I’m a Southwest person. If they don’t go where I’m going, I’m a US Airways person. With US Airways alliances, sometimes they stick me on a United flight.
I haven’t flown on American in about 10 years — until a speaking client’s travel agency put me on an American flight this week.
On Wednesday, when I saw the lines, I thought there would be a bloggable customer service disaster. But BNA did well. They were handling the crisis very well (at least, they were on Wednesday morning). The only trouble I had was that I didn’t have any AA miles clout in achieving standby status. Luckily, I had plenty of time to get where I was going with relative little trouble.
The thing I kept thinking was that just a few years ago, people would have been incensed at the whole situation. All through the airport, there were just dead eyed accepting blank stares from passengers. The entire air travel industry has lowered the bar so much in the last few years that people are accepting of situations like this. I suppose if you mistreat customers enough, they eventually are satisified with subpar experiences.
Chris Houchens is a marketing speaker and the author of Brand Zeitgeist. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.
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