Airlines Solving Some of Passengers' Biggest Headaches
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What airline passenger frustrations are introduced at the start of the episode?
Here's your Money Briefing. I'm J.R. Whalen at The Wall Street Journal in New York. You'd think that when airlines merge and group themselves in alliances like One World or SkyTeam, they'd iron out all the kinks that messed up the boarding pass process or honoring frequent flyer miles. Well, they haven't until now. We'll have more in a moment. First, some money and market news you should know. For the first time since at least 2011, American workers under age 35 report being happier with their paychecks than people over 55. A new report from the conference board shows that overall, The share of workers satisfied with their paychecks rose to 46.4%. In 2018, that's up from 43%. In 2017, the biggest leap coming from millennials born between 1981 and 1996 and Generation Z born after 1997.
Their enthusiasm for their compensation shot up from 36% in 2017 to about 46% last year. Now, young workers may be reporting greater happiness with their pay because people tend to change jobs more in the early years of their career, and switching to a new position or employer often comes with a raise. And with the demand for labor in the current tight job market prompting many companies to lower workers with higher salaries, younger people are reaping the benefits. And maybe investing in the monthly membership in an online dating app is worth it. A study from the University of Chicago has found that more than a third of U.S. marriages between 2005 and 2012 started online, and that online couples have longer, happier marriages.
They studied 19,000 participants and found that what researchers termed as the relationship quality of partners who meet online may be higher. and the rate of separation or divorce lower than for partners who meet offline. In addition, the research revealed that more anonymous online interaction produced greater self-disclosure and stronger feelings of affection than face-to-face communications, and that could be steps toward more solid relationships.
Many times when airlines merge or get together in alliances like NowStar Alliance or One World or SkyTeam, some details that could make things easier for passengers fall through the cracks. But now many airlines are plugging up those holes, and Wall Street Journal Middle Sea columnist Scott McCartney joins us on the line with some details. So, Scott, as you point out in your story, these alliances have been around for about 20 years, but challenges still exist that get in the way of just simply like issuing a boarding pass.
What recent workforce and social trends are briefly covered before the interview?
Yeah, it's really pretty remarkable. One of the alliance CEOs said some of these things, they're like going into a restaurant and expecting to find a knife and the fork on the table. I mean, you really couldn't believe it if it's not there. And with airline alliances, really simple things, check-in, boarding passes, updates on flights, they just have really struggled to be able to give you information or sell you a seat or give you a seat assignment on a partner airline, even though they're doing so much together on the cost side.
And SkyTeam, for one, is addressing what you call pain points for passengers. And there are especially some frustrating areas that they're trying to address.
Yeah, they have five pain points that they've identified. And really all three of the alliances are doing similar projects right now. But the SkyTeam pain points are boarding passes. That's number one. Seats, number two. It would be seat selection or even the ability to sell you an extra legroom seat across partners. That's number two. Tracking check baggage. That's something that more and more airlines are doing themselves, but they can't give you the information once they hand off the bag to a partner. Rebooking passengers when flights are canceled. Sometimes you have to go back to the original airline where you bought the ticket. You may buy a ticket on United, but you're in in China and the flight gets canceled and Air China may say, you got to go back to United to get rebooked.
It can be really difficult.
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