The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

http://dustincurtis.com/incompetence.html

by arjunlall • 17 years ago

323 98 17 years ago

dustincurtis.com

davi• 17 years ago

More interesting to me, the email that got the guy fired: http://dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html

An articulate explanation of how good intentions at big companies can often be implemented only slowly.

adw• 17 years ago

Also a good argument for never putting someone's email up directly on the Web - you've got to paraphrase if you think anyone might ever object to it.

And, yes, that's depressing.

kolya3• 17 years ago

Also a good argument against using company email for personal correspondence.

"AA searched their exchange database for the text I posted, found the guy, and fired Mr. X on the spot."

mwexler• 17 years ago

While poor intentions appear to be able to be enacted very swiftly.

gaius• 17 years ago

But doing the design isn’t the hard part, and I think that’s what a lot of outsiders don’t really get

That's always the way with any non-trivial undertaking. Recognizing this is the hallmark of actual experience.

gvb• 17 years ago

Dialog from Makers, by Cory Doctorow http://craphound.com/makers/Cory_Doctorow_-_Makers.htm

This dialog comes near the end, Lester and Perry discussing the paradox of working for a big company. According to Cory's bio, he never worked in a big company, but he nails it here.

gvb

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Lester: "They said that they wanted me to come in and help them turn the place around, help them reinvent themselves. Be nimble. Shake things up. But it’s like wrestling a tar-baby. You push, you get stuck. You argue for something better and they tell you to write a report, then no one reads the report. You try to get an experimental service running and no one will reconfigure the firewall. Turn the place around?" He snorted. "It's like turning around a battleship by tapping it on the nose with a toothpick."

Perry: "I hate working with assholes."

"They’re not assholes, that’s the thing, Perry. They’re some really smart people. They’re nice. We have them over for dinner. They’re fun to eat lunch with. The thing is, every single one of them feels the same way I do. They all have cool shit they want to do, but they can’t do it."

"Why?"

"It’s like an emergent property. Once you get a lot of people under one roof, the emergent property seems to be crap. No matter how great the people are, no matter how wonderful their individual ideas are, the net effect is shit."

"Reminds me of reliability calculation. Like if you take two components that are 90 percent reliable and use them in a design, the outcome is 90 percent of 90 percent - 81 percent. Keep adding 90 percent reliable components and you’ll have something that explodes before you get it out of the factory.

"Maybe people are like that. If you’re 90 percent non-bogus and ten percent bogus, and you work with someone else who’s 90 percent non-bogus, you end up with a team that’s 81 percent non-bogus."

"I like that model. It makes intuitive sense. But it’s depressing. It says that all we do is magnify each others’ flaws."

"Well, maybe that’s the case. Maybe flaws are multiplicative."

"So what are virtues?"

"Additive, maybe. A shallower curve."

jasonlbaptiste2• 17 years ago

I hope Virgin hires this guy and makes a media event out of it. I will now never fly American Airlines ever again in my life. This sincerely pissed me off.

butterfi2• 17 years ago

Clearly AA prioritizes the wrong things. I'm betting the guy broke some policy, but is it really a firing offense? Are they going to sack the middle-management bonehead who blew this up into a much more embarrassing spectacle?

Like I really needed another reason not to fly AA. These days, its Jet Blue or Virgin America if at all possible.

Vivtek4• 17 years ago

On the other hand, when I flew from Puerto Rico to Florida with my dog this spring, JetBlue not only didn't have facilities to fly my dog, they had no answer to my dilemma at all. And instead of refunding my ticket, they gave me credit, with JetBlue, who ... can't fly my dog. And then they said, "Well, have a nice day." No help, no money back, no nothing. It took them fifteen minutes even to tell me that they couldn't do it because they didn't have cargo facilities that could handle dogs.

I have a year to fly anywhere I need to, with JetBlue, except I needed to fly from Puerto Rico to Florida.

American flew me, and my dog, to Florida, no difficulties at all, on the spot. So maybe their corporate culture is screwed up, like many companies in this world, and maybe they're so big that there are a whole lot of people to screw up their Web design.

But when it comes to actually flying somebody somewhere with a dog, well, they appear to be an airline. Between AA, whose staff knew what they were doing, and JetBlue, whose staff came off as clueless, I'll continue to take AA.

dschobel• 17 years ago

Spare the boycott for a cause which merits it. AA just lost a competent and passionate employee and announced themselves as a lousy place to work for creative people.

jfager• 17 years ago

Why spare the boycott? It's not like it's difficult to avoid buying American Airlines tickets, and frankly, it sucks to fly with them anyways.

clistctrl• 17 years ago

They lost me as a customer after 2 consecutive miserable flights. Midwest Express has yet to show me anything less then a fantastic experience. Though I've recently been gaining confidence with Air Tran, its the in flight wifi.

hwijaya• 17 years ago

Hmm .. maybe this will catch Virgin attention if all of us do it?

http://twitter.com/hwijaya/status/5436741226

jasonlbaptiste2• 17 years ago

i would be down for organizing something to help make this happen.

wakeless2• 17 years ago

Its amazing how someone so obviously passionate can be completely screwed over by such bureaucracy. Do HR departments ever have humans running them?

potatolicious3• 17 years ago

Yeah they do, but it's a tough situation for everyone. If the HR person didn't fire Mr. X, someone else more opportunistic and less scrupulous would've done it - and the original HR guy's head would've rolled with Mr. X's.

Things like this will keep happening so long as we're willing to trample all over each other in our race to the "top".

michaelcampbell• 17 years ago

Sadly, the sole purpose of an HR dept. is to keep a company from getting sued. The bigger the company, the more that's their sole focus.

This guy admitting anything but the most perfect of environments and purity of process, while not a firing offense to normal folk, opened a vector for the possibility of the hint of something bad being done. So he had to go.

Confusion• 17 years ago

Sadly, the sole purpose of an HR dept. is to keep a company from getting sued.

When that company is a US company, then yes, because of the sue-on-sight culture that has grown there. The same thing wouldn't have happened if this was Air France, Scandinavian Airlines or Iberia Airlines.

billswift2• 17 years ago

Bureaucrats don't want passion, they want repeatability - see Robin's new post about sports rules http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/11/sports-signals.html.

padmanabhan01• 17 years ago

From the point of view of the management - this is someone who wrote an article about the company having big time bureaucracy, lot of teams that don't talk to each other and hinting that the company culture is all messed up. well, what can one expect.

arohner• 17 years ago

And firing him obviously confirmed that notion. AA just got Streisand'd

ghshephard• 17 years ago

This is nothing but positive, actually. Someone who is passionate, thoughtful, and caring about his trade will have a _much_ greater impact, career, and reward at a different organization than the one described by http://dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html

drusenko3• 17 years ago

A bit off-topic, but Dustin Curtis' site really hurts my eyes reading on my MacBook pro... I have a really hard time reading his text, and when I look away, I have very pronounced stripe patterns in my vision.

DarkShikari• 17 years ago

I have the exact reverse here. I love sites and applications that use a dark background; bright backgrounds are like staring into a lamp. It probably depends on the environment you tend to read in; I usually read in a darker room.

drusenko3• 17 years ago

I'm quite OK with a lot of dark sites, but this one produces an insane "buzzing" feeling. Might have something to do with the gray-ish text. I couldn't get through the entire article even if I wanted to.

I'm reading in a dark-ish room right now. I suspect it may have something to do with the type of monitor used to view the site, because on mine the physical effects are very pronounced.

billswift2• 17 years ago

The lamp-effect depends on your monitor. I hated white screens when I was using a CRT. Now it doesn't make any difference to me with an LCD.

butterfi2• 17 years ago

I have to admit, looking at Dustin's site, I thought "huh, interesting choices from a UX designer." I also found it hard to read now that you mention it...

jonny_noog• 17 years ago

I have the same issue with light text on dark background pages, I generally dislike them. It actually affects my vision for a few seconds after I look away from the page, before my eyes adjust again. That page could certainly do with a little more contrast between text and background at any rate. I recently created a site that does make some limited use of light text on dark background and found this post from a few years ago to be a good resource for looking at the issue from both sides (the comments are an important part):

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200608/light_text_on_d...

For as long as I can remember I have not liked reading large amounts of light text on dark backgrounds. It's always felt as if this was some kind of genetic predisposition for me. While for others, the opposite (i.e. strongly preferring light text on dark background) seems to be true.

I'd be really interested if anyone has heard of some solid research on why certain people prefer one over the other.

dcurtis• 17 years ago

Yeah, this happens on some screens. I spend all day looking at and designing white websites, and I just enjoy playing with dark on my own site.

I feel I can take risks with my blog that I can't take elsewhere. Sorry if it bothers you.

drusenko3• 17 years ago

You certainly have that right :) It doesn't really "bother" me in an emotional sense as much as I just can't read much of it whether I'd like to or not -- I'm not complaining, just pointing out that fact.

But some people seem to find it more appealing, so I suppose it works both ways.

jlees• 17 years ago

Same problems on my macbook pro as well - but http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ fixes it, of course.

marknutter• 17 years ago

cmd+opt+ctr+8 unless you're not on a Mac in which case too bad for you.

pyre3• 17 years ago

If you're using GNOME and Compiz, this feature is buried in the settings (run 'ccsm' aka 'Compiz Config Settings Manager'). It's called 'negative' or something like that. I don't recall off-hand if it is enabled/disabled by default or what the default keybinding is, but it's there.

edw519• 17 years ago

AA searched their exchange database for the text I posted, found the guy, and fired Mr. X on the spot.

As upsetting as this is, it's just not that big of a surprise. Some companies take non-disclosure very seriously. Why didn't Mr. X just use gmail? I can't imagine discussing any company's internals on their own email system.

OTOH, maybe Mr. X just committed corporate suicide by email. That's one way to escape the insanity.

Thanks for the update, Dustin. I sure hope Mr. X lands on his feet fairly soon and I applaud your contribution. I like to think that integrity still trumps idiocy.

trevorbramble• 17 years ago

I wondered that as well and assumed he used his corporate account to make his identity claim more credible.

3pt14159• 17 years ago

He could have emailed Dustin from gmail then told Dustin to make a throw away email that he would email "hey Betsy, hope the trip went well. Did you bring me back any chocolate from Switzerland?" Done. Verified and completely secure.

dtran• 17 years ago

IMHO, any employee not on the customer service team that reaches out to customers should be awarded not punished, given that it's done somewhat reasonably. In most cases filing a complaint with the customer service people would get you nothing - you need to talk to the ux designer.

pyre3• 17 years ago

Maybe AA's customer service or PR team is unionized, and this was just a CYA maneuver? (I realize that this is a huge stretch, just saying...)

daleharvey• 17 years ago

its ironic that he signed the reply off with

     Very truly yours (and hoping I don’t get fired for being completely incompetent),

but yeh I hope it turns out positive, the guy seems to have a good attitude and is apparently talented, so will be nice to have people like that at companies where I can actually get the benefits of someone caring about ui

jrockway4• 17 years ago

Ouch. I have top-tier status on AA, and they will be getting a note from me about this. Not cool.

That said, I am still confused as to why Dustin thinks AA's website is so relevant to its business model. Their website is not very Web 2.0, it's true. But, they make up for that... I can fly non-stop from Chicago (my home airport) to thousands of cities around the world on AA quite cheaply. They have three-class international service, which means I can use frequent flyer miles to get a really nice seat once in a while. They have lounges. They have international partners where my status benefits can be used. I get free domestic upgrades to first class. They have customer service that cares. (I have never been greeted by name on Southwest, but it happens rather frequently on AA.)

So anyway, the legacies are not totally incompetent. I fly at least every month and I would never even consider WN or JetBlue. The fare is about the same, and I have no chance of receiving anything other than a middle-seat on the back of a 737. No thanks. Perhaps the website UX is nice, but the rest of the trip won't be. And when I'm in a metal tube for 18 hours, I don't really give a damn about how much AJAX the website had.

(I am a little defensive here, I know. AA has been really nice to me, so I feel that they deserve some compliments for that.)

wakeless2• 17 years ago

I think this is less about AA being crap and more about you being a frequent flyer with ANY full service airline.

jrockway4• 17 years ago

Agreed. Although I do think AA beats the other US airlines on paper, which is why I haven't tried any others.

(I have flown on Southwest. Once. I got to the airport two hours early for a domestic flight. Waited in line for an hour and 45 minutes to check my bag and get a boarding pass. The boarding pass was "the wrong one" and security wouldn't let me through. Ticket agent didn't care. Gate agent didn't care. I then ran around the airport like a crazy person, "oh, you can connect in Kansas City, go to gate whatever". "She told you that we had room? HA! Try Oakland." Then I was stuck in Oakland for 6 hours.

This was before I was a frequent flyer and perhaps I was being stupid. But I have missed a fair share of AA flights and have never had any problems.)

potatolicious3• 17 years ago

"Their website is not very Web 2.0, it's true."

One of the original reasons why I disagreed with Dustin. Slick Web 2.0-y goodness does not imply a better user experience. Copious amounts of whitespace is easy on the eyes, but also doesn't automatically imply discoverability or readability. I know first-hand of at least one top-50 website that is very Web 1.0 but absolutely excels at what it does.

jfarmer• 17 years ago

Amazon?

tbrooks• 17 years ago

Drudge Report

Imprecate• 17 years ago

Agreed. Dustin just comes off as whiny and self-important, though I don't think the employee should have been fired considering the content of his email.

Also, booking flights is very straightforward on aa.com. Dustin could have provided some substantive comments on usability, but instead simply called it ugly and slapped together a minimalist southwest.com knock-off. The only thing that really annoys me about the site is how confusing it is to get a list of your current reservations.

A majority of the public only shops based on price and availability. Unless the website is so bad that they can't figure out where to put their credit card number, it doesn't matter.

wizard_2• 17 years ago

Is he whiny? He's a designer, this is his 'blogazine' about design, of course his post is going to be about AA's design. Later after posting from a result of his and Mr. X's actions Mr. X go fired. If I was Dustin I would have been concerned and outraged too and dam well would have written about it.

noonespecial• 17 years ago

The mistake Mr. X. made here was not about caring about his job or even criticizing his employer. He contacted an outsider, with his company's email server, ostensibly on their behalf. At bigco, you just can't do that folks. Everything that leaves corporate walls must be vetted by legal, (and probably marketing too). There are lists of 100's (maybe 1000's by now) of innocuous seeming words that you just can't use. Language, nationality, gender, and racial issues all must be considered.

Like it or not, at Bigco International, everything is a press release.

Personally, I would have given the guy a warning. What he said was quite harmless and almost certainly common knowledge, but we don't know the whole story here. He may have been warned before, or AA burned by this type of thing before or both. Its unfortunate, but understandable. In the name of tolerance and acceptance, we've built one of the most intolerant and litigious societies ever. This is just one of the many sad side effects.

jf• 17 years ago

Thanks, this is a great reminder: Work email is strictly for work, personal email for everything else.

pingswept• 17 years ago

For me, this is a reminder of why I don't work at bigco.

SwellJoe• 17 years ago

Or: Don't work for mega-corps for which every email is a press release.

ciupicri• 17 years ago

You're right, but the AA web site was his work, not a personal project.

DrJokepu• 17 years ago

I can't help but think that this approach cannot work anymore in the current communicational golden age. We really have social media, twitter, blogs. Content accessible to the public is not constrained by publishers anymore. If you're a big organization, people want to hear things from your employees directly and not from the usual boring PR channels, and they find a way to do so because it's so easy.

I believe companies have to embrace allowing their employees to communicate independently while making it clear that what they say is not the official position of the corporation. There's simply no other way, the age of controlled communication channels is just over. A good example is MSDN blogs - anyone at Microsoft can launch his or her blog and talk about whatever they want (except, of course, confidental information).

Quarrelsome• 17 years ago

But what is really weird is that Mr X and AA.com come off pretty well in the email. A bit of humility and a focus on the future. I even liked AA a little bit more after reading it..... until I realised they fired him for sending it.

mseebach• 17 years ago

> Everything that leaves corporate walls must be vetted by legal

Hardly. If Sun can, then sure AA can too:

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/10/16/I-Just-Wan...

Sun was one of the first companies to open the blogging floodgates, officially. [...] I note, with some pride, that we’ve had maybe ten thousand person-years of blogging since we launched, and we’ve never had any material disclosures or legal trouble. Nor have I heard of any over at IBM or Microsoft or Oracle or any of the other companies who empower their people.

cakesy2• 17 years ago

Yes, the guy is clearly not a "team player", not a "loyal" employee, he had to go.

nrr2• 17 years ago

From http://dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html (struck-out): "Fire your entire design team, if you have one."

I guess AA took some of that advice to heart here.

I can only hope this guy does land a job someplace where the company culture isn't completely and utterly fucked all across the board, all the way from the hangar to the board room.

raquo• 17 years ago

> Very truly yours (and hoping I don’t get fired for being completely incompetent)

Last line from his email, ironically.

cakesy2• 17 years ago

That is not ironic. I expect people to use words they don't understand anywhere else, but come on hacker news, I expect more from you and the people who comment here.

njn• 17 years ago

There's a common attribute that makes for good designers, good engineers, good employees, and good companies. For a long time, I couldn't figure out what it was. Was it practice? Was it skill? Was it innate ability? Turns out, it's none of those. It's taste.

Steve Jobs also cited 'taste' as the fundamental difference between Apple and Microsoft. His high-and-mighty attitude almost made me want to puke, as Dustin's does here.

dangoldin• 17 years ago

I'm not sure why no one's mentioned this but isn't Dustin responsible for having Mr X fired?

It seems the proper thing to have done would be to make the email untraceable to Mr X rather than just anonymizing the name.

symptic2• 17 years ago

And this, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is a lesson in why establishing a brilliant culture in your company is of utmost important. It's amazing to me to see all the praises in this thread for JetBlue and would be interesting to see a case study comparing the differences in culture between the two brands.

The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

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