The hard truth about airlines, from a pilot

During Cross Country Checkup's show about air travel a pilot from Hamilton, Ontario called in to share his feelings about the airline industry from the perspective of an insider. Captain Bill (who asked we not use his last name) told host Duncan McCue that he feels the airlines are out to make as much profit as possible at the expense of customer service. Bill said airline crews have no power to affect change on circumstances that are frustrating for customers, such as delays and overbooking. He explained that employees and the aircraft itself are pushed to the limit by airlines driven to make millions.

Captain Bill: To be honest with you I have mixed feelings about making this phone call. It's a tough one. I don't know if the travelling public really want to hear what goes on behind the scenes.

It's a tough industry. I've been involved in the airline industry for 25 years now. It's a tough gig. Money's tight. It's an expensive game and it's all about making profit. And frankly I don't want to single any airline out, but it's all about making a buck. And so we offer less and less service, and less and less frills. And the company wants to make money. They might be making hundreds of millions of dollars a year in profit, but they claim that they're losing money, and at the end of the day the people that suffer are the travelling public.

There's a disconnect between the employee and the employer, and that relationship ultimately trickles down to the customer. The customer is not treated well. Flight attendants in particular, I really feel for their job. It's a tough gig and they're not treated well by the employer. They're the frontline staff who have to deal with all of the baggage, all of the issues that the passengers are dealing with.

Duncan McCue: You're saying the company wants to make money. How is that pressure coming down to you as the captain of a plane?

CB: We don't make great money. We're making the same dollar that we were making back in the '70s. People think that the airline crew are making fabulous money, and it's a fabulous lifestyle where we're travelling all over the world and we're experiencing new things. We're ending up in Deer Lake and we're staying at the motor inn off the highway. We're making the same salary that we made back in the '70s and '80s. We're not making great dollars.

And the airline frankly just…the company makes money and the crews don't. And the services are minimalized and passengers are frustrated.

DM: You said that you're concerned about the way that some of the flight attendants are getting treated and that it ends up filtering down. Why?

CB: They do this job because they loved this job when they first started doing it. You do it for a couple of years man, and you end up burning out. You can't keep it up because you're just constantly inundated with passengers who have complaints and concerns. Frankly you can't complain to a flight attendant or to any of the air crew because they have a job to do. The only way that there's going to be changes made is if you go and complain to the airline. But passengers dump on the flight attendants. They reap all of the sour passengers who are upset about service, and I don't blame them frankly.

It seems like every single time I'm doing a flight I'm making a PA saying 'ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to apologize.' I apologize on behalf of the company for a delay or whatever it is. You know, there's always an issue going on. And passengers expect better service and we don't offer it. We're chisel charter companies trying to make money and offering the least amount of service. And what do you get? You get bad service.

DM:  I don't think any passengers would get upset with you if you had a delay because of weather, but how often are you seeing delays because of mechanical issues or the scheduling of crew?

CB: An aircraft flying right now will come in to Deer Lake in Newfoundland and an hour later it's off again to Halifax - an hour later it's off to Varadero - an hour later it's off to Vancouver. There's no downtime on an aircraft. Airlines schedule their aircrafts so that it's 100 per cent efficient. It's just non-stop go. They're short changing the schedule and customer service by trying to maximize the utility of an aircraft. And there's no downtime for an aircraft to frankly deal with little maintenance issues. If there is a maintenance issue it throws off the entire schedule. And frankly there's no excuse for it. It's all about making a buck. They want to keep that airplane flying all the time.

Customer service has gone as far as I'm concerned. There is no customer service. All of the customer service reps that passengers meet out there in Winnipeg, Manitoba or wherever, they're not the airline employee - they're a contract employee. So again another wall is developed there because passengers will complain to them and they don't care.

DM: You started off by saying that you weren't sure that we wanted to hear the perspective from the cockpit. Is there something that you think would surprise customers to know when they get frustrated about passenger service?

CB: Honestly, at the end of the day, there is absolutely nothing that the flight attendants can do, there is absolutely nothing that pilots can do, to change this situation. It is completely out of their hands. We're operating 14 hour duty days, which is another shocking thing that the travelling public don't know. We operate incredibly long business days. Sometimes we are delayed at home four or five hours and we still continue to operate a 14, 15, sometimes 16 hour duty day, and it's completely out of our control. Everything operationally is completely out of the control of the crew. And we just come in and we do our job to the best of our ability under the circumstances. It's all out of our control. 

Captain Bill's and Duncan McCue's comments have been edited and condensed. This online segment was prepared by Ieva Lucs on May 1, 2017.