It’s not easy being Green – AirTransat, Thomas Cook MyTravel, Easy Jet et al

I wanted to commend all the low frills airlines trying to give us cheaper ways to get around the globe.  EasyJet’s attempts at being green are getting news. Yup, they care about the environment… but at what cost to customer service? MyTravel and Canadian Affair use baggage weight bouncers controls to keep hefty passengers suitcases from stepping foot onto their planes. So there we were, unpacking on the grubby floor at Gatwick Airport, while those waiting in line for their own bad news perused the detritus of our three weeks jetting to and fro in Europe. Our goal? Attempt to re-distribute the weight in all our bags so we’d arrive at the magic weight for our check on bags before MyTravel closed off the flight.

Now I don’t know about you, but how many of us carry a weigh scale while we are on holiday? What does this airline think we are going to do at this point in our travel? Pay the fine of course. What a great way to bring in additional revenue. Alienate your customers by humiliating them in front of their fellow passengers and then charge them more for the pleasure.

Now folks, this is not a great way to be the ripple. I bet you that bag weigher lady goes home each night ready to tear a strip off of someone from having to be MyTravel’s enforcer. What kind of ripple does she spread with her colleagues? Seemed the check-in employees were a little beyond irritated with all of us by the end. I wonder why they thought it would be a great idea to broadcast all that frustration right in front of us as if we weren’t really there? Airing some dirty laundry, me thinks. You get what you (see!) think about all day. That’s a big red flag to me that all is not sunny behind that green curtain.

Hmmm… you know, I bet there must be a better way to be green and eliminate the hassle for your customers. At the rate the competititon is growing for bargain fare airlines, I bet the next green wannabe EasyJet or MyTravel will find a way to do both. Or can Thomas Cook really do a better job now that they are acquiring MyTravel. Can we help them avoid some big customer gaffes while they wrestle through their transition?

People… CEOs… there is a better way to be green and customer friendly!! I bet we could all think of a few things that EasyJet could do. I’ll start brainstorming, you add…

1. The airline could place a weigh scale at the beginning of the line and place a curtained-off area for passengers to work out how they will deal with their luggage before they’ve just spent 1.5 hours in the queue.

2. The airline could set up a joint venture with a package delivery service and have a customer counter with that firm right there, beside you in the line after you’ve just gotten the bad news that it will cost you big bucks to send home your dirty laundry and that lovely bottle of Limoncello you just had to buy. Better yet, EasyJet could start their own package delivery service and charge half the rates of a competitor to get your overweight treasures home. Then they could get that extra revenue they would forgo by removing the customers’ pain.

3. I’ll add your ideas here as you send them to me in the comments.