Airbus A320 de la desaparecida Aces. Foto: Jaime Escobar
Once you gain pilots for your customer experience improvement crusades, they may even go a step further and accept full accountability (as everyone should) for whatever occurs in their area of responsibility with a direct impact on the customer.
I remember one particular flight, a decade ago, where an airline management team had really achieved the goal to make the pilots their partners in the effort of delivering a carefully designed experience (then called “product” 
) to their customers.
The flight was operated by now defunct Colombian carrier Aces under the leadership of Juan Emilio Posada (who is currently heading a new, Bogota based, low cost airline project, which I predict to be hugely successful). We had already boarded the airplane in Medellin and were waiting to depart for Fort Lauderdale when the captain stepped out of the cockpit, took the microphone and positioned himself in the corridor so that passengers could see him and look into his eyes.
He announced that the flight would unfortunately leave 30 minutes late, assuming personally the responsibility. He told us that he had removed the day before, after his last flight, one of the mandatory technical manuals from the aircraft to review it at home. However, when leaving home for this flight, he had forgotten to pack the manual. A taxi was now on the way to deliver it as soon as possible, but a 30 minutes delay was inevitable.
We were allowed to leave the plane in the meantime and even grab a drink at Aces’ VIP lounge to shorten the waiting time.
I was genuinely impressed. Actually, something like this never happened to me again.
The captain’s public appearance demonstrated the passenger several important things:
First, he addressed them face-to-face, not from his cockpit-hideaway. That told the passengers, the Aces pilots were not only good professionals, but also mature human beings with the courage of looking into your eyes while assuming the responsibility for what went wrong. We all know that error occur, what we do not tolerate is that nobody accepts his or her accountability for it and makes a sincere effort to get it fixed.
Second, it made clear that he and the airline took safety really seriously. Many passengers may have thought that nobody would have noticed if they had decided to flow that return trip to Florida without that manual. But they did not, so they felt completely reassured that major issues would be dealt with with the same degree of seriousness.
Third, the pilot was transparent, he did no finger-pointing, he did not put the blame on anybody else. He told no lies. No wild stories about “air traffic congestion”. He made the company believable as a whole. The next time Aces delayed a flight because of “air traffic congestion”, people would believe them.
Fourth, the airline acted to minimise the negative affect on customers by opening the VIP lounge (which was basically empty at that time) to any passengers wanting to wait outside the plane and by offering soft drinks on the plane. Nice touch – transmits genuine concern and respect for the passenger’s needs.
