Airlines ignore customer service at their peril – just ask United

United Airlines’ CEO’s statement following the worldwide furore after a passenger was violently dragged from one of its aeroplanes last week hit a new low in corporate reactions. After Oscar Munoz – with the tact and subtlety of a drunk hippopotamus – said that the passenger was disruptive and beligerent and staff behaved well, United’s shares promptly plunged nearly £1bn. To add to its misery, there have been global calls for a boycott of United as well as endless online jokes.

Although this is an extreme case, airlines outside the Middle East have generally been surprisingly dismissive of the need to treat their customers well for years.

King of this arrogant attitude is of course Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary. Here’s some of his comments over the years:

• «You're not getting a refund so f**k off. What part of 'no refund' don't you understand?»
• «Germans will crawl bollock-naked over broken glass to get low fares.»
• «If drink sales are falling off, we get the pilots to engineer a bit of turbulence. That usually spikes sales.»

He’s said that passengers forgetting to print their boarding passes should pay an extra €60 for being so stupid, admitted that Ryanair bombarded passengers with as many in-flight announcements and trolleys as possible, and that putting coin slots on the toilet doors, and getting passengers to stand, were good ideas.

(Indeed, the idea of passengers standing during a flight is becoming more and more of a reality, especially as aerospace engineering professor Fairuz Romli has calculated, using a Boeing 737-300 as an example, that a standing cabin would lead to a 21 per cent increase in passenger capacity).

No free food on short haul flights

It’s not surprising that in 2013 Ryanair was considered to have the worst customer service out of Britain’s 100 biggest brands in a survey of the readers of the UK’s Which? magazine.

But Ryanair is not alone. British Airways has recently been criticised for trying to model its brand on the low-cost carrier model – but without the low-cost fares. It has scrapped free food on short haul flights and is even considering doing so on long haul. First and business class class passengers have recently noted the removal of such perks as fresh flowers in the loos, amuse-bouches with drinks, slippers and a sizeable washbag, and a smaller choice of magazines and spirits.

Frequent BA users have complained of reduced baggage allowances, ageing aircraft, fewer menu options and faulty entertainment systems - yet no reduction in fares.

Disatisfaction with BA has reached such heights that this week the company announced that it will be investing £400m to improve  long-haul business class.

United’s woes this week were triggered by the widespread airline policy of overbooking flights. Not all airlines do this, including Ryanair, surprisingly, but ones that do defend the unpopular policy by citing the tiny profit margins they have to operate by. However, other industries don’t work on a policy of selling more seats than are available, inevitably meaning that paying customers are regularly turned away. You don’t go to the theatre with the possibility of being turned away because too many people have been sold tickets - and the theatre industry is probably just as precarious as aviation.

As much personal space as that given to an animal

The distain the airline industry has for its passengers is demonstrated each April at Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg -– where wonderous (or torturous?) new seating plans enabling the cramming on of even more passengers are announced. Some offer about as much personal space as that given to an animal in the average factory farm.

Zodiac Aerospace’s Project HD31, for example, uses pop-down seats forming a kind of honeycomb pattern throughout the cabin. For every two passengers facing forward, one is facing backward, forcing people into an intimacy and eye contact with one another that’s usually more appropriate for a candlelit romantic meal.
 
More and more airlines are cramming more and more seats onto ‘planes. For example, Air New Zealand and America’s JetBlue, which once promised industry-best economy space today promise minimums of no more than 79-81cms per seat row when once they were offering 84-86cms. In January 2016 JetBlue started adding 12 extra seats to its A320s and reducing seat pitch. Some airlines, such as Spanish national carrier Iberia, have already hit the 79cm legal minimum per seat row. BA are reportedly increasing seat rows from nine to 10 on its Boeing 777s from 2018.
 
An increasing number of Boeing 777-300ER and 777-200ER aircraft around the world are now 10-abreast instead of Boeing’s recommended nine abreast. Every airline except Japan and All Nippon has opted for nine-abreast seating in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner - when Boeing had calculated that passengers should be a maximum of eight-abreast. Every easyJet Airbus A320 received after May 2016 has had six extra seats fitted than before. Wizz Air is opting for a more densely packed version of the A321, with 230 passengers, ten more than before. Etcetera etcetera.
 
This all seems especially puzzling considering the general increase in obesity and tallness around the world from year to year.
 
The brazen indifference to a pleasant customer experience all these airlines display has greatly helped the Gulf Carriers - Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways and Emirates – which have been making huge inroads into the worldwide aviation market. The Middle Eastern airlines put much more emphasis on customer service and lead the way with innovations in customer comfort, whether they be increased passenger space, private suites, showers or in-flight bars.
 
And which airline has taken a leaf out of the Middle Eastern airlines’ book and started to make customer king again, instantly reaping rewards in doing so? Why, none other than Ryanair.
 
Ryanair’s complete turnaround in its attitude to passengers, introducing such things as allocated seating, flights before 8am and after 9pm without incessant on-board announcements, free room for children’s car-seats and allowing a second bag without it incurring a fine resulted in an amazing 66 per cent increase in profits to €867m the first year of its change of attitude, 2015.
 
Take heed, United.