Chris Elliott argues that airlines, hotels, and car rental agencies have gone too far with their kiosks and web-check-in.

Over-automating the travel business is bad news for people, though. Removing the personal touch forces us to work harder when we’re on the road. That’s exasperating, infuriating and sometimes embarrassing. And over the long term, it’s likely to drive us away from these companies that have poured money into technology at the expense of customer service. It’s time these airline, hotel and car rental companies realize there are still some things a machine can’t replace.

I’m not entirely in agreement. Sure, I like the personal touch as much as the next guy, and there’s lost opportunity to interact with our fellow humanity when kiosks are made ubiquitous, but does “removing the personal touch” really “force us to work harder when we’re on the road” ?? If anything, the opposite may sometimes be true.

I’m a big fan of some kiosk transactions (that is, when you can’t do it online…) Simple check-in for flights? Reprinting a boarding pass when I bone-headedly leave my online check-in printouts at my desk? (Like I did last week.) Love the kiosk.

I’m even a fan of the kiosk for the rental car transaction. I just used a kiosk a week ago at National Car Rental. It was quick, simple, and intuitive.

For hotels, I’m less of a booster. I’ve used the kiosk before, and it has spit out crappy rooms next to the elevator or the ice machine. The human may be better here.

But where kiosks aren’t available, and human help is the only option, it’s often far more time-consuming and tedious. Without a kiosk option, you have to wait for everyone in front of you to finish their business before you can conduct yours. The couple who’s never flown before, with the excess baggage? Enjoy your wait! What’s worse, pulling your own boarding pass, or waiting for others to be served?

I know that the travel companies, like banks, only put in the kiosks to cut their own costs. Especially their labor costs. And, especially in light of Monday’s Labor Day holiday, I recognize that there are people who lost their jobs to the machine. But in my opinion, throwing the kiosks out is not the answer, either. I’d argue that segmenting the market into those who need the human touch and those who don’t is good for customers — as long as those who need the human touch have the option.

So I put it to you: What’s your view of the kiosk? Vote in the poll below, or hit the comments with your kiosk tales…

Reader Joanna writes:

Is it worth paying an extra $20 to get an extra 1000 miles? United has a deal where you pay the fee and get bonus miles. My husband and I are hoping to fly to France next year, and we could use the extra miles. What do you think?

$20 for 1000 miles means two cents per mile… that’s about what miles should be worth. That’s my minimum-value target for cashing in miles, though I try for higher. Most folks get a lot less per mile than that, if they cash in their miles at all.

(See here for a breakdown of how miles are valued.)

United’s offer is a discount to their normal “miles-for-sale” offer, so it’s an upgrade from that. But it’s not really a steal.

A year ago, Northwest Airlines started an identical offer. (They called it “supersizing.”)

My advice: Only pay up for this offer if you KNOW you are about to cash in miles for something, and you’re just shy of the “free” ticket. And use it only — only! — as a last ditch effort to bump up the account. Don’t use it to hoard. It’s not always easy to cash in your points, so you don’t want to just pay money willy-nilly to an airline. And if you’re effectively pre-paying for that “free” ticket. For most people, the offer isn’t worth it.

(gratuitous image of Three Mile Island lamp… Three MILE… get it… har har har…)

Upgraded… or is it Downgraded?: Southwest boarding
Southwest Airlines has been test-marketing alternate boarding processes for a few weeks now. (Such as the family-only section test.) Now, in one of the latest tests, they are having passengers line up in the precise order in which they checked in. Not just Group A, B, or C. First person to check in is #1. This makes checking in early all the more important, since getting the last A pass is effectively the same as getting the first B pass. Seems like a major revision of their model (again, it’s only in a market test, not rolled out everywhere.) Reader Eric sent me this photo (I’m not sure of the original source), showing an example of the new lineup procedure. Is this really an improvement?? (Thanks, Eric!)

Downgraded: Ryanair check-in counters
I remember when First Chicago, now part of Chase, started charging a fee whenever bank customers used a real human bank teller. The fee was meant to force customers to use the ATMs. Now, it’s the web: Europe’s WalMart of the sky Ryanair is rolling out a new fee for customers who don’t check in online. Starting September 20, passengers will need to pay £2 or €3 (about US$4) if they check in at the airport. Swank.

Upgraded: The human touch
The counterpoint to the all-automated Ryanair way, perhaps: Scott McCartney has a nice feature on human touches that make the inflight experience more enjoyable. In this case, it’s United pilot Denny Flanagan, who hands out business cards with handwritten notes thanking customers for their business, orders takeout for passengers when there’s a diversion, and phones parents of unaccompanied minors when there’s a flight delay. Wow. Give that man a bonus. (Or maybe just his old pension back.)

Downgraded: Paper tickets
Rest in peace, muchachos. With e-tickets to become the international standard for all air travel on June 1, 2008, the International Air Transport Association placed its last giant order for paper tickets. 16.5 million of them will have to last through next May. Then they’ll be “collector’s items.” Stock up and save?

Reader Mara writes:

My husband and I are planning on flying to Milan from Houston later this fall using US Airways miles, and I’m wondering what the best option for connections would be. The agent tells me we can connect in Philadelphia, or there are Star Alliance flights we can take with Lufthansa, United, or Austrian. We know from reading your site that London Heathrow is bad for connections, and we would love some advice on where to change planes most conveniently. What should we avoid? Unfortunately there’s no Houston to Milan flight we can take! Thanks!

I applaud your strategizing, Mara, and I think you’re well on your way, simply knowing that Heathrow is a place to avoid. (Don’t believe me? Watch the video.)

There’s no nonstop Houston to Milan, so you’re going to be changing planes for this itinerary. So the question is, as you suggest, where to do it.

My general advice for travel to/from the United States: Try to avoid changing planes upon arriving in the US from overseas. You go through passport control and customs at your port of entry, not your final destination, so you have to claim your bags, possibly submit them to search, re-check those bags for your connection, probably change terminals, and hope you’ve left enough time to make the next flight. Not so in most of Europe: Connections are much, much easier in Europe, with customs inspections at your final destination rather than your entry point.

At the same time, the last thing I want to do after an overnight flight is to get onto another plane. Sure, I’ve done it, and sometimes it’s unavoidable, but my preference is always to have the overnight long-haul end at my destination. On overnight flights, try to arrive at your final destination, instead of at a hub requiring a connection.

So, practically, what does this mean for you? On your flight TO Italy, I would make connections in the U.S. and fly over the Atlantic direct to Milan. On the return, I’d make my connection somewhere in Europe and fly the long haul straight to Houston.

A caveat: These itineraries will usually involve different airlines on either end. That could get pricey for cash-money fares, even with codesharing. Try ITA’s search tool to find the best connections, and to get a sense of prices. Kayak.com may be of help, too, for mixed-airline itineraries.

But you said you’re using frequent flyer miles. Good! This is one of the less-celebrated benefits of the “free” ticket: You can mix your itinerary, with one airline going over and a different alliance member coming back. Use that flexibility to your advantage. And note: You won’t be able to view all the options online. You have to call the airline that you have the miles with — in your case, US Airways.

A quick search on arbitrary dates yields a flight from Houston to Philadelphia, and Philadelphia to Milan (all on US Airways). Coming back, consider Lufthansa from Milan to Frankfurt, and continuing from Frankfurt to Houston. Those flights follow the rules I set out, letting you avoid connections in Europe in the morning after your arrival, and skipping the tense fear that you might not make your connecting flight in the US, once you’ve dealt with Homeland Security’s passport control and customs inspections.

Either way you go, good luck, safe travels, and enjoy Milan!

(image)

It was a quiet flight yesterday evening between Hartford and Washington-Dulles, and the seat belt sign was off. I got up to use the restroom, to be shocked when I opened the door to find someone sitting there already. Hey now! But the real shocker came seconds after I returned to my seat: Just as I was starting to buckle up again, our plane was jolted with severe turbulence. And not just jolted — jolted hard. The left wing tilted skyward, with the Boeing 737 at an apparent 45-degree angle. The pilots corrected our angle shortly thereafter and took us to a different altitude with dispatch, but it was a rough moment, even for seasoned travelers.

I was glad not to have been standing in the lavatory at that time, as I had originally planned… Or, perhaps better, the passengers and cleaning crew who would have followed me into there should be glad I wasn’t standing in there…

Grabbing my headphones, I tuned in to channel 9 on the audio system (on United, I’m a sucker for listening to the cockpit communications when I’m not reading or working) to hear what was going on. The first officer came on a few seconds later to inform the tower that we had encountered severe wake turbulence.

The culprit? Sixteen nautical miles ahead, a Virgin Atlantic Airbus A340 was barreling down the Eastern Seaboard on its way to Washington-Dulles, just like us. It took about two minutes for us to cross the same airspace as the Airbus.

Two minutes, I thought? Sixteen nautical miles? Well in excess of the minimum 5 nm separation between planes in our size classes. How could we get so powerfully smacked by turbulence from a plane so far ahead of us?

For an answer, take a look at this 1-minute video, filmed by NASA in the 1970s to test the effects of wake turbulence. A widebody L-1011 passes through a smoke screen, which indicates the waves that follow an aircraft. Note how long it actually takes for the violent swirls to actually appear:

And here’s a 30-second clip of a four-engine military C-5A, creating a lovely vortex. It’s like a vertical hurricane cloud, really impressive in its force:

Seeing that swirl eventually appear, the violent bumps we felt last night make much more sense. Thankfully, it was just a brief shake-up, and, other than surprising a fellow passenger in the lavatory, the only blemish on an otherwise pleasant, on-time flight.

In a little over an hour, my wife and I are traveling on a family trip to attend a wedding. But it occurred to me that, in the course of planning and booking this trip, I ignored just about every rule that I set for myself, and which I recommend to others. Here’s what I did wrong:

1) Flying at the end of the day.
The flights are the last ones of the day heading to our desired destinations (we have a connection). If either of these flights is canceled, we’ll be out of luck.

2) Connecting, instead of flying nonstop.
My wife and I will have the enormous pleasure (groan) of milling about Washington Dulles International Airport this evening, watching the moon buggies cross the airport grounds. Two flights means twice as many opportunities for getting stuck. (Non-stops were available, but at an extortionary premium, or from a distant alternate airport.)

3) Flying at the end of the month.
In this instance, this was impossible to avoid, since the wedding is happening this weekend, and there’s not much we can do about rescheduling other people’s nuptials. But late-in-the-month flights risk cancellation because of pilot shortages. Pilots are only permitted to fly a certain number of hours per month, so if they meet their quotas early on, they’re grounded at the end of the month. The last week of every month gets riskier.

4) Flying in regional jets.
To fly to Dulles, we’ll be sitting in a 50-seat Embraer 145. Not as miserable as the 50-seat Canadair Regional Jet, if you ask me, but no picnic. But putting comfort aside: A 50-seat flight is still more likely to get delayed or cancelled during irregular operations (such as bad weather) because they don’t move as many people around as the Boeings and Airbuses.

Looking for a silver lining? At least 1) we’re not checking bags (though our roll-aboard will be gate-checked on the regional-jet flight, since those RJ’s don’t have overhead bins that amount to anything), 2) we’re earning miles (…which we’ve got in spades), 3) we’re upgraded on the second leg of the trip tonight (a whopping 1-hour flight, but hey, it’s an upgrade), and, most importantly, 4) we’re going to the wedding and celebrating.

Wish us luck.

Foodie tourist traps, highbrow and low
Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed… museum campus? The Big Mac Museum is open for business. Not your speed? How about the uber-bombastic Napa Wine Castle? Sounds like the supersizing of wineries. (Thanks, Dr. Vino!)

“Secrets From the Tower”
Fox News Chicago has a short “tell-all” report featuring a former Chicago O’Hare air traffic controller. My favorite snippet: “ORD controllers still use slips of paper to control traffic.” But take heart, the controllers take delays “as personally as you do.” (Thanks, Steve!)

Delta starts a blog
Corporate blogs are actually remarkably rare in the travel business. (Of the biggies, Bill Marriott has a blog, and Southwest has their blog.) Delta Airlines now joins the fray. Welcome to the blogosphere!

The re-mystification of myths
The TSA keeps trying to play “Mythbusters,” which I’m sure has the folks at the Discovery Channel doing cartwheels of excitement, seeing their brand name attached to the TSA. The problem is, the myths aren’t really busted. Here’s their attempt to refute the ban on liquids. But as Chris Elliott busts the supposedly busted myth, you can’t just say that liquids are dangerous “because we said so.” There are plenty of others who disagree, after all, and who come back with science-based arguments. (More here, for example; or read most anything Bruce Schneier has written in the last six years.) The TSA simply has lost its credibility, and it’ll take more than a few decontextualized videos of stuff going “Boom!” to make me feel water is dangerous. Their mythbusting efforts? Busted.

Down the memory hole
A China Airlines plane recently blew up (no one was injured) but what does the airline do to manage their image? They white out their name and logo from the plane. China Airlines explosion? What China Airlines explosion? Full story and before-and-after photos here.

Videos like this clip of the hulking Airbus A380 landing safely after approaching the runway in crosswinds — practically flying in sideways — make me feel just that little smidgen safer. When I’m getting onboard a flying hunk of metal jammed full with suitcases and sweaty humanity, it’s good to know that the plane can land even under these conditions. It just gives me the warm fuzzies. Those fuzzies would probably go away rapidly, once the pilot announces that our gate won’t be ready for an hour, and the toilets are backed up. But let’s keep it positive for now, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the giant plane doing the stunts.

The video shows the Airbus A380 undergoing crosswind testing in Iceland. (Enjoy the Icelandic newscaster’s overdubbing!) For those folks who demand a Boeing equivalent, scroll to the bottom of this post for an equally impressive video from Boeing crosswind tests.

Related:
- Video: Airbus A380 evacuation test
- Airbus A380 at Chicago O’Hare

Time to send the CEO to Microsoft Outlook School! Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza hit “reply to all” instead of “reply” and thereby sent this charming e-mail not only to one of his customer service employees, but also to the angry passengers who contacted the company to complain in the first place. Here’s the CEO’s message:

Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.

Comedy gold, or the perfect distillation of the state of air travel? Maybe both!

“Let him tell the world how bad we are.”

Well, Mr. Baldanza, you’ll be glad to know that the customer did! Blogger Alex Rudloff posted a reader’s entire correspondence with Spirit on his site. Go read the whole thing.

Rudloff’s post hit the Consumerist earlier today, which is where I first saw it. But it’s making the rounds, going viral even, and frankly, the airline is getting exactly what it deserved.

James Wysong asks why U.S. airlines are so bad. Spirit Airlines’ disdain for their passengers just provided Exhibit A.

I get a lot of complaints about Spirit — more than any other airline. (Chris Elliott recently named US Airways to his “blacklist” on the basis of sheer volume of complaints that he receives. If I were writing that list, Spirit would have to be take the top slot. No contest. Most of the complaints surround their baggage fees or automatic opt-in to travel insurance or the $9 club. One airline employee wrote in with a long list of complaints, many of which were common to other airlines, but the sheer litany of issues… Tip: Avoid the coffee.)

Spirit just keeps leading the charge downhill.

Like trying to determine the bottom in a sliding stock market, trying to figure out precisely when an airline’s in-flight service has hit rock-bottom is difficult, if not impossible, especially when you’re in the middle of the turmoil. Months or years later, you can look back and wisely nod, “Yes, that’s the precise moment when they could go no lower.” But when you’re in the moment? Much, much trickier. But I think I’ve found the indicator that signals the bottom:

Shampooing the carpets.

Hear me out.

Every so often, an airline announces that it has found religion, so to speak, and that it will start cleaning its planes more often. With minor fanfare, airlines announce that they are ramping up their “deep cleaning” schedule. It’s only worth mentioning when things have gotten so bad that passengers start to revolt. It’s sad that it comes to that point, where budget cuts make these cleanings so rare that the space between the seats looks like a miniature landfill.

Delta made such an announcement last October, and that was around the time that things started improving. Sure enough: Improvements to in-flight service started being announced, new premium cabins, etc.

Now, just days after it’s United’s turn, smaller Biscoff packages notwithstanding. It’s buried in this short blurb — which also points to an improvement, actually — about the airline’s video entertainment:

United Airlines plans to put digital entertainment systems on some planes and clean its aircraft more often to attract customers on U.S. flights. e carrier will replace the video systems on 269 planes used in the United States with digital servers by the second quarter of 2009, Tom Abraham, director of in-line maintenance, told employees Friday. United also will increase “deep-clean” services like shampooing carpets by 20 percent, he said.

So I’m calling a bottom here. Not in the stock — I’m not making any stock picks here, ever! — but in the service. It’s not going to go up overnight, and like the stock market, there will be volatility, but the trajectory at United customer service is looking back up.

(image)