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News and notes from around the interweb:
- Travel With Grant says that the Platinum Card by American Express will stop earning double points on Uber effective February 1. I wasn’t using my Amex Platinum to pay for Uber, just for the monthly Uber credit. I like the card best for 5 points per dollar on airfare (scheduled flights purchased from a passenger airline).
- El Al will launch Tel Aviv – San Francisco in late 2018 and they’re also eliminating the ‘UP’ low cost carrier within a carrier brand that flew to five European destinations, offering mainline service instead. It took them awhile to learn the lessons of Ted, Song, Metrojet, and others…
- Washington Post digital access free for Amazon Prime members for 6 months then auto-renews for $3.99/month instead of the usual $10 though you can cancel if you wish (HT: Doctor of Credit)
- A crew wedding onboard Delta’s final 747 flight
- Interview with an airport architect who worked on projects at LAX, Chicago O’Hare, New York JFK and London Heathrow. The biggest difference between US projects and those abroad is that airports internationally are frequently privately owned or managed. The British drink a lot. Airports would be designed differently with better security “if we didn’t have this big government agency that did things very slowly, which is a TSA.”
- American Airlines flight attendants will be required to take one day of ‘de-escalation training’
2018 is shaping up to be the year that American flight attendants focus on “creating relationships that LAST.” “LAST” stand for “Listen. Apologize. Solve. Thank.”
That is supposed to be the end result of a new intensive one-day training session in how to de-escalate a situation that could become ugly — and viral — if not handled properly.
Your headline makes it sounds like FAs have to read the paper. Which is probably not a bad idea! lol
As a high school administrator for a couple of decades in my pre-retirement life, I’m scratching my head at the word “Apologize.” There is nothing worse than a formulaic apology.
A much better concept to insert at that point would be “Acknowledge.” Active listening and letting the other person know he or she has been heard, is key to solving conflicts, not “insert fake apology here.” Better yet, “Acknowledge” still fits cutely into the “LAST” acronym.
“Understanding,” on the other hand, could create real confusion.
Precisely, such stupid LAST de-escalation are only likely to piss people off and make things worse. If I am pissed off, I am already pissed off. The best way to de-escalate is solving the problem directly and quickly. I don’t need you to listen (weren’t you listening when I was first complaining), and I don’t need fake apology (which only waste my time and yours). Fix the damn problem and move on.
Required training == Collective punishment.
There’s some merit in DJT’s diatribes against Amazon as Bezos continues his “colossus at any cost” approach.
With all the expose that had happened anybody that supports is a Russian agent.
As trump likes torture we hang these Russian agents upside down and beat a confession out of them.
Yup most southern whites are Russian agent.
AA’s de-escalation training is absolutely necessary given the variety of customers they face everyday and the nature of the service they provide, which is basically a bus ride after clearing TSA checks and arriving one to two hours early. And, then to top it off, being nickel and dimed past the breaking point for most inexperienced travelers.
It’s a good start, but they cannot please all of the customers all of the time. Accommodating one customer’s needs could be at the inconvenience of other customers. So, go through the instructional courses, but be prepared to enforce rules so that rule abiding customers aren’t trampled by people that think they are flying on private aircraft.
Nice to see the wedding photo on the 747. Happy news is always most enjoyable.