Chances are, those who fly either US Airways or American Airlines do so because of a loyalty program. Not because of superior service.

US Airways and American fail to do an adequate job of getting passengers from point A to point B.
The most common metric to measure airline success is the on-time performance rate. Airlines have become so satisfied with mediocrity that they boast when their on-time percentage is above 85 percent.

What kind of success is that? What if your car only started 85 percent of the time? Or if your soda was carbonated only 85 percent of the time? Or if your cable only worked 85 percent of the time?

Chances are, you would switch cars, sodas and cable providers.

Powerful brands cause people to pay more and inconvenience themselves to use them, which is not true with airlines. Passengers choose airlines based on price, schedule and loyalty programs.
Consolidation of airlines is not done to provide a better service. It’s done to pick up additional airports and aircraft. Unfortunately, as the number of airlines dwindles prices jump, service sags and brand becomes irrelevant.

With this merger there will be just four major domestic carriers: United, Southwest, Delta, and the “new” American.

The problems that plagued American to the point of bankruptcy and the sloppy service from US Airways will remain. Who knows, conditions may worsen.

Is there room for an airline to develop a brand that attracts travelers beyond price, schedule and service?

Absolutely. With the consolidation of two inferior carriers, the opportunity is greater than ever.

It has been a while since I had anything scathing to say about US Airways. Of course, I have not flown that airline for a while.

Coincidence? Not on your life.

Here is the latest example of how a brand can be completely out of touch with the needs of its customers:

Last night, I flew back to Greensboro from a client meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. Because of tight scheduling, I was forced to fly USAirways, which requires a stopover in Charlotte.

The initial leg from Greensboro to Charlotte had included a 45-minute hold on the tarmac because of air traffic control issues in Charlotte. The pilot – who represents the brand when you are on the runway – assured all of us that we would still make an “on-time arrival” because the delays are “already built into the schedule.”

Lucky us.

Things were just maddeningly inconvenient on the way out, but they became positively gothic on the return trip.

On arrival in Charlotte from Birmingham, the flight board told us to head to the gate for an on-time departure. But our 9:30 p.m. boarding time came and went without so much as an announcement. At 10, we were told the flight was delayed until 11.

With experience as my teacher, I headed to the rental car counters so I could drive the hour and a half back to the Greensboro airport. Unfortunately, it was race week in Charlotte.

“We have zero cars” the Enterprise attendant sighed. “Zero”.

Defeated, I went back through security to take my seat at the gate with the rest of the deflated passengers. Hoping against hope that the flight would eventually take off, two hours later, I was still waiting. Each hour brought word of further delays.

Worse, actual news became a guessing game as passengers tried to decode such revealing things as nods and eye contact on the part of the gate attendant who made it absolutely clear that this delay was a major inconvenience for her, telling us she was “Past due my time to get off.”

No one felt sorry for her. At that moment, she represented the brand.

At midnight she had an announcement. Actually, a rapid string of announcements that I’ll relay here with no editorial comment.

Ready?

“The flight to Greensboro is further delayed. We will not know the take-off time until 2 a.m. You can see the customer service desk to rebook on the first flight out in the morning. However, until the flight is actually cancelled, US Airways is not responsible for lodging. We will not, I repeat, not be taking bags off of the aircraft for those who have been asking until we know for certain that the flight is cancelled. No, we do not have a shuttle bus to take you to Greensboro. Thank you for choosing US Airways.”

I think they should merge with American Airlines. They share a brand: Bankrupt.

One is financially broke. The other is ethically broken. I’ll leave it to you to decide which is which.

On a US Airways flight yesterday from Philly to Greensboro, I experienced a situation which both epitomizes my discontent with US Airways as well as the airline industry as a whole.

While sitting a plane with a dysfunctional air conditioning system in the sweltering heat in Philadelphia, one of my fellow passengers peered out her window as the gate checked baggage was being carted from the jet bridge to the cargo compartment of the plane we were on. During transit, one of the bags, a bright red roller board, fell from the cart and sat there on the tarmac, unnoticed by the ground crew. The passenger, who was sitting directly in front of me, very politely got the attention of the stewardess as she walked by and informed her of the situation. The stewardess retorted, “Is it your bag?” to which the passenger very politely responded, “no, but I thought you would just like to know.” Without hesitation or any apparent care, the stewardess said, “Well, baggage is not my department, there is really nothing I can do.” With that she turned and walked away.

The passengers around me were stunned. Of those in my immediate proximity, all but the passenger who reported this unfortunate incident, were business travelers in their final leg to get back home. One of them even remarked, “There’s the new US Air for you.”

I bit my tongue, knowing that what I might say would have no bearing on what happened. But in my mind and with rose colored glasses of being a branding consultant, I was furious. At that moment, this stewardess who is supposed to be the face of the US Airways brand, reinforced everything I have been conditioned to expect from US Air – poor customer service, incessant delays, and a general lack of pride in what they do.

I was returning from a trip in which I had discussed with my client the importance of making sure those who have the most customer “face time” are trained and evaluated on their ability to be good brand stewards and I was confronted by the exact situation that is the antithesis of properly caring for your brand. In that simple interaction, the stewardess demonstrated not only that she does not see the US Airways brand as being important but that US Airways as a whole does not see their brand as important. Sure she may have been “trained” to handle that situation better, but she clearly believes she works in a corporate culture where brand is not important else she would have happily handled that situation differently.

How much effort would it have really taken to tell that passenger, “Thank you very much for letting me know, because we at US Air care about the service we provide, let me go and inform the ground crew.” Does creating a culture that is focused on making the miserable experience of traveling for business better through words and simple actions really cost THAT much? Seems like it costs less than having disgruntled passengers in the long run.

I guarantee you that if she had demonstrated even the slightest bit of pride in the US Airways brand, those business travelers around me would have remarked at how impressed they were with her ability to take action and exhibit caring for the brand of the “new US Air.”

Perhaps you may have not heard, but Delta Airlines recently charged a group of 34 soldiers coming back from Afganistan a total of $2,800 to bring their baggage back home from war. The fees were in “extra baggage,” which, in some cases, included military weaponry. I fly a lot and I am trying to imagine the conversation that occurred as the ticket agent checked these soldiers in to their flights.

“Yes, you have 4 extra bags and that will cost you $200.”

“I am sorry ma’am. My orders say that we will not be charged for bags and I am coming back home from Afghanistan after almost two years. The army paid for this ticket.”

“I understand, but it is our policy to collect for additional baggage and I am sorry that we can not make exceptions. If we start making exceptions for you, then we have to make them for everyone.”

“This is completely wrong, one of these bags has my field weapons in it. I do not even own those. But I want to see my wife and the little girl I have not seen in almost two years so here.”

“Enjoy your flight”

While I am sure my version of the conversation was both softened from the perspective of the returning soldier and a bit snark, clearly there is no thought placed in the value (or lack there of) in the Delta brand by its employees and executives. In most airports, the presence of members of our Armed Forces seem as common as Starbucks. I have no doubt that Delta has serviced members of the Armed Forces before and I hope and assume that this is simply an aberration. But what it shows is the lack of thought about the Delta brand in general.

I say this because the best brands train their employees to make decisions that are in the best interest of the brand first – even if those decisions cost the company money. It is the ability to make those decisions that help good brands become great. Nordstrom does it. Apple does it. Disney does it too along with a host of other brands I am not naming. Empowering employees to make decisions autonomously shows that management believes in and promotes the value of their brand.

Delta obviously does not value it brand in the same way as the likes of Apple and Nordstrom. But does that surprise anyone who travels for a living?

Advertising on airplanes. I talked about it a few weeks back when I first heard it was in the works, but I just saw it first hand on a recent U.S. Airways flight.

On my way back to Greensboro, I let down the tray table in front of me and saw a full tray table advertisement for Verizon’s 4G service. I should not have been surprised to see it, as recent articles in the news have talked about it. However, seeing the first hand usage of it was a bit unsettling.

What was once a glamorous way to travel has, in my lifetime, has seen a continual loss of brand equity due to a focus that is defined by price. Rather than working to establish a brand message that is meaningful to the traveler and trying to increase traffic through preference, U.S. Airways and other airlines have decided instead to shift focus even farther from the consumer and using advertisers as their means of profitability.

The problem is that ticket prices certainly are not free. If, as a consumer, you believe you get what you pay for, you might be willing to pay slightly more, or at least fly more frequently, if you believed the service you were receiving equaled that price. Instead, I now have advertisements on my tray table, which, by their “in your face” nature, turns me off to the product and makes the airline seem scummy. The resources of airlines is better spent elsewhere: On the brand.

This recent move should come as no surprise, of course. From allowing just enough fuel in their airplanes to make it to their destination, to overbooking, to charging more for a ticket that boards in Greensboro and has a layover in Charlotte then taking one that leaves directly from Charlotte, U.S. Airways seems to be surprisingly good at sacrificing customer preference with corporate bean counting.

The biggest pitfall in the recent U.S. Airways move is that if it advertises more heavily, consumers will begin to devalue their service more. Whether this decrease of value leads to less overall travelers or demand requires even more aggressive price competitiveness from U.S. Airways, it only lends it self to more advertising to make up the difference.

But hey, maybe they can just change their farewell to passengers to “Thank you for flying the subway of the sky.”

There’s a reason why all the “cracks” in the Southwest Airlines planes won’t hurt the airline at all: Because Southwest has a brand.

As we’ve said before in a detailed study a few years ago, Southwest is one of the few airlines that actually has any meaning in the marketplace. Therefore, it is another example of how we will forgive a brand if it has been meaningful to us.

Now, if this had happened to Delta or American, it would have been a different story. Because travelers have no emotional connection to those brands, the damaged aircrafts would give us another reason to ignore those brands.

Southwest has developed a position in the airline industry by focusing on low prices, no baggage fees and a model in which you line up in a kind of “first buy, first serve” order to nab a seat. It’s not my preferred way to fly, but the model and its operations are fulfillments of its “You are free to move about the country” brand.

The Southwest brand says that, now that you pay less, you can travel. With that brand, it is one of the few airlines to post increases in revenue over the last few years, although it probably won’t challenge the market leaders amid all the recent mergers.

But the power of brand is how you overcome communication crises. When Apple’s iPhone 4 had issues, nobody cared because Apple had a brand. If BP had a brand, even the justified outrage over the Gulf Coast oil spill would have been tempered.

Southwest (and Boeing) certainly need to take care of this issue (and, really, it’s a sign that airlines need to spend some money buying new planes and updating the old ones because most fleets are becoming outdated).

But having a brand means Southwest will weather this storm because, in a sense, it has already been forgiven.

This past weekend, Boeing successfully performed a test flight of its 747-8 Intercontinental. Being someone who spends much of their time using air travel for transportation, I have to wonder why is it that airplanes seem to progressively get more and more advanced, and the airlines themselves seem to follow an exponential slope in the other direction.

The Boeing 747-8I offers airlines the lowest operating costs and best economics while also catering to increased environmental performance. When quantified, these adjustments equate to 16 percent better fuel economy, 12 percent lower costs, 16 percent less carbon emissions per passenger, and noise reduction of 30 percent over the 747-400.

I shift my attention to the airlines, which have taken steps in the opposite direction and have avoided  making any improvements whatsoever. We now have to pay to check a bag, we have to fly airlines that constantly overbooks their flights, never taxis out on time, and from personal experience charge more to take a flight that leaves from Charlotte than one that departs from Greensboro and connects through Charlotte.

If only the airline’s business-to-consumer model could learn a bit from the manufacturer’s business-to-business model.

Brand is a fragile thing. Attempting  to resurrect a brand is much more difficult then launching one. In the case of the airlines, they all went the route of making price their differentiator and this has inevitably led to a market where price is the only qualifier for the consumer and no one single carrier has created preference through it. Even Southwest, which positions itself against bag fees, doesn’t deliver an emotional message of why as a consumer you should identify with a company that takes that position, they always make it about a dollars and cents saved proposition.

Brand has the power to transcend table stakes likes price. If the airlines do not change their focus they will continue to flounder and the quality and craftsmanship of the aircraft will matter little.

In the never ending saga of brand blunders by the airlines over the years, United has once again signaled to the world that its brand is not worth protecting.

Recently, United created an in-house media company to allow advertisers to market within the plane itself.  In an effort to build additional revenue streams, United has come up with the idea to use the interiors of its planes as “space for rent” for advertisers. Chase, among a couple of others, have taken the bait and are in the process of rolling out United’s newest in-flight “service.” I  am reminded of sitting on a New York subway with ads plastered where the wall and ceiling meet. The airlines are already treating their passengers like cattle, now they are admitting it openly.

Long gone are the days of “Come Fly the Friendly Skies,” with those once friendly skies being now replaced by “ad littered skies.” Sadly, it appears that United does not seem to care at all. By not caring about subjecting its already disgruntled customers to ads on a plane, it is in fact saying it does not care about the flying experience. United is placing ad revenue ahead of its customers.

But to be honest, I am not really surprised, just disappointed. This is just another disappointment  in a long series of them from the entire airline industry. I guess it is only a matter of time before United introduces plastic seats and hand holds for the stand up passengers. Don’t laugh. That is coming.

New United Logo

If you have ever read this blog, you know I hate to fly and, more to the point, I really hate the airlines. This is a real problem for me because, as a course of business, I have to do it pretty frequently.

I constantly hold onto the small glimmer of hope that one day the airlines will take the steps necessary to fix their problems, even from a brand perspective.

Needless to say, that already small glimmer faded even more when I saw what United and Continental are doing with. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me as I am used to being disappointed by United. But like someone trapped in a dysfunctional relationship, I am always trying to look for the best in the airline whose best is a shadow of the past.

It’s not that the new identity is so horrific I shield my children’s eyes from its carnage. But it represents a sheer waste of an opportunity to capitalize on this merger in a way that strengthens the brand for flyers. The forceful combination of the United and Continental logos are symptoms of a much greater problem with the airline industry as whole: They simply do not care about their customers.

Want proof?

After visiting the link above, read the “Deal Details.”  It says, “The combined company will provide a platform for increased profitability and sustainable long-term value for shareholders. It is expected to realize $1.0 billion to $1.2 billion in net annual synergies by 2013, including between $200 million and $300 million of net annual cost synergies.”

Where is the customer in this?  Yes, there is some copy that this merger will create the biggest airline with the world’s most “comprehensive” network. Why would that matter to me? It seems this is all really just about the merger – the logo says as much – and stockholder value. It’s just about piling more cattle on the cattle cars and capitalizing on economies of scale.

United and Continental have really missed an opportunity here to take a true leadership role in the airline industry.  The “new” logo, I guess, is supposed to be a reflection of the merged companies with special emphasis on the “global network” vis a vi the Continental globe.

But I ask you, isn’t having a route to get someone where they want to go the definition of an airline?  Instead of defining who the new United/Continental is and how it is can be an extension of the aspirations and beliefs of its target audience (including the desire to be treated like a person rather than a cow), it is simply restating what it has always said, “We can get you to where you want to go.”

Come on United and Continental, you can do better than that.

“Safety is our number one priority,” extolled the United Airlines customer service representative I had pigeon holed into explaining how an airline can remain in business when six flights had been canceled on me in two weeks. During the same time period, four others had been so delayed that I missed two meetings and had driven five hours from Traverse City, Michigan, to Detroit after my only fight home had been canceled from Grand Rapids. “Sure it is”, I sarcastically responded. ”If I ran my business like you do, I would not have a business.”

I felt sorry for the guy actually. Considering my experience with the airline (a 1K flyer, meaning I spend my life at airports and hypothetically I get better treatment because of my “preferred status”), I can only imagine how horrible this man’s life must be these days. Just not as bad as the infamous JetBlue flight attendant.

So let’s put it all on the table. The airline apologizes for the canceled flights, but those cancellations were due to mechanical problems and “Remember, Mr. Dougherty, safety is our number one priority.”

What am I supposed to say to that?  “I don’t’ care about safety, just get the #&?%#@# plane in the air.”  Hardly. But the truth is the reason for all the mechanical issues has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with the fact that the airlines are flying an aged fleet of jets and pushing them to the very limit of endurance in an effort to squeeze every dollar out of the old birds.  Safety is a convenient catchall defense for bad business practices, a terrible business model and a failure to understand that getting somewhere and getting there on time are as different as fast food and haute cuisine.

Years ago, I had a Professor at Trinity College in Dublin tell me that the greatest work of Irish fiction was the Dublin bus schedule. Well, the greatest work of American fiction is the airline schedule. Looking back, it may just be the world’s greatest work of fiction.