Monday, August 13, 2007

Fix what we already have - AGAIN

Airtran cancelled a flight for me and my family getting ready to go on a vacation because at the last minute, a first officer was a no show. The plane was there but no first officer. Fair enough, this stuff happens.

Rebooking 200 people on other flights was bad enough although they did use technology to do this. The slow and sad part involved manual integration - 2 men and 2 phones. 1 person at the gate, reading out bag tag numbers to someone on the tarmac was approximately 5 minutes per passenger.

So, in the end, Airtran couldn't transfer people to new flights fast enough because they overlooked this manual process that would not be so difficult actually to automate.

So, before you look to sweat the big back end integration projects, look to sort out the little stuff first! You'll be surprised at the customer / end user / business satisfaction rates going up.

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