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Comment by yupper32 | Hacker News Reader

I never understand people's expectations of companies during stuff like this.

There are people complaining that they can't get through to customer service on their phone. Like, do they expect them to always have enough customer service capacity for when every single customer in the world has reason to call them? That'd be insane.

Flight cancelations are always a risk when flying. You need to always expect that you'll potentially have to be stuck somewhere for a night or two. If the airport floor doesn't suffice for you, fly airlines that have a track record of giving hotels for cancelations and have insurance/funds to cover a few nights if you aren't able to get a room from the airline.

This kind of stuff is unavoidable and just part of air travel. Be prepared, be patient.

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When you've travelled 30 times in a row with near-perfect QoS, your expectations get recalibrated. It's an ironic effect of success that your customers become less tolerant of failure.

It's the Louis C.K. bit about being (roughly) 'in a chair in the sky at 500mph: it's a miracle yet no one's happy'.

from the same clip "How quickly the world owes him something he didn't knew existed 5 minutes ago?"

Baseline reset.

I chuckle a bit when people complain about the slow satellite based wifi. So, you're in a metal tube, miles in the air, going 500mph, getting internet from a satellite 20,000 miles away. And...the wifi is a bit slow?

We have the technology!

Louis is right about You're flyiinngg! but also flying is normal now, so we always hope that things get better. Rich people don't even fly anymore, they sleep in a luxury hotel in the sky. Things are possible, it's just that they're not cheap yet.

I do think LEO satellites will fix this, but it takes a long time to test, get regulatory approvals, do installs, etc. By the time new tech rolls out on aircraft, it's not really new anymore.

We've already solved it. There's a service on some airline that I forget that lets you even stream videos (Netflix, Youtube, etc) from the plane without issue. It was absolutely amazing.

Gogo, the one that absolutely sucks, locked many airlines into a 10 year contract so they're screwed until that ends. That's the only thing stopping the fast service(s) from rolling out.

Guessing you used a Ka band system. It's 70mbps in ideal conditions, but probably more often 30-50mbps in real life. Works great if not too many of the passengers are streaming.

Last time I flew back from the EU, I enjoyed the Panasonic system, until we entered US airspace. Frankly, I did not miss a beat. Experience was on par with many terrestrial wifi deals.

Then boom! Back to NoGo, limited craptastic, swore I would never pay for it, service.

I've had a video call on a budget airline before.

Relevant link: https://youtu.be/q8LaT5Iiwo4

The problem is that we now have entire airlines shutting down due to technical failures. We have power failures that affect most of a state. 911 failures that affect multiple states. Entire retail chains going down due to a system outage. Wide area over-centralization failures are a new thing.

Not having enough human capacity for a random event is reasonable enough, but between their app and their website there should be a smooth, automated, and easy way for customers to rebook or get their money back to book with another airline. That shouldn't require going through a person, especially if there are not enough people available.

How long should that take, for every single person doing business with a company to change their plans?

If you give users the right self-service options, they'll resolve it for themselves between the start of the outage and when they expected to fly. They'll rebook or take their money and go.

I'd assume a nontrivial number of customers are calling because automated methods to reschedule aren't giving them the options that they want, and they assume (probably incorrectly) that they will do better when talking to a human.

I don't know with Southwest, but I know more than one airline has a system that sends automatic "choose one of these options" emails when flights are cancelled. When all of your customers need new flights, though, the issue isn't how the rescheduling is done, it's the fact that almost nobody is going to be able to choose an option they like.

> they assume (probably incorrectly) that they will do better when talking to a human.

Anecdotally, it has worked enough times for me to call/talk to an agent vs dealing with the automated suggestion system. Just don't be a jerk.

One automated system gave me a next flight of the following day. Spoke to an agent and was rerouted through another hub and only delayed by two hours overall.

In another case, a delayed flight caused me to miss my connection. Was officially told that I was out of luck and would have to wait (as were the jerks who asked) for the morning. I went and got a seat on the plane out that night.

In my experience if you complain enough the human agent will occasionally agree to rebook you on another airline even when the online system doesn't show that as an option.

Of the two other responses to this thread, one recommends "don't be a jerk" and the other recommends "complain enough".

I wonder if there just isn't a negative feedback loop here (everybody gets helped) so people just assume their way is the most effective.

> one recommends "don't be a jerk" and the other recommends "complain enough"

Those aren't mutually exclusive. You can complain a lot but not be a jerk. You just have to understand and acknowledge the situation the customer service rep is in but still be firm on what you want.

Exactly this, I feel like the "all of your customers" thing is important and what bothered me about the GP comment. I know it's tremendously inconvenient for people who are trying to travel, but it seems like a triumph of technology to be able to sort something like this out in less than a whole day? And to expect literally every customer to be able to jump on an app and get a refund or reschedule in the same hour strikes me as... possible, but not necessarily a thing we should expect?

Would these be working during the giant computer outage?

That's called an automated re-accommodation system. They do have one. People call anyway.

Yes but who knows about that?

Flight got cancelled? Send me a text, email, whatever. They have all of my information. Text me a link.

The reality is that they don't do that because they'd lose money this way. It's best to underprovide so people who don't want to wait just go elsewhere.

When covid hit last year I had to spend literally hours on the phone trying to cancel/rebook because Alitalia did not allow this online. The low-cost EasyJet instead *sent me an email* with a link to get a refund. It's easy. Nobody had to wait for disaster to hit to think of a solution.

These are just (anti-user) choices that companies make to save money. Some users will still call, but much fewer.

It sends a text to affected passengers with a link to the reaccom page.

I don't know about Alitalia. Not all airlines have these systems.

> Flight got cancelled? Send me a text, email, whatever. They have all of my information. Text me a link.

Airlines always do it for me. Well, at least in the last handful of years I've been flying.

People's experiences are mared by bad behavior on the airlines. Most airlines lock you into whatever you bought and put so many restrictions on it that it's ridicious. (extremely high change fees, baggage fees, etc) They give you a false option that you can buy out of these things. (Paying more money.. but often those options are obscenely over priced)

Different airlines handle misconnects differently: Delta sometimes auto rebooks, United and US Airways required you to call and rebook.. although US Airways required you to work with the gate or call before hand and you got issued a new ticket at the kisok. On top of this.. there are different rules you aren't explained about what conditions indicate you can break the ticket without being penalized. (Schedule change being one)

Lastly, theres the effect of that the airline never takes responsibility when they screw up. It's always "eh you should know better" .. Leftouthansa sends your bags to EWR on a FRA-LHR-ORD flight? Maybe you'll get your bags in 48 hours? Don't forget to ask for an amenity kit (that's on you to ask for). Bag got lost and you want reimburstment? Please keep your recepts from years ago for the jeans you had in there.

Southwest is actually really good about these sorts of things. You can rebook and apply the full ticket price to another flight (or at least that was the case last time I flew SW). Their normal customer service level is fantastic which makes the cases where it fails that much more dramatic.

People in shock don't think about the wider issues.

"I never understand people's expectations of other people's expectations..." Well, I guess I feel I understand that too.

"Be prepared, be patient..." Good advice, so is "don't have a global outage" but do people follow it? Nooooo

> Good advice, so is "don't have a global outage" but do people follow it?

People on HN should understand better than anyone that this isn't really possible over a long enough period of time. It's not like Southwest has to ground its fleet every other month. This specifically is a very very rare event.

Whenever you go on longer trips you need to do at least some disaster planning, otherwise you’ll get in some wild inconvenience sometime

What can you plan for exactly if you plane gets diverted to nowhere's ville?

Should you be carrying a tent and three days food and water? That would add to your carrying ons. The only thing I can think of is not making appointments on the other side where your life is screwed if your plane is diverted. But how much you can do that or need to do that varies by person.

Some underwear in carry on in case you stay at the airport. Some cash if your cards fail. Ticket bookings with not the cheapest companies in case you need to rebook the next (significant) leg.

Absolutely agreed. The airline industry has become victim of its own success there in a way. Planes are so amazingly safe and reliable and even punctual by and large that people forget that it’s not just a bus going from A to B, and how miraculous it really is. (Some stand-up comedian had a bit about that, I thought it was George Carlin, but I don’t find it.) ETA: Louis C K, yes, thanks.

Louis CK bit on Conan about people complaining about flying. Certainly relatable reading some passenger complaints regarding this Southwest debacle.

https://youtu.be/kBLkX2VaQs4?t=133

> fly airlines that have a track record of giving hotels for cancelations

In the US those are? United, Delta, and American for the most part don't. They'll look for any reason to claim WX issue so they won't pay out.

That's what I put "and" and not "or" after that part of the sentence. Weather is a big one that they don't usually pay out for. You need to be prepared for that to happen, either by being okay with the airport floor or have other ways to fund a hotel stay.

FWIW I had United give me a hotel in 2019 after a mechanical issue.

Uh, every airline I know sells round trip tickets at least a day apart. A considerable portion of their business is short, business trips. It is unreasonable for a service to have an SLA that allows outages larger than the duration of the service.

Sure weather is hard to predict but it is good enough to alert you the 3-4 hours before your flight so you would know prior to arriving at the airport. Computer systems can be made fully redundant, etc.

I agree that it's pointless to expect customer service to handle the load during these crisis precisely because these events should either be one per decade type events or at least be handled in a planned, graceful manner.

What would that look like? For every flight let customers at least check what the probability of delay/cancelation is - the airlines certainly have a number.

When a flight is canceled; book first and business class on alternative airlines/flights. Let economy/other customer's select alternative flight or request refund via zero human/robocall interaction process. If more than 50% of the flight's capacity has already checked in then alternative lodging should be mandatory and meals should be provided.

It's painfully obvious that the airlines know that as long as all of them provide terrible service then none of then will be expected too.

You're saying that from the perspective of someone who's not currently stranded at an airport. Your points are valid, but I think the irony is your expectations aren't reasonable.

These are people stuck in strange places who are anxious and uncomfortable. Some of them are probably going to miss important things. Others have to worry about kids/pets/etc. That's not to say they shouldn't be patient (and certainly they shouldn't be taking their frustrations out on the airline staff), but you're demanding rationality from people in the exact sort of situation where it can be really, really difficult for someone to be entirely rational.

They're trying to do what they can (call customer service) and find themselves helpless - that's not a situation where they're going to reason through the economics of call center staffing.

> You're saying that from the perspective of someone who's not currently stranded at an airport.

I'm saying it from the perspective of someone who has been stranded at an airport. It's very easy to chill tf out for a while and wait in line for a while at the service desk to see what you've got to work with. You're not dying, it's not literal fight or flight. You're just stuck for a while.

> Your points are valid, but I think the irony is your expectations aren't reasonable.

I don't think it's reasonable to scream at service reps, which I guarantee will happen to nearly every single Southwest rep today. I've seen it so many times.

And it's the people who are confused why the customer service lines are jammed, those who are irrational, who are more likely to be the screamers. That's mainly who my comment was directed at.

> These are people stuck in strange places who are anxious and uncomfortable.

Those people need to relax a little bit.

Just a generation ago they could have been driving down a remote road, in an unreliable car with no cell phones.

What would they do then?

Well they'd start walking and nobody on earth would know where they were.

Being stuck at an airport, you have something in your pocket you can use to inform everyone of what is going on, handle getting your pets taken care of, etc.

Some of the anxiety is probably driven by the fact that other people's expectations of you and your ability to keep to a tight schedule have changed from what they would've been back then, as a result of the improved reliability of these things.

I was in the middle of the second outage today that significantly delayed a flight for me. I was fine.. I was just coming home from a trip so no big deal.

That said. I think people were understandably pretty pissed. I talked to a family that was taking their first vacation in 18 months. He only gets a handful of vacation days a year and due to cancellations their vacation has been ended. Just like that.

If I was them I'd be out of my skull. It'll probably be another full year before they get to try again.

I think is likely the big difference.

If you traveling for work.. no big deal Company may be out some money, you may be delayed for a meeting, etc etc

If you are traveling for personal... these things are not as easy to just rescheduled, push back, or change. The family likely also lost money on reservation especially if it was a "vacation package", which likely use the same excuse as Southwest so screw the family out of their money.

I often see people mad about a delay because they booked a flight in order to get to a meeting an hour or two after arriving when the car trip would be at least a day long.

The retail veneer is a powerful edifice. Folks that don't have any experience with building or operating or manufacturing things at scale really have no conceptual footing on just how difficult it is. As a result, at least in my opinion, there's no reservoir of empathy to tap when things don't go according to plan.

Well dude, they're... stuck. They're stuck in the middle of nowhere. That feels horrible no matter what happens. It happened to me yesterday at MCO.

What? An airport in a US city is hardly “middle of nowhere”. There are toilets. Restaurants. Air conditioning. Lighting, running water and electricity. Bookstores and bars.

>do they expect them to always have enough customer service capacity for when every single customer in the world has reason to call them?

Yes, why wouldn't they, they just canceled their flights.

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