Alsop's Small Thoughts

I Love Frontier Airlines!

Right now, I am really rooting for them to emerge from bankruptcy. I don't know if Frontier operates at the same rank as Southwest Airlines, particularly as enumerated in Joe Nocera's column in the New York Times this morning. But Frontier scored right up there with Fish. (for regular readers of this blog). 

I flew from Denver to San Francisco yesterday on Frontier and sat in seat 21F. Frontier has a relatively new policy of being cashless, which means that if you want to buy a drink or snack, you can only do it with a credit or debit card. I bought a drink. And left my wallet in my lap, anticipating I might need it again. And then forgot about it. When we landed (on time), I stood up and walked off the plane. I didn't discover until I was home and decided to go out for dinner that I didn't have my wallet. 

Freak out! I have had two wallets -- one for cash and one for plastic -- ever since my pocket was picked in France about 20 years ago and I lost both in a foreign land at the beginning of a trip. Better, my theory goes, to lose either cash or plastic, but not both. 

With the changes in the 20 years, my life is now contained in my plastics wallet: debit card, two credit cards (personal and business), office door and parking garage key, various membership cards, and most significant, my drivers license. Cash is nice, but when you arrive home on Friday evening before Memorial Day weekend, it's not the optimal time to lose your plastic. I could drive, use the cash I had on me, and go home. But I couldn't get new cash, get into my office, or do recreational shopping. I would have to procure my passport to get on my scheduled flight on Tuesday. Once traveling, I couldn't rent a car without a drivers license and I would not be able to pay for the hotel or other expenses unless I could get replacement cards over a three-day weekend. 

So I was freaking. I called Frontier Airlines main reservation number as soon I realized I had left the wallet on the airplane. Airlines don't want you to call them these days since it's so much more expensive than getting you to do the work online. So Frontier's IVR (Interactive Voice Response) System told me I would wait 12 minutes. Meanwhile, I searched online and found that they also have a toll-free number for lost or damaged baggage and for leaving stuff on the plane. Fortunately, the lady I eventually got (in about 11 minutes; always good to exceed expectations, particularly when your customer is freaking out) gave me the direct number for Frontier's baggage office in San Francisco. I called and left a message. I also called the central lost-and-found number and left a message there. 

Then what? Suffice it to say that I didn't sleep well between leaving those messages about 8:00pm on Friday night and the next morning. How long should I wait before I start cancelling my plastic and replacing it? I have to travel on Tuesday, but I doubt I can get more than a temporary ATM card before I leave. Once I left those messages, the quality of my weekend was in the hands of Frontier Airlines and I didn't know what to expect. If it was United Airlines or any of my other favorite examples of companies that don't design for servicing customers, I would know to just start the process. 

You can tell where I'm headed with this. At 8:15am on Saturday, I got a call from Frontier Airlines in which I learned that they had found and kept my wallet. I went down to SFO and picked it up. Life is returning to normal. But I couldn't let the incident go by without saying how positive I feel about Frontier Airlines, how this experience cements the fundamental experience I've had with flying on their airplanes, using their systems and dealing with their people. 

It's Too Bad About JetBlue

I get really loyal to great companies, so much so that I'll often overlook poor treatment. I was really loyal to JetBlue, until last week.

I fell in love with the idea of JetBlue when it first showed up. Treat customers right; use technology to make service work better; stay focused on the fundamentals of flying -- more legroom, television at every seat, low cost operations, reasonable fares. At the time, my main alternative was United Airlines, bloated, arrogant, disorganized and sloppy.

Now every airline has been through hell, and those that made it have had to make themselves a lot more like JetBlue (and Southwest, the real model for low-cost airlines). And something has happened to JetBlue that means it has lost its difference and is now just another cheap airline. Perhaps it was the operations mess at JFK a few years ago, when people were stuck on JetBlue airplanes on the ground for hours waiting for gates to open up. Perhaps it is because the founder (David Neeleman) left the company and turned the leadership over to people with "better" operating experience. Perhaps it's just too hard to differentiate an airline when gas costs so much.

Last week put me over the top on JetBlue. At RDU, the lady who checked us in told us that the inbound flight was late and we might miss our connection at JFK. When we reached the gate, the same lady (an excellent representative for JetBlue, by the way) came to the conclusion that we would almost certainly miss our connection and started working on finding an alternative. We ended up switching (on our own) to a United connection through Denver (that actually got us back to SFO sooner than we were scheduled to).

The problem: JetBlue insisted that we had to check ourselves out of the flight we abandoned before they would cancel the second half of the reservation. We couldn't do that because we had already left the terminal to get to the United gate (with about 10 minutes to spare). And once they agreed to cancel the reservation, they charged so many change fees that they refunded less than half the return portion of the fare and only as a credit on future travel on JetBlue. It was clear that the attitude of the JetBlue representative was one of reluctance: reluctant to help, reluctant to provide service. But the reason we switched was because of JetBlue's airplane being late and making us miss our connection.

That attitude isn't what made me loyal to JetBlue in the first place. That attitude is pretty much what I get from United, American or any other legacy airline. (United performed exactly what they promised and treated us better than any other traveler, simply because we've flown a lot on their airline.) It feels like the accountants have taken over at JetBlue. (My apologies to the accountants reading this.) And it's hard to see one of my favorite companies lose its way and fritter away the brand loyalty it worked so hard to create in the first place.