Emma Newlands: Airlines must focus on customer service

It is now just over a week since what United Airlines initially described, with some understatement, as a move to 'reaccommodate' customers, but was seen more accurately as a passenger's forcible, brutal and humiliating removal from an overbooked aircraft.

Putting customer service at the core can help lift airlines' earnings, writes Emma Newlands. Picture: Mel Evans/AP

Apologies have been delivered, redelivered, lawsuits mooted and changes to the airline’s overbooking policy announced at high volume.

• READ MORE: United Airlines boss finally apologises as passenger named

The long-term implications for United remain to be seen, but the incident shines a spotlight on the treatment of customers in air travel, an industry ambitiously described as “the business of freedom”, a definition used by Alexandre de Juniac, director general and chief executive of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), at the end of last year.

He proclaimed: “The safe and efficient global movement of goods and people is a positive force. Aviation’s success betters lives by creating economic opportunity and supporting global understanding.”

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Looking ahead to 2017, it said airlines were expected to operate 38.4 million flights, up nearly 5 per cent from 2016. The global industry was forecast to make a net profit of $29.8 billion, “a very soft landing and safely in profitable territory”, despite “abundant” political, economic and security risks, according to De Juniac.

Furthermore, increasing competition may be a bonanza for customers, but it puts additional headwinds in the path of airlines battling already-squeezed margins, which are often precariously thin on economy fares.

Attempts to cut costs or boost revenues are therefore understandable. Many are nostalgic for the departed chance of a “free” G&T on a short BA flight, for example, while we have all experienced, or know of, horror stories regarding eyewatering additional charges at the sharp end of air travel.

But Ryanair, for example, has seen efforts to improve its passenger experience with its Always Getting Better programme bear tangible fruit, recently announcing that it had led to “ever-increasing load factors and record passenger numbers”.

Customer service being a core part of flying rather than a luxury can produce the kind of numbers that accountants like. As De Juniac said: “We must stand firm in the face of any rhetoric that would put limits on aviation’s future success.”

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