Worst airline service in 7 years

I was on my way back from Vancouver and had a 1 hour lay-over in Edmonton. I took this picture from the 2nd floor of the Edmonton airport to show my boys what plane I was on.

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Flight from Vancouver to Ottawa... was 3 hours late leaving. thanks west jet.

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The problem isn't so much as declining service, is that airlines are being forced into lower ticket prices to attract customers and are having to cut other areas in an attempt to stay afloat.  I expect to pay a reasonable fare, in line with how much it actually costs to fly, arrive on time and collect my bags in a timely fashion while dealing with friendly customer service.  I can say that about some airlines I fly on regularly, but not some others.  It makes it quite easy to make a choice when picking a ticket.  People seem to buy tickets purely based on the lowest price, and then bitch when they only get a small bag of peanuts and half a can of pop or their bags don't show up.  It costs a lot of money to operate an airline safely and efficiently and when you cut ticket prices to get customers, you cut service.

I took this photo in January on a family vacation to the Dominican Republic. When I arrived my suitcase was not on the flight. I spend a week in paradise without my cloths and toiletries. I repeatedly phoned Westjet but they were unable to locate my bag. About three weeks after I arrived home my bag was found with all the tags ripped off in their unclaimed luggage dept. Westjet didn't offer me any kind of future discount on flights/vacations only a 100 credit for picking up my suitcase and I found this disappointing considering I paid for a family of five to fly at prime prices.

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The Wing of a WestJet Airbus

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The only major decline in airplane service is food. There aren't many complimentary meals anymore. some flights only have a little bag of pretzels. There is  better airline entertainment, though, with seat-back TV and Computers.

Wing on a WestJet flight down to Florida.

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I was near the SLC airport and thought that it'd make a good picture

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Ever since Air Canada decided that my hometown, Regina SK, was too small to warrant service with planes bigger than those little propeller ones (about 10 years ago), I've flown with WestJet (for domestic flights).

My photo was taken in July 2007 at Vancouver airport.

Shot was Toronto on my way back to Australia. I had 14 hours to kill on my return and of all places I think I scored pretty well for a day trip. Awesome city and nice people except the nutters that followed me and all the "homeless" asking for handouts? Are we serious? A city like toronto has people sleeping in air vents int he rain?

Still I shall return

Oh I have a bigger issue. This is rather sexist but hey I'm a guy.

Staff are no longer what they once were. Young and pretty.

On my Air Canada flight back to Aus the youngest would have been 40 and half were old men in the 40's. None I would have called pretty.

I miss the old days of pretty young hostesses.

Arriving at Uluru airport from Cairns after a nice flight over one of the most spectacular areas I ever have seen.

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Timely article.  My cousins were flying out to Ireland from Boston yesterday and their US Airways flight #776 was cancelled at Logan, which caused them to miss the connection in Philly, also US Air...no explanation for the 24 hours shaved off their vacation.  Great stuff!

As others have pointed out...people want service but don't want to pay for it.  The passengers want Tiffany service and want to pay K-Mart Jewelry prices.  Or bus prices and limousine service.  The carriers are always under pressure from  upstart airlines (like the one in the U.S. that was borrowing the airplanes) with lower labor costs and efforts are being made to let non-domestic carriers compete in domestic markets.  I don't think that in the long run that a American or European carrier can compete with a company paying third world pay scales.

I used to spend a lot of time overnighting in Seoul.  We stayed at a nice hotel used by several other airlines.  We flew freight but we did have female crew.  We got complaints from our female crew members about they way they were treated by some of the area shop keepers.  Turns out that one of the other carrier's paid their cabin crew (mostly female) so poorly that they shoplifted!  They couldn't afford to eat even in Seoul!  Street food there is good and safe, I've eaten it myself.  I've seen freighters flown by other countries that had the crew living on the airplane...laundry hanging on the cargo deck...looking like tramps.

I have friends that are leaving major carriers like United and American and going back to school and finding another career.  The pay cuts and poor working conditions are driving the motivated and skilled workers to jobs that have better pay and working conditions as well as a better future.

Consumers demanding low price over all other factors drive the prices down and the quality of the service or product down as well.  My wife worked as a travel agent for years.  All too often she would have a client swear up and down that they would never ride such and such airline again, bad service or what ever.  Then the fares come and that airline is the cheapest...guess what gets booked?  The only real exception to this was business travelers that were NOT paying their own airfare.

I think that in the not so distant future air travel will be like it was in the '30s or '50s, just for the few that can afford it, it will not be the "mass transit" that it has become in the past almost forty years.  No real answer but the airlines are not the only ones to blame.

My two photos (from www.flickr.com) were taken at the Vancouver International Airport (YVR) in October 2007 and March 2008.

The service on most of my flights recently has been reasonably good. The staff has been polite and usually had some type of help to offer. What bugs me about flying is when you buy your ticket, the price almost doubles with all the extra fees and service charges and taxes! Why aren't all of these things build into the price of the ticket? I think their current system is misleading.

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