The cattle are prowlin', the coyotes are
howlin'
Way out where the doggies bawl
Woo - hoo - woo - ooo - ti - de
Woo - hoo - ooo - oop - i - de - de
Woo - hoo - woo - ooo - ti - de
Yodel - odel - lo - ti – de
Singin’ his cattle call
Anyone remember that catchy but
smooth yodellin’ tune? Tex Owens wrote it way back in 1934, but it has jumped
out of the past and taken over my head. I’ve been humming it ever since David
Dao boarded a United Airlines flight a doctor and got off a patient.
Video clips of Dr. Dao being dragged
off the flight by the feet, screaming and bleeding, showed the entire world just
how far the airline industry has descended into passenger Hell.
Round ‘em up, stuff ‘em in and
ship ‘em out. Rawhide! Keep ‘em movin’, movin’, movin’, there’s a bigger bottom line at the end of this ride.
Commercial airline travel these
days is about being shoehorned into an increasingly crammed seating area and
fed tiny packages of stale pretzels with half-filled plastic cups of soda
water. Set up a compact laptop on your fold-down seatback tray and it gut
punches you when the guy in front tilts his seat back one inch.
All that after being pushed
through the airport check-in obstacle course, and the unpacking and undressing
at security. Then after being vacuum-packed into your seat comes the anxiety of
wondering whether a computer will bump you from the overbooked flight.
It didn’t used to be this way.
Back in the days before airline CEOs became bean counters, passenger comfort
and satisfaction were important. Claude Taylor, who ran Air Canada roughly 30 years
ago, personally replied to passengers who complained about service or offered
suggestions.
Then there was Max Ward, the bush
pilot who built a world-class airline with a passion to make flying an
enjoyable experience. And it was, until the Transport Canada bureaucracy drove Wardair out of the business.
Wardair gave passengers
first-class treatment for economy fares. Cabins were decorated in bright
holiday colours. Dinners featured filet mignon cooked on board to the
passenger’s preference. It was served on Royal Doulton china, with stainless
steel cutlery and linen napkins. Flight attendants hand delivered individual
food trays to each seat.
Drinks were free and coffee was
fresh percolated. Then there was that fabulous dessert trolley.
Max Ward has been quoted as saying:
“In the airline business, it’s about the journey, not the destination. It’s
much more than merely getting our valued customer from A to B, and the level of
service a passenger receives is indicative of exactly how the airline values
the customer.”
Airline passengers today know how
the carriers value them. Maybe you get to your destination, maybe you don’t. If
you don’t get bumped from a flight, you arrive at your destination burping up
stale pretzels.
United CEO Oscar Munoz presumably has
learned a bit about the value of customers since Dr. Dao was beaten up on one
of his airplanes. One of his first statements on the incident called Dr. Dao
“disruptive and belligerent” and praised the United crew.
When the incident caused millions
of dollars in United stock losses, Munoz threw on the reverse thrusters and has
been falling over himself apologizing to Dr. Dao, saying his treatment was
horrific and promising that nothing like this ever will happen again.
He certainly hopes not because the
United board has decided that his $18-million-a-year pay cheque now will be
tied to a new customer satisfaction pay scheme.
Max Ward never made that kind of
salary. He paid himself less than his pilots and ploughed the savings back into
building a customer friendly airline.
Meanwhile, I just can’t get The Cattle Call song out of my head. Tex
Owens said he wrote it after watching the snow fall in Kansas.
“My sympathy went out to cattle everywhere, and I just wished I
could call them all around me and break some corn over a wagon wheel and feed
them.”
Cracked corn, eh? Sounds a mite more
appetizing than stale pretzels.
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