Skybus: Not Off To A Good Start
I’ll begin with an unusual statement for a trip report: I didn’t actually fly on Skybus. I was supposed to. Here’s the story.
Last month when Skybus started selling tickets, I decided to take another “trip to nowhere” by flying from Columbus to Greensboro and Greensboro back to Columbus (with positioning flights to/from NYC) in order to try out Skybus. When I booked my tickets, I got each segment for May 29 (outbound and inbound).
But when I went to check-in online before my flight I discovered that Skybus listed me as coming back not on May 29, but June 29. Skybus doesn’t operate a toll-free number and all customer service communication is through e-mail. Since this was the night before my trip, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to get my issue sorted out in a day, through e-mail no less.
The small Skybus ticket counter
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I was much relieved when I got to the somewhat small Skybus ticket counter in Columbus and the agents were very nice (albeit clearly new at working for Skybus). I explained my problem and they looked up my reservation and their system listed me as coming back on May 29 and not June 29 as the website said. But then it got interesting. While I was listed as supposed to come back on May 29, the system did not have me listed on some other list that would create a record and allow me to check-in and get a boarding pass. (But I was also not on the June 29 list.)
The agents took care of the problem within 20 minutes, and were very nice and apologetic. They were equally as stumped as me about the whole thing (they kept saying “This is sooo strange”), and my only guess is that the system was overwhelmed with requests when I booked my tickets (within hours of when they started selling tickets) and this glitch happened or it didn’t like my same-day turn around.
The flight I was supposed to be on
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But anyway, that’s not really the bad part. The GSO flight was scheduled to leave at 4:42 (odd time). Most Skybus flights have 30 minute turn-arounds, so I was not expecting to board 30 minutes before departure, but by 4:30 when they had not started boarding I knew something was up. Sure enough, a few minutes later, one of the gate agents announced there was a mechanical issue that would be resolved “shortly.”
There were no further announcements until 5:10 (28 minutes past scheduled departure) when it was announced a cooling valve in the baggage hold was triggering a malfunction indicator in the cockpit, even though the crew determined the valve was working fine (Skybus has hired two Airbus technicians to assist them for a few years, according to a worker there, who were dealing with this issue). It was stressed this was not a safety issue but rather a FAA follow-the-rules issue.
The passengers for the flight to MCI (5:00 departure) queued up and I kept thinking that we should get their plane and they should get ours (whenever it got fixed), in order to reduce the delay (instead of having one really late flight, have two somewhat late flights). But the plane comes in and they get on and leave approximately 30 minutes late (no announcement about the delay in the boarding area).
About this time I noticed a Skybus employee, who was definitely not in his 20s or 30s like everyone else who worked there (except for the pilots), who was wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt (Skybus employees wear black shirts and pants--more on that later) and seemed to be distant from the operations. He had the CEO-type look to him. Sure enough, a bit after the 5:10 announcement he gets up to the podium and introduces himself as Bill Diffenderffer, the CEO of Skybus, and says he will be flying with us to GSO.
Oh, he also says the malfunctioning part will need to be replaced. And the part will get here in 40 minutes. There were lots of sighs from the crowd. But then he tells the crowd the plane is new and this will be its first flight, which makes the crowd very excited. Only this isn’t the plane’s first flight, I discovered later that night. It first flew in 2000 in Germany and then served with Skyservice (interesting--Skyservice to Skybus and both even use a similar type face). And one of the Skybus agents told me it operated a Skybus flight earlier in the day. Oh well for the new plane gimmick.
At CMH, Skybus does not use jetways but rather this space below the main terminal that is ground level with the ramp, allowing for boarding via stairs. Skybus is the only airline that uses this area, which is isolated from the rest of the terminal via a series of long ramps, and only has chairs and restrooms (no food).
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CMH, please get stairs or an elevator. These 3 ramps are very annoying.
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Skybus uses Disneyworld-style rope dividers, and has four “gates” (each with three lanes for the three boarding groups) in the small area for a total of 12 lanes, all of which loop around. If this sounds complicated, just look at this picture.
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I took this before anyone was in the area, and I couldn’t figure out where to go to board. Now put 100+ people trying to queue up and no one knows where to go. Before boarding everyone kept asking “Which line is this?” It also didn’t help that once everyone was in the lanes, the order somehow got messed up (first it was zone 1, then zone 3, then zone 2).
Crowded and chaotic boarding area
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At this point I pretty much realized there’s no way I can go on Skybus as I would miss the last flight back to New York. But I stucck around in case things suddenly get fixed. When the part arrived (6:00 I think it was), the CEO said it will be installed and boarding would begin shortly. One woman asked if she could get food (we had all been waiting since 4:00 and there’s no food down there) and the CEO says he doesn’t know. He couldn’t even give a time estimate of when boarding would actually begin.
And so 6:00 turned to 6:30 and 6:30 to 7:00, all without any helpful announcements. A Skybus employee would go out to the ramp, then another, and another until finally no Skybus employees were in the terminal for a good half hour. I don’t think the passengers realized this, much less Skybus.
Finally the CEO comes back and says the part is not working but they are going to move on to Plan B (at this point, it was more like Plan F) but then one of the Airbus technicians comes in and says it’s working. But for some reason instead of taking our plane, we’re going to take the plane that was supposed to go to PSM and should be arriving shortly. Ah! Where was this concept two hours ago when the MCI flight was boarding?
During the wait I had chatted quite a bit with the Skybus crew (when they were in the terminal) and they worked out with the CEO for me to hop on board really quickly to see the plane since I couldn’t actually fly with them, which I will say was very nice of them and the CEO. (See the pictures at the end.) Their current fleet is all leased and has a capacity of 144 (their A319s will have 154 as well as two window exits on each side to comply with the increased capacity), so the seat pitch on their current A319s will not be as bad as it will be.
I heard the load was 112 pax and 73 checked bags (at $5 a bag, that’s $365), but 12-15 pax left before I did because of the delays and there may have been more after me. Around 8:00 as my LGA flight is taxing to the runway and I see the GSO Skybus flight pushing back. It had a nearly 3.5 hour delay.
My overall impressions with Skybus are not directly related to the ticket error and mechanical problem, but rather how the delay was handled. I’m not one to proclaim “I’m never flying your airline again!” after a delay and I understand delays (even long ones) happen but irregular operations reveal the true infrastructure companies are, and this situation showed that Skybus is operationally weak. Here’s why.
-Skybus is using their fleet to a maximum. There’s no room for, oh, say, a mechanical delay (or weather, etc.). This is just foolish. This is the airline industry and delays happen. This is why airlines keep spare planes around, even wide bodies (AA keeps a 777 overnight at JFK and NW keeps a 330 overnight at DTW, both in case of trans-Atlantic SNAFUS).
-A number of employees are from Independence Air, which is rather ironic since Skybus is making the same critical mistake Indy made: too much, too fast. Every new LCC airline wants to be the new jetBlue, but jetBlue didn’t start off serving a bunch of cities. They kept it simple and slowly expanded (and did very well until this February).
-Starting an airline requires training a lot of people, which takes time given the number of systems and procedures to know. Starting with a few routes allows everyone to get used to operations; throwing a bunch of flights at them creates mayhem for them and the passengers. At the time of my attempted fight, Skybus had been flying for about a week.
-Skybus currently has 3 active planes. Another arrived Monday night but won’t be in service for a few weeks, and another will arrive in late June/early July. (The 154-seat A319s fresh from Hamburg apparently won’t be in service until 2008.) Three planes are not sufficient for 8 daily routes. Period.
-In irregular ops, informed passengers are happy (err, not as grumpy) passengers. Going more than 15 minutes without an announcement is not good.
-Employees are helpful. At no point should there be NO employees in the gate area, especially not for half an hour. I and another pax ended up playing gate agent (telling people which flight left where, what the deal with the planes is, etc.).
-Don’t lie to the passengers. Because of the limited number of planes, the plane doing CMH-GSO-CMH had to do CMH-FLL-CMH after that (another plane was doing a BUR run, and the other was doing MCI and Portsmouth). A FLL pax asked a Skybus employee where she should wait in line as the FLL departure time was approaching. The employee told her just to take a seat and the flight would leave later--and the employee had a small laugh. At the time the pax asked, FLL pax weren’t looking at getting out for at least three hours.
-During the delay, the CEO did not interact with the customers. I would have thought that a CEO of a brand new airline on one of its first routes that was currently experiencing significant delays would talk to passengers and keep the company’s image positive.
-And finally, I particularly enjoyed the periodic announcements by the ground staff during the delay saying that food and beverages were not permitted on board the aircraft. After the delay, I could only hope Skybus gave free drinks and snacks out on board.
Other comments:
The uniform: The gate agent attire was okay. They wore black plants (one female had those long shorts/Capri-type clothing) with a Skybus shirt (black or white, short- or long-sleeve) and black shoes (everyone had a different brand).
The flight attendants wore a similar outfit, only they wore shorts--and not the khaki, semi-professional ones WN crews have, but rather very casual black shorts (a type you would expect people on the street to wear). I think this was outfit was completely unprofessional. Long pants (or skirt with stocking for females) should be required, and if Skybus does not want to have button-down shirts, they could at least go for polo shirts.
The pilots wore olive-colored button-down shirts, which created more of an army pilot look than civilian pilot (although perhaps given Skybus’s “Rules of Flying” the look is intentional :wink:). Get normal pilot uniforms.
The passengers: I was very surprised how well the passengers handled the delay. They did not seem that upset. Pax at a major airline with this long of a delay would have been very upset. I think this has to do with the pax Skybus is attracting: the types that do not normally fly (similar, IMHO, to Spirit) and do not have set levels of expected standards.
The color scheme: There are questions about if the current orange scheme (“Mystery Machine”) will stay, as apparently the painters hated painting it (3 different orange/yellows, Independence-style dots at the top of the fuselage), took a long time to paint, and was likely very expensive. On the other hand, perhaps most of the Skybus fleet will have billboard ads, so the scheme won’t be a problem.
I sent them an e-mail after my “flight” and got this automated response: “Because we receive a very large number of messages, we can't guarantee a timely response.” If Skybus is not going to have a customer service telephone number, they should at least promptly reply to e-mails. NWA replies to most e-mails within two hours.
Final thoughts, and now the big question: Can they make it?
Skybus is going after an entirely new market, the so-called Ryanair market of the U.S. Europeans may have a love/hate relationship with Ryanair, but customers in the U.S. will not be willing to put up with low customer service.
I think there is a very large market for a Ryanair-esque airline in the U.S. and Skybus can pull it off if they select the right cities. From what I gathered, there is talk that CMH may not be the main hub in the future, or there may be many small hubs (similar to EasyJet).
Passengers in this new market may like cheap fares and be willing to pay extra for checked bags and snacks, but an airline needs a positive image and be able to keep its customers pleased. Skybus understands part of that, but has its work cut out to be a successful and well-liked airline.
They sell food and snacks and….jewelry?!
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Nationwide Scheme--yuck, sorry for the awful quality, but this was the only picture of N522VA I could get
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Simple scheme on N552SX, the aircraft with the mechanical issues (interestingly, she was sitting on the ground for 2.5 hours+ before the scheduled GSO departure)
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Mystery Machine, N521VA, pulls up to the gate from BLI before going to MCI.
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A ramp was used for boarding at 1L and regular stairs were used for boarding at 2L
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Departing to MCI
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Inside the Nationwide plane, N522VA
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-Will
P.S. If/when Skybus serves New York, have fun shooting it--those Mystery Machines require major saturation adjustment.
