NYT op-ed piece relates what happens when a near-emergency on a flight turns into fodder for reality TV

Flight 1004 made its careful descent. Later, a Southwest official would explain to me that after takeoff, the control stick in the cockpit had begun to shake violently – the universal warning to pilots that a plane is about to stall. To the captain, the jetliner seemed to be flying fine. But the shaking stick would not stop. We had reversed our course; it would turn out that an angle-of-attack measurement vane on the exterior of the plane had broken, and the pilots were receiving a false indication of the impending stall. But neither the crew nor the passengers knew that at the time.

We landed, to the audible relief of those on board, pulled up to the gate, and – before the captain could tell us what had gone wrong – four people entered through a jetway. One held a television camera; another began handing out release-permission forms.

The captain – referring to the camera crew – told us: ‘They’re ours.’

The television people were from an entertainment series called ‘Airline,’ which runs on the A&E cable network. The program is one of the many so-called reality shows – nonfiction. Highly stylized, accompanied by a soundtrack of guitars and percussion instruments, ‘Airline’ weaves in and out of several stories at Southwest Airlines each week.

Five minutes earlier, we had been holding our breaths. Now the camera was rolling; as the captain stood in the aisle and explained to us about the aborted flight, the lens pointed over his shoulder, catching our expressions.

We had already become a plot point – it had happened just that swiftly. The realness of the trepidation we had felt in the air had seamlessly been turned into reality, that parallel but separate new state. The clammy uncertainty that had filled the plane was even now being packaged as entertainment, with a beginning, a middle and an end.

We hadn’t been given permission to stand up yet, and no one had aspired to be a part of this, but the production had commenced. It felt oddly familiar, and it was, because permutations of it have been around us for a while now: 911-call audiotapes with the anguished sounds of people in the worst moments of their lives, their recorded voices involuntarily played on TV and radio for the divertissement of strangers; surveillance videotapes from brutal convenience store robberies and shootings, routinely televised for all to watch; children being beaten by school-bus bullies, caught on video, broadcast nationwide if the images are gripping enough. Life as a carnival sideshow.

Yesterday I was selected for secondary screening while going through airport security at SFO. It started off rather typically, with no explanation from the person who checks ID and boarding passes, only an instruction to follow a certain path. It’d be nice at that point if they told you what was going on. I follow the path I was directed to – a long and narrow corridor between the wall and those straps-on-poles (were that I was hip enough to name those by brand!) – a long and twisting path that eventually reached a dead-end. I was confused, so I turned around only to find a security person was ducking under the straps to join me.

He was exceedingly polite, and extremely patient while I did as he requested, provided boarding pass, unloaded my laptop, took off my shoes. He made suggestions gently (“I’ll get you a container for you to put your bag and your shoes in”). And he told me what was going to happen next (“If you could come with me, sir, we’ll just stand here and wait to go through”).

Instead of treating me like a presumed criminal, I actually felt a bit of privilege. Partly by singled out, but partly because of a certain experience of access. My bags were put through the X-ray machine ahead of others, with somebody carrying them for me and getting the nod to lay them on the belt as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I was able to stand out of the line, in a space in the middle where no one else could stand (since they had to remain in line). I went through the metal detector myself and was directed to a little holding area. After a call of “male, secondary” went out, I encountered a man waiting there for me told me immediately (calling me sir) where I could go next, pointing to an area that required me to pass the end of the X-ray machine, and go around behind. And then I was “free” to traipse over there myself, crossing several zones and lines that the normal passenger wouldn’t go through.

Two different people greeted me there, one of whom smiled nervously (the nervous smile of youth and introversion, simply) at me with a mouth full of braces. He dealt with my bag, and another did the search. They weren’t extroverted, they weren’t bossy, they were comfortable and friendly. Stand like an airplane, palms up. Face this way, so you can see your bags being searched. I never felt manhandled. The warned me my wallet and keys would be re-X-rayed.

I have been to the hairdresser (oops, I mean barber) and been treated more like a piece of meat than today. Or that all-too-familiar experience (like last week at Ross Dress For Less) when the cashier was engaged in a phone conversation for the entire duration of my transaction. Or the flight attendant on yesterday’s flight who walked through the cabin distributing the “snack” (Oreo, cheese spread, cracker-wafer-thing, world’s-smallest-box-of-raisins) with an amazing lack of interpersonal energy – no eye contact, no words, just place the snacks on the trays and move along.

Anyway, while traveling, all of my clothes and toiletries were in checked baggage, so I’m sure that reduced the sense of violation of having stuff opened, touched, looked at.

Two interactions felt more like cooperation than victimization, and they were small but significant. In one part of the search of my b, the wanded the button that closes my jeans – and of course it beeped. They asked me to twist it over (a gesture that is difficult to describe but is akin to walking around with your collar up, rather than any kind of underwear-proximal violation) and he said “good enough” in response. Secondly, when my bags were finished being searched, the bag-handling guy put a lot of hole punches into the boarding pass. When the wanding guy returned with my re-x-rayed wallet and keys, he asked me if the other agent had punched my boarding pass.

I suppose those may be signals of lax security, but I’m only talking about it from my perspective, the traveler. I think I finished up before anyone who entered the regular line before I did, and I got “special” treatment that didn’t make me feel bad or weird. And I wasn’t in a rush so I wasn’t worried about that, either.

Overall, it was an incredibly powerful reframe – from being a suspect to receiving valet service. Some minor cues (with a different mindset behind them, no doubt) changed the perspective of an ordinary experience about 180 degrees.

Cingular is in favor of banning cell phone usage on airplanes

“‘We believe there is a time and a place for wireless phone conversations, and seldom does that include the confines of an airplane flight,’ Cingular wrote in a June 8 letter to the FAA…’Cingular will encourage passengers to ‘tap, not talk’ – that is, to use discreet services such as text messaging and e-mail as opposed to voice communications in flight,’ the carrier wrote.”

Surprising but pleasing occurrence! For more analysis on this issue, check out my recent FreshMeat “Push to Talk.”

This story in the New York Times describes how companies are looking at what customers have to say online, and are indeed turning that into an opportunity to understand and connect. No mention this article of companies trying to suppress or remove negative comments made by their customers.

Early in April, Continental Airlines played host at a gathering in Houston for members of FlyerTalk.com, a travel Web site best known for its message boards where travelers discuss, dissect and often complain about pretty much anything related to travel, but mostly airlines and their frequent-flier programs.

…

Not that it was all warm and fuzzy, Mr. Burri acknowledged. The dinner guests “didn’t necessarily like all the answers they got” to questions about the removal of first-class seats from some aircraft, the challenge of qualifying for elite status and the difficulty of redeeming frequent-flier miles for free tickets and upgrades.

…

In fact, blogs may be grabbing all the media headlines, but online communities like FlyerTalk are wielding a different kind of influence in the corporate world, providing instant feedback from those critics who marketers have called influencers. Just by logging on, companies can study, learn from and even respond to the cacophony of opinions about what they are doing wrong and what they are doing right without spending a dime on focus groups or market research.

…

Some travel companies have even assigned employees to act as authorized representatives in monitoring FlyerTalk’s message boards and answering questions, reporting back about hot topics and occasionally putting out fires – ideally without sounding like a corporate mouthpiece or disrupting the Web site’s natural give and take

Although Continental does not have anyone participating in the FlyerTalk fray in an official capacity, “Lots of us will go to FlyerTalk and pull up our forum and see what our customers are talking about,” said Mark Bergsrud, Continental’s vice president for marketing programs, who attended the Houston event.

“When we see something that’s factually incorrect,” Mr. Bergsrud said, “we’ll work with the moderator, but we don’t like to put our own posts on there. We’d have to be real careful about how we word everything.”

That said, Continental has responded to suggestions that have bubbled up through the FlyerTalk forums, Mr. Bergsrud added, like creating a customer service desk exclusively for its elite fliers, changing the format of frequent-flier statements and tweaking some of the tools on continental.com.

One company that has assigned an official representative to FlyerTalk is Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, owner of the St. Regis, Westin, Sheraton, W and other chains. William Sanders, better known to FlyerTalk regulars as “Starwood Lurker,” says he spends six or eight hours on Mondays getting caught up on all the posts and messages that have come in over the weekend, but four hours a day is closer to normal.

Figuring out how, and how much, to participate has been a learning process, Mr. Sanders said. “I used to respond to everything I knew an answer to, and then I figured out they’ll often answer it for you.” He said he now tried to observe the delicate balance between being helpful and disrupting the exchange of ideas the site was meant to foster.

Looks like I’ll be back in NYC later this week. My second trip in 2 (or 3?) weeks – sometimes it’s years between opportunities to visit New York, now my cup runneth over. I’m pretty excited!

You’ll probably need to click on this picture to make it large enough to read it. It’s a detail of the invoice from my recent stay at a Hilton. As usual, they encourage the rapid check-out where you leave the keys in the room, take this document with you, and don’t even bother to stop at the front desk.
In this case, however, they’ve added a “violator” – a gold sticker with a bunch of extra info. Looks like they are planning to send out mail surveys, and it’s opt-out, not opt-in. To opt-out, I’d have to stop by the front desk on my way out, exactly what the Zip-Out Check-Out (R) is designed to avoid.
I did not bother, and I guess maybe I’ll actually complete the survey since that will be my chance to tell them i) how crappy the room was (the desk lamp was broken – I mean badly broken, with the bulb-assembly bent over at 90 degrees, the power plug didn’t work)
ii) how crappy the food was (my chicken wrap was made with chicken that was grilled, then frozen, then thawed to assemble the sandwhich – partially thawed – nothing like chicken icicles in your dinner
iii) how crappy the service was (what kind of business hotel – and this place was in an office park, business accomodation is the only reason is exists – doesn’t offer a breakfast-room-service-hang-tag deal where you can order your breakfast before you go to bed and it’ll arrive at the time you specify)

As far as i) I guess I get some lame points myself for not telling them about it, so the next visitor will have the same discovery. When you arrive at 9:15 pm and you have to eat and get work done, it’s not like you want to be dealing with workers in your work or the frustration of the whole repair/request process. Clearly they don’t check out stuff that is broken that badly and they (ineffectively) rely on the guests to take care of the notification.

I’m off to New Jersey/New York this week. I’ll be doing some meetings in NJ to kick off an exciting new project, and then hanging for a couple of days in NYC (staying at the W Hotel) to see some friends

. It’s been nearly a year since I’ve been out there; looking forward to it!

The New Mile-High Club is a piece about the business and technical issues surrounding the use of cell phones on airplanes. A really excellent companion piece to my recent FreshMeat

on the same topic.

In the final edition of Circuits the New York Times publishes an astonishing article informing us that airline travellers prefer e-tickets over paper tickets which are becoming increasingly rare.

From: “Hotel Asena Beach”
To: steve
Subject: sales dep.
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 02:33:16 +0200

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Reservation Supervisor

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Belcekiz mevkii
Oludeniz/Fethiye
48340 Mugla/Turkiye

TEL :+90 252 617 0154
FAX :+90 252 617 0487
GSM :+90 533 650 0239
http://www.asenabeach.com
e-mail :[email protected]