Naresh Jain » Agile FAQs Blog » Managed Chaos

International Travel Sucks!

Yesterday I got a call from the airline saying my flight to US on Tue morning is cancelled. (While I’m pissed with the airline, I’m glad that I booked my flights with an Indian airline. At least they had the courtesy to call me up 2 days in advance. American Airlines don’t have this concept.)

Yet another cancelled flight and change in my travel schedule. What crap? Is it a problem with the airlines or with me. Somehow this year has been really really bad. Pretty much every international travel this year has had some change in schedule. Either the flights are delayed by few hours/days or are completely cancelled.

I’m so glad, I don’t have any more international travel planned.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 12:06 PM and is filed under Crib. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

http://billschofield.typepad.com/my_weblog/ Bill Schofield

I’ve been assuming that all of the airlines are consuming their slack. Consumers are choosing their flights based solely on price (this is a generalization), so airlines are doing whatever it takes to be $5 cheaper.

Instead of having standby pilots and planes, they either put them in the air or get rid of them.

No slack means no ability to manage change. Hopefully consumers will start using additional metrics in addition to price.
http://billschofield.typepad.com/my_weblog/ Bill Schofield

I’ve been assuming that all of the airlines are consuming their slack. Consumers are choosing their flights based solely on price (this is a generalization), so airlines are doing whatever it takes to be $5 cheaper.

Instead of having standby pilots and planes, they either put them in the air or get rid of them.

No slack means no ability to manage change. Hopefully consumers will start using additional metrics in addition to price.
http://www.majorcaholidays.net/ majorca

customer service is the first casualty when it comes to cost cutting! sucks
http://www.majorcaholidays.net majorca

customer service is the first casualty when it comes to cost cutting! sucks
http://agilefaqs.com/nareshjain.html Naresh Jain

Very well put Bill. In fact I was exactly thinking about Slack seeing these problems occur. Mary Poppendieck in her Lean presentation talks about how 100% utilization (trying to fill up all the seats) is a bad idea and gives an example of South West Airline, which is the only profitable airline in US. Their average utilization is about 64%.
http://agilefaqs.com/nareshjain.html Naresh Jain

Very well put Bill. In fact I was exactly thinking about Slack seeing these problems occur. Mary Poppendieck in her Lean presentation talks about how 100% utilization (trying to fill up all the seats) is a bad idea and gives an example of South West Airline, which is the only profitable airline in US. Their average utilization is about 64%.