Cockpit Confidential (38 page)

But wait a minute, isn't there a Republic out there today? Indeed there is, which brings us to the annoying phenomenon of airline name recycling:

The existing Republic, one of the biggest regional carriers in the United States, is of no relation to the original. They've merely resurrected the name (using the Airways suffix in place of Airlines). And we've seen this before. At one time or another, we had two different reincarnations of Pan Am, two of Braniff, and a Midway. All were in-name-only outfits, and none lasted very long before joining their predecessors on that big tarmac in the sky. When USAir—as US Airways was called at the time—purchased Piedmont and Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) in 1987, these brands had been so admired that a decision was made to keep the names alive. They were given to a pair of USAir Express affiliates. Suddenly, PSA found itself headquartered in Ohio, while at airports along the Eastern Seaboard, passengers could (and still can) once again step aboard Piedmont. Sort of.

By the way, the doppelganger Republic recently acquired struggling Frontier Airlines. Frontier is, you guessed it, another appropriated moniker. The original Frontier, based in Denver, flew from 1950 until 1986. At this point, we're getting layer upon layer of rehash.

While it might have a ripped-off name, the new Frontier uses a clever outdoors theme as an all-around marketing tool. The tails of its Airbuses depict animals and birds native to North America, from mallards to sea otters to bobcats. “A Whole Different Animal” is the airline's wily catch phrase. Bringing us to yet another facet of air carrier identity: the slogan.

As with logos or liveries, a slogan needn't be particularly ingenious to be successful, but the right combo of sentiment and lyric rhythm go a long way. “We like you too,” jetBlue tells its customers—a bit presumptuous, maybe, but a capable tag for just that reason. Korean Air's “Excellence in Flight,” is another of my favorites. It's pleasantly succinct and has a canny double meaning, without the pandering, we-do-it-all-for-you sentiments we expect from airlines.

We've heard some classics over the years. United scored big with the touchy-feely warmth of “Fly the Friendly Skies,” while Pan Am's “The World's Most Experienced Airline” pretty much said it all. KLM's “The Reliable Dutch Airline” excelled in its plainspoken modesty. At Braniff, the most image-conscious airline of all time, it was “Coming Through with Flying Colors.” Perfectly apropos considering Braniff's rainbow-painted fleet.

On the other hand, Eastern once billed itself “The Wings of Man,” which was definitely over the top, as is British Airways' use of “The World's Favourite Airline.” I suppose BA was under pressure to devise something with one of those cute British spellings that so charm Americans, but technically, measured by boardings, it's the world's twenty-first favourite airline.

Other unfortunate campaigns include at least two from Delta Air Lines, whose affable “Delta Is Ready When You Are” was nixed for the gross vapidity of “Good Goes Around,” which sounded like the pitch for a diet cola. An earlier slogan was “We Get You There.” Passengers don't anticipate much from airlines anymore, but talk about the nadir of lowered expectations.

If nothing else, be coherent. Stepping into the cabins of SAS (Scandinavian Airlines System), one is prone to notice the immaculate furnishings and tasteful, understated colors. All very Scandinavian, you could say, except for the period a few years ago when SAS chose to include a scattering of bizarrely rendered English slogans as part of its décor. “There are three ways to travel,” announced a placard near the forward boarding door. “In an armchair. In your imagination. Welcome to the third.” What's that now? Later, when your meal arrived, the tray included conjoined packets of salt and pepper, upon which was written:

 

The color of snow,
The taste of tears,
The enormity of oceans.

 

Ah, what better for those quiet moments at 37,000 feet than the existential musing of the Scandinavian salt-poet.

And finally, advertising:

We have come a long, long way since the old National Airlines “Fly Me” campaign of the early 1970s. “I'm Lorraine,” a seductively posed flight attendant would say to the camera. “Fly me to Orlando.” Braniff had a similar pitch, called the “air strip,” showing attractive young flight attendants changing uniforms mid-flight to the sound of suggestive music.

But possibly the most memorable airline commercial I ever saw, if not entirely for the intended reasons, was the 1989 “winking eye” spot from British Airways. Conceived by the Saatchi & Saatchi agency and directed by Hugh Hudson (
Chariots of Fire
), the commercial featured hundreds of people costumed to represent various world cultures, assembled in a dramatic landscape near Salt Lake City, Utah. The voice-over was from actor Tom Conti, and the score, from Leo Delibes's opera “Lakme,” was adapted by Malcolm McLaren (of Sex Pistols and Bow Wow Wow fame). Seen from high above, the actors took on the shape of a gigantic face, which through the magic of carefully timed choreography proceeded to “wink.” It was a stunning and altogether creepy 30 seconds. Impressive for sure (you can watch it on YouTube), but I get nervous when masses of oddly dressed people are winking at me. What's worse, I forever associate British Airways with footage of the crowds in North Korean stadiums forming those enormous profiles of the Dear Leader.

In the meantime, as if you need to be reminded, “DING, You Are Now Free to Move About the Country.” Southwest's TV tag, with its signature chime, is a brilliant evocation of the discount carrier's key to success: affordable fares for everybody. Unfortunately, after hearing it for the five-thousandth time, it becomes grating enough to send any sensible person scurrying to a competitor.

It's no secret that U.S. carriers have a lot of catching up to do, as shown year after year in passenger surveys and industry awards. Almost everywhere—Asia, Europe, South America, even Africa—U.S. carriers are heartily outclassed by their foreign competitors. To be impartial, I might mention the knee-breaking seat pitch and treacherous cuisine of EgyptAir and Royal Air Maroc, but exceptions like these are uncommon.

How we got to such a shameful position is the subject of debate. Is it a fiscal thing? A cultural thing? A little of both? It has been a long, hard slide, and most folks agree that it began at or around the moment president Jimmy Carter attached his signature to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1979. From that moment on it was a race to the bottom, with competitive chaos inspiring a battle so fierce that, from the airlines' perspectives, undercutting the competition became more important than pleasing customers. By 2001, the few remaining extravagances were curtailed in the battening-down that began after September 11.

In my opinion, there's something systemic at hand that transcends the bottom line. It is easy to assume that with a falloff in profits comes a falloff in the quality of your product, but what we have today is the nadir of a prolonged decline that was ongoing even through the mid-1990s—the airlines' most profitable period in history. Overseas, in the meantime, even financially struggling companies are, for the most part, able to uphold their good reputations. For them, profitability and customer service are not zero-sum variables.

It has reached a point where an economy class seat in a foreign market is often on a par with a
first class
seat in the U.S. domestic market. I can vouch for that. My recent experiences aboard Korean Air, Emirates, Cathay Pacific, Turkish Airlines, Thai Airways, and LanPeru, all in economy, were as good or better than many first class segments I've flown within the United States. What made them so was a combination of things tangible and intangible; both physical comforts and onboard staff who were exceptionally attentive. We'll get to the latter in a moment. The former included things like extra-wide personal video screens with a comfortable headset, retractable footrests, seat-back USB connections, contoured tray tables, amenities kits, and full meals even on short flights. Cathay Pacific's long-haul planes have those shell-style economy seats mentioned earlier (
see cabin classes
) that even when fully reclined do not interfere with the person behind you. In Thai Airways' economy, hot towels are handed out before takeoff. They're not the cotton facecloth version like you'd get up front, but more of a heavy tissue, dispensed from a microwaveable box. It's a nice touch, and one that couldn't cost more than a few dollars per flight. And every airplane was immaculately clean, from the seat pockets to the lavatories.

None of those things, you'll notice, was especially luxurious. Honestly, in light of how inexpensive fares are, together with the razor-thin margins our airlines are forced to work with, luxury is out of the question. And that's all right. What the airlines haven't quite figured out yet, is that satisfactory service doesn't have to be elaborate. The average passenger doesn't expect to be pampered. What he or she expects and deserves are convenience, respectful employees, and a modicum of comfort. Nobody is lobbying for a return to the prissy pretensions found aboard planes in decades past. In the premium cabins, you've earned the right to some grandiloquent fun, if that's your thing, after handing over $7,000 for a sleeper seat to London or Tokyo, but a backpacking college kid in row 45 is not interested in living out a bourgeois fantasy of the 1940s. He is not covetous of a velvet-clothed cheese cart or a fussily presented plate of grilled salmon with braised fennel and leeks. What he yearns for is a clean, halfway comfortable space to sit in, something to watch or listen to, maybe a sandwich, and for God's sake an occasional bottle of water.

And something else too: workers who are polite and professional. While it may sound hackneyed, it's also patently true that passenger allegiance is ultimately earned or squandered not through material comforts, but through the attitude and dedication of your employees. I'll never say that anybody else's job in this mad business is an easy one, but if airline workers, as a group, cannot muster the necessary levels of commitment, then something is systemically wrong and needs to be fixed before any of the rest will matter. Extra legroom, on-demand video, and free drinks are much appreciated, it's true. But they're all for naught when you're dying of thirst in the middle of an overnight flight, with trash on your table from a meal that was served three time zones ago, because the flight attendants have spent the last five hours reading magazines in the galleys and ignoring the passengers. Or when a gate agent takes your boarding pass without so much as making eye contact. What I remember most about those flights aboard Korean, Cathay, Emirates, and the others was the attentiveness of the onboard crew. For the full duration of the flight, flight attendants were constantly coming up and down the aisles, asking if passengers needed water, coffee, juice, or anything else.

It is worth mentioning that in an industry where the average is six weeks, Singapore Airlines flight attendants endure
five months
of schooling. That is considerably longer than pilot training at most carriers. I am not suggesting that Singapore's model is a reasonable target for a U.S. major—it's not. For any U.S. airline, hoping to emulate the Singapores of the world would be at best quixotic and at worst financially ruinous. But the deeper point is that an airline's most valuable service asset is the professionalism, grace, and courtesy and of its staff. End of story.

And here's some advice: if you're going to do something, don't be half-assed about it. The smallest touches can leave an impression. If you're going to have pillows on your aircraft, they should be
useful
pillows. Flying across the Atlantic on Air France, economy class riders get a comfortable feather pillow wrapped in attractive fabric. It's neither a significant nor expensive item, but it's a
nice
one, and you remember it. On an American carrier, assuming there are pillows at all, they tend to be flimsy wedges of foam about the size of a slice of bread, with coverings that tear apart like tissue. Thanks for nothing. Or, if you're going to offer gratis cocktails, be dignified about it. Don't, as I heard one airline do, precede the meal service with a stern-sounding public address announcement reminding people that your generosity extends to “one, and one only, beverage per passenger.” That's about as tacky as it gets. The problem isn't the one-drink rule itself, but the idea of scolding people about it as if they were children.

So which airlines are tops, exactly? Let's see what SkyTrax says. SkyTrax is a prestigious air travel advisory group that ranks carriers on a scale of one to five stars. Currently only six airlines meet the group's strict criteria for five-star status, awarded only to those “at the forefront of product and service delivery excellence, often setting trends to be followed by other airlines.” They are, alphabetically: