion, chosen by lot (short straws are really not good). Good times. The political layer that is the target of your tirade was typically subject to more capricious and individual rules. Political life in large corporations is dangerous, and presumably exhilarating as well as rewarding if you can take the stress. You surely have some insight into the currents in Schenectady that you can’t blog about.
The railway industry made a decided effort to discourage passengers, with great success.
The standardized testing industry (specifically, ETS). All of their execs need to be executed immediately, as an example to the rest of the world. $130 to take a goddamn test? Fuck you very much.
Eric Lund gets it right. I really miss living where I could fly Southwest most of the time. I vaguely recall that air travel didn’t always seem like absolute hell, back then. Continental is not a bad option, though, compared to United, which I think is a reasonable candidate for most evil company on Earth, although organizations like Blackwater might give them a run for their money. (I’m trying not to think about the consequences of the United/Continental merger…)
Academic publishers. Their model: Get free content whose production is paid for by universities and governments, and then sell that content back to universities and governments.
“Airlines are near the top of my list of institutions that need to be completely demolished and then rebuilt from the ground up…”
Airlines are going the way of the Dodo when oil crashes; don’t worry about them. Focus instead on the corporation which has brought more worldwide stress and frustration into people’s lives than any other entity, including terrorist groups: Microsoft.
I’d recommend reading Ask the Pilot. People whine and whine and whine, yet they can get anywhere in the world now, cheaper and faster than ever before. Spoiled brats. All of us.