An Open Letter the the Airlines

Dear Every-Terrible-Airline-I-Have-Dealt-With (and that's most of them):

We are your customers.  We pay you money, and you provide us with a service.  That service is getting us safely and comfortably to our destinations.  Being that we always provide you with the bill you are owed, you really need to step up to the plate to remember what your purpose is and do it well.

One way you may try to accomplish this is through some improved training of your flight attendants.  I believe in being extremely kind and polite with everyone I encounter in public, assuming they treat me the same way.  So I cannot imagine why a flight attendant would ever give me a hard time about anything.  And yet they do.  I'm sure they encounter some very difficult passengers, but is it not their job to handle these folks with class and grace?  I've dealt with snark, ineptitude, and outright rudeness too many times to count.  The days of cute stewardesses in blue Pan-Am dresses may be long behind us now, but the need for friendliness is not.

As you know, when a human being is traveling to a new destination for business or pleasure, it is only natural that they should want to bring clothes and incidentals with them.  I think that your customers are paying enough and giving up enough that they should be provided with planes that can accommodate two suitcases, provided they are not too heavy.  And I know the liquids thing is a TSA requirement, but in my opinion, it amounts to discrimination.  I am a woman with thick, long hair and I need a lot of products to tame it.  If I check them, my bag could (and often does) get lost.  If my bags get lost, I don't always even get a toiletry kit (as if those contents would be helpful to me), an apology, or money to buy new clothes or incidentals- even if my bag doesn't come back to me until the next day.  I feel you should invest in technologies that do exist that would allow better screening and the ability to bring liquids on the planes.  Now, maybe this in turn would raise our rates.  I think passengers would either like really cheap rates and then would be more forgiving of everything they deal with, or are willing to pay more to not have to suffer so many indignities.  Air travel economics is indeed complicated, but the basic tenets of capitalism should hold- and consumers need better choices.

In closing, I would like to address the issue of missed flights due to lay-overs.  I have seen flights close their doors and sit at their gates not allowing people in who were late to due to the airline's lateness of a prior flight.  I have seen flight attendants totally unwilling to say anything to help a worried passenger who knows the flight they're on is going to screw them over.  I have seen airline personnel be extremely rude to be people who have tried desperately to make their layover, accepting no responsibility whatsoever and not even offering ADVICE on where to stay in their layover city or how to get there.  It's deplorable.

For all of the awfulness out there, there are definitely kind and capable airline personnel, and even entire airlines that seem to try to go that extra mile (I've been almost always impressed by the way jetBlue handles everything).  I thank them.  And I appreciate that most of the time, we all reach our destinations safely.  If the trip could be more enjoyable, that would be nice too.

Love,

GirlFriday