If Congress wants to help travelers with delays, it can fund training travel agents

Training travel agents will change the way we fly

travel agentIt’s almost impossible to get through a day without some scary story involving a US airline. And while United Airlines and Boeing are getting the most headlines, other delays and problems are happening regularly. Unfortunately, training travel agents is not in the headlines today, though it should be.

Is this more than usual?  Hard to say.  As a travel agent, I’m used to flights canceled and delayed for various reasons at various airports. Europe has also been ferociously hit with strikes this year. (One client had a meeting in Germany in April that was canceled a month in advance because the organizers didn’t want to risk attendees being stuck, and switched the event to Zoom.)

Airlines that laid off and fired many employees during the COVID pandemic have struggled to get back to normal. Plus, and this is just my sense, with all the headlines, airlines will now be especially cautious if there are the slightest safety worries. I’ve seriously told clients, “Look, if so much as the most trivial sensor light looks like it might be on, expect airlines to err on the side of safety. There may be more delays and cancellations than ever. So don’t cut it close if you’re flying to a significant event.”

Now airlines have all kinds of automated chat systems they claim will help passengers, but the reality is, those systems can often fail miserably.

United Airlines had canceled two Frankfurt to San Francisco flights, with others delayed. I can’t speak for all passengers, but personally, I had five clients recently on United 59, all in paid business class.

Irritated by hotel resort fees?This flight was canceled  24 hours in advance, then reinstated in the evening with a three-hour delay, and eventually, on the day of departure, delayed three hours further, then canceled for a second and final time.

United’s system managed to rebook three of five passengers, all on different flights. One was on a new flight (known as an extra section) that had been scheduled to replace the same flight that had also been canceled the day before. Another passenger was put on a Lufthansa flight the next day. One got assigned to a long connection via Washington Dulles to arrive about midnight. Two had no backup.

And all needed to get home on Saturday, two because they had flights somewhere else afterward for Easter. With several hours of effort, I got two more people on the now sold-out extra section. They also reworked better connections to get two others where they needed to go. Nothing super-human, so much as understanding what the travelers required (and yes, experience in looking at United’s reservation system). Then, we worked with United to change their tickets appropriately. In one case, the rebooked flight was changed in error by the United reservation system to yet another connection, but I eventually got it restored to a nonstop.

Had it been up to United, one person of those five would have gotten home close to their original schedule, one would have been brought home at 1 a.m., and two would have gotten home no earlier than the next day,

Travel agents are trained to act as advocates for travelers. Airline reservation systems are not. It’s that simple.

It’s also clear that airlines, for all they tout their technology and apps, often find that technology is incapable of finding solutions that work for their passengers when things go wrong.

Airline airports and reservations agents get overloaded when a particular airline has a bad day. Moreover, we can do this for all airlines. Any given agent can help United passengers in one way and other airline passengers in another.

And the industry needs people. Most of us currently working get regular unsolicited job offers, and most agencies I know are looking to hire.

Yes, experience helps, but training programs can help new people in a matter of months. Look at straightforward bookings — including dealing with flights. (Community colleges used to do it decades ago.)  And Congress can look at helping travelers and supporting apprenticeships/job training in careers that do not require a four-year degree. The travel industry is a field where investment may pay off both in jobs and in help for millions of Americans.

And how about it, Congress?  A pilot program could be inexpensive. Nothing unites people across party lines like the rage and frustration of being stuck for hours at the airport.

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