Hello, United (and Spirit), meet the Internet
You think this would have been written 10 years ago. It probably was, but the airline industry missed it. I went on three trips in the past 3 weeks. On each trip, the flight back to my home city was delayed. Nothing really bad- 3 hours or so on average.
So why gripe? I didn't even sleep in an airport. The airlines (culprits, in this case) were United and Spirit. When asked about the flight delays, the gate agents did not know how long the delays were for. The Spirit folks didn't even know if the plane that was supposed to arrive and then pick me up had left the ground or not. This was pathetic. The clerk blamed his computer system, but I blamed his brain. Don't these people have phones? Don't they have a secret number to call and ask if flight 171 from Laguardia has taken off or not? This was assinine.
Meanwhile, my cell phone did have all the missing info. Orbitz was sending me SMS updates about the delayed United flight. I had the news over an hour before the gate agent. For the Spirit flight, some guy with an iPhone connected to the free wifi at Ft. Lauderdale International and was watching an icon of the plane flying over North Carolina. Why didn't the airlines have a backup system?
Since the airlines were ignorant and would not do their job, the passengers filled in. Should we just get rid of useless gate agents? Probably. Should we have electronic signs connected to real networks that give useful data to people? Definitely. This could be done with wifi, cellular, or wimax technology. And it could apply to much more than the airlines.
