Chaos Reigns!

I’d like to send a special “WTF, over?!” to the good folks at Delta Airlines.

As I understand the airline industry, they are a service industry. I expect them to do three things and do them well. Those things are:

Get me where I’m going safely.

Get me where I’m going on time.

Treat me with the respect a valued customer deserves. (All customers should be valued, they pay the bills.)

Most airlines do the first 2 at a similar rate. The third item is admittedly subjective. The real differentiator is cost. I tend to fly the airline that gets me where I’m going for the least amount of money. I assume the cheaper flight is due to the airline keeping their costs down.

In the Seattle airport, Delta has installed those fabulous free standing kiosks to speed you along your way. I like the kiosks, you enter your confirmation code and you are off! Along these lines, obviously (logically) the more kiosks you have the better. More people can be served more rapidly and no extra cost (people) is incurred a theoretical win-win.

Delta-Seattle has installed 3 circular tables with around 10 stations each to speed people though. This would have been brilliant, except… …They put the damn kiosks exactly 6 feet in front of the customer service windows. So basically there’s no way to line up in front of the kiosks, there’s no place to line up to check your luggage, and there’s no obvious course of action if you can’t use the kiosk for whatever reason. So you and 30 to 120 people are left standing around without direction because you can’t access the place you need to be and you can’t ask anyone.

They say insanity is repeating the behavior and expecting a different result. Nice going fellas!