Enter The Hold Room for episode 16 with Roddy Bogus Vice President of Aviation at RS&H as he speaks with Delia Chi and Neil Chatwood about the differences in the passenger experience for Baby Boomers versus Millennials during the pandemic and in general. Listen to this episode to learn about emerging technologies to streamline the passenger experience and how customer service is changing due to passenger behavior.
The Hold Room, Episode 16
Transcript
[Introduction]
TJ: Welcome to The Hold Room with ACC: a quick update on all things relating to airport development as well as the Airport Consultants Council.
Wendy: This episode is part of a New Passenger Experience series hosted by ACC’s Terminal and Facilities Committee. In this series, we are collecting the experiences and perspectives of different types of users of the airport passenger terminal, including: business travelers; leisure travelers; airport executives; airport, airline, TSA, and concessions staff; and airport consultant staff, to name a few. For more information on this series and the hosts, go back and give the first episode a listen to.
Wendy: Roddy Bogus is in the Hold Room this week with Delia and Neil. Listen to what Roddy has to say as a Baby Boomer and a seasoned aviation professional about traveling during the pandemic and the outlook for the year ahead.
[Interview]
Delia: Welcome to the Hold Room in this episode on the New Passenger Experience today we turn our focus to the air travel experience from the perspective of a baby boomer. We are joined today by Roddy Bogus, a leader in the aviation industry who serves as Vice President in the Aviation Building Service Industry at RS&H. It's such a pleasure to have you today in the hold room. Can you please tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Roddy: Thanks Delia, my name is Roddy Bogus. I'm the Building Service Group leader for RS&H, and what that means is anything that is vertically constructed, so architectural and engineering falls under my group at RS&H, so I don't have responsibility for runways and taxiways, but my leadership is on the vertical applications on airports today. I started out as an architect and in 1988 somebody said,” Hey, can you write a proposal for some airport work?” …and I go, “Yes.” It was very exciting, so over the years I started on the airline side, working for two major carriers. After 911, that business didn't seem to be the right business to be in and started doing a lot more on the airport side. I've enjoyed every minute of it and many times hated every minute of it.
Delia: Thanks, Roddy, one of the questions we had for you was how has the pandemic affected you, and I will add, as a baby boomer air traveler, and then, after that, as your experience being a consultant in the aviation industry?
Roddy: So as a traveler, I think we all in our industry have to look at what we do as travelers too. We went down in March and I didn't travel probably much after the design symposium. I don't think I traveled again till maybe late summer, and the first time I went back after all these months of not traveling and I picked my clothing, my shoes, what goes in my briefcase to get me through the checkpoints, you know, without having to disrobe, and after four or five months, of not traveling. My first trip, I went to the airport, and I wore all the wrong stuff. My shoes rang. I wore the wrong belt. I was disrobing, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I wasn't quite sure what was going on. I felt a little taken aback. My wife always argues with me and says, “Hey, you know what you guys at work in the airport industry, you guys know what to expect. You kind of know where the restrooms are gonna be.
You know where to look for the gates, and so no matter which airport you're in, you kind of look for your certain clues. For those of us who don't travel every day, you know we sometimes can't find the restroom from having to read the signs and you don't. We don't see it the same way.” I felt for the first time, maybe her pain of going into an airport and being a little less comfortable and how it works 'cause I'd been away from it. So, I think it was a good slap of reality that had me thinking about things which we may talk about today as a passenger. Now from the consultant side, obviously we've had a ton of bad behavior both in the sky and in the airports. There's some airports that jokingly refer to as Friday night Fight Night at the airports now. And that's kind of comical, but it's also very sad to see what's going on, and is that a result in the polarization that we're seeing in the US? Not only politically, but otherwise, where you sit in the political side where you sit on the mask side or you’re just tired of other people side. Then we have that we have the airlines trying to get back up and running. I think we're also in the middle of changing who's flying. We're going from the last of the baby boomers all the way down to the Gen Zers, and I know looking at some of the Gen Zers, I know that their values and what they look for in travel may be different than mine, so there's a lot of things I think that we, as designers of airports, have to start considering. And at least asking ourselves questions of what does air travel look like in the future? How does one size fit all? And even the question is, do I look at the IATA (Airport Handling Manuals) and ACRP Manuals and say that tells me what an airport should look like and how it should function. Maybe there's a little bit of blank paper going on here and saying there's some changes to the system and we ought to be questioning why we're doing what we're doing and is there a different way?
Delia: From the pandemic, what changes have you seen that you feel like needs to be evaluated, maybe already has been evaluated, and do you think those changes will stay around?
Roddy: So, way to start right off with asking hard questions that don't have great answers in my opinion. Delia, I don't know that I've seen a lot of real changes in the US for the pandemic, other than we put in a lot of hand sanitizing machines, we put social distance stickers on the ground, which most people don't really acknowledge, and we've put up a lot of plexiglasses. There's a lot of talk early on with more automated systems, but outside of what I'm seeing, Seattle and I think one other airport do with kind of a call to checkpoint system where you can make reservations and trying that. I haven't seen a whole lot of real change. Let's be honest, that change most of the time, the automated systems here in the US, it comes from the airlines typically. We've read the papers lately with, you know server airlines having really bad days which makes lines and lines and lines of people very unhappy and inevitably they get unhappy with the carrier of choice, but they also become very unhappy with the airport that they're in. Well, I'm not flying out of airport X because the lines are so long, or because my flight is always delayed like it's the airports’ fault, and, at some point in time, I think the airports own a little more of process. And I don't know how that conversation happens with the airline agreements, but we've all seen where bags get late and I hate going to this airport because I never get my bags on time and all this so the automated systems, the intelligence systems, maybe digital twinning as it comes up in the future of how we monitor our airports and play what if with real time analytics are things that we need to see happen? I don't know how the airports and the airlines get together on this, but I think they have to be better partners because the airports wind up being the recipient of bad behavior when people get really frustrated at their carrier.
Delia: I feel like in this industry it is moving towards that direction, but I'd love to get your take a little bit more on what the airport and the airlines need to do become better partners.
Roddy: Well, they've got to talk a little more. I think there's a disconnect sometimes between the airlines on the corporate side and the airlines on the station manager side that reside in the airports. Station managers are the boots on the ground and the corporate people sometimes are there far less, and let's face it, during COVID many of the corporate people we all saw there was a ton of furloughs and a lot of the airline’s corporate offices. There's a bunch of new people there, and because of that, in some of my experience and not in all cases, a lot of the consultancy probably have more experience than the airline people that we're talking to, and that doesn't make us smarter it just means we have more experience and so that conversation that give and take that collaboration probably needs to happen a little more and we all have to be cognizant. They're trying to find a business model that works for them, and their vision is 90 days probably at best right now, so there's there's a lot of spit balls being thrown on the wall. In the meantime, the airports are trying to make a business decision that works for them and their concessions. What happens when you get these low-cost carriers that don't have agreements with other airlines? It's kind of like the mutual aid agreements, that kind of our stations have with municipal fire departments and other law enforcement agencies to come and help each other. I think there needs to be more of that between the airport and the airlines that's more freely utilized and then. I think it's up to us as consultants for how do we plan for this and how do we provide areas to deescalate situations? I feel like our design right now needs to be more focused and de-escalation design then amenity design. If people come off the plane and have nowhere to go, how do we accomplish that? If people are coming in the airport and they're anxious to begin with, how do we de-escalate them before they get on that long cylinder that they're gonna be close. No matter what we do, they're getting on an airplane, and it’s still pretty much has is the same type of seating arrangement, so can we do de-escalation design principles that at least make people breathe and not go on quite as anxious as they might be today? And I don't have the answer to that yet, but I think the answer is yes, we can. It just requires us to look at things a little differently.
Neil: A lot of the changes that you mentioned that you can foresee coming up on the horizon, seem to be technology driven. Whose responsibility do you think it is to try and keep up with these emerging technologies?
Roddy: Well, I think it's consultancy we have to. I feel like my job is to bring ideas of what's possible to my clients, whether it's an airport or an airline. Their bandwidth is very narrow what they're looking at, and I think they look to us. We often use, maybe an overused term, “Trusted Advisors.” What are we seeing in industry? What are we seeing in other airports that we've done? What are we seeing overseas that we could apply over here? So, I think some of it starts with us. Five years ago, I gave a presentation to the Seattle Tacoma Airport, when they you may remember a Memorial Day where their [Seattle Tacoma Airport’s] checkpoints were really, I mean they were out of their mind, they had long checkpoint lines people were missing flights. And we [RS7H] talked about different ways to deal with checkpoint lines that didn't involve the TSA, because the TSA has their formula, they're going to do what they're going to do. What can we do on the queueing side, and how can we eliminate soft targets by having very long queue lines, that if somebody wanted to do damage on the unsecured side, they could do that. And one of the things we talked about, out of many, was using our phone apps to reschedule time at a checkpoint. Well, here we are three to five years later and we're seeing Seattle pilot two different versions where you can log in and get a, it's like you know Disney Fast Pass, get a time that you're supposed to be at the checkpoint, so you have some certainty of when you're going through that allows a little breathing room on your end. You know whether you're sitting in the car waiting, whether it provides more concession time to have a cup of coffee on the landside, before you go in, but there's opportunities and that provides certainty. In this case, we all know that much of the anxiety people have before they fly is getting through that checkpoint. You know, passing that that gate, and so that helps with that, knowing that you know when you're going to be there. I think there's things we can do with technology also, on the secure side, which is virtual hold rooms, as I call it. What can we do about having to have gate huggers? You know, the first thing you do when you go through a checkpoint, I think most people just make sure your gate is still your gate, and that'll then limit you on where you're going to shop or spend money. We're already seeing that the checkpoint process where you can make arrangements. They're seeing more spend per passenger. If you have a virtual hold room, to where, if you're in the Irish pub, maybe six or seven gates down, you can still see the digital paging they say, “Hey Mr. Bogus come to the gate you've been upgraded.” - But then you know when to be there you can see if it changes. So, I think we can use technology to help ourselves out and for the people that are flying, and we still have some analog people, but we're getting to be more and more digital natives to use that to our advantage. So, I think technology is one aspect that certainly they can team with the airlines to bring some of their airplane content into the Hold Room, where you can start a movie in the Hold Room and take it down with you into the plane. One thing we haven't seen so much here, that's been talked about a lot, is automated boarding and, right now, that still seems to be in the airlines box, so I think there's a lot of technology that can help us, but some of it's just going to continue to be us to design things that flow a little better.
Neil: Thank you.
Delia: You’ve [Roddy] provided a lot of great suggestions as far as how to improve the passenger experience. Going back to the Baby Boomers and the difference between the generation, one thing that I've always wondered is, Baby Boomers, when they [Baby Boomers] go through the airport, they may experience a lot of stress. Do you think, as a Baby Boomer that stress is any different than the stress that a Millennial may have, and how do we make the passenger experience better for Baby Boomers, especially as they start to age, and what do we need to consider?
Roddy: I don't know if I'm the right one to answer. I'll tell you what I think. What I'm seeing, the big difference is for a lot of these younger flyers now, is flying is a means to an end. It is not the event and I think for Baby Boomers, and maybe it's 'cause we came on the backside of what we, a lot of us affectionately call the Golden Age travel, it's not that way anymore, and so I joke, as I as I've watched my kids, especially in Europe, you'll get a £20 fair on Flybe or Ryan, or somewhere to go somewhere, and they will sit on the floor in the Hold Room, and as long, as they have Wi-Fi, they will wear 3 layers of clothes cram as much stuff as they can into their backpack, and be in a cattle car, because they're saving their money for their destination, so it's just a crowded bus ride my experience is going to be I'm saving everything for that. So, I think there's two different ways they look at it. You know you look at the Baby Boomers and a lot of them were built on, you know, well we want to go to the club, and we want to leave a space between us and the bench seating at the whole room and we're worried about getting there on time and we need a cup of coffee. I see some of the younger crowds now taking a lot more in stride and just saying I'm not going to talk to anybody. I'm just going to walk through and do my bit business, and I feel like the stress is less. There definitely is two different ways to look at it, I think.
Delia: I definitely do feel stressed in the travel experience sometimes.
Neil: Yeah, it's interesting, I think for the younger folks, the experience through the airport is a bit more transactional than it used to be, and I think you can ,and a good marker of that, you know, I'm turning 40 this year and I started getting on planes, I think when I was eight years old, and one of the things that I even noticed this kind of shift in people you know looking OK in the airport and then people just wearing pajamas, right? Like and I remember the first time I saw like a gaggle of people just wearing, you know, pajamas and flip flops and stuff in the airport. I was like what are they doing like they look. They look terrible, but it doesn't matter look like. What they look like in the app, like they're not taking pictures for social media inside the airport anymore, right? So, I think the way people dress and move for an airport really speaks to that point you made before.
Roddy: Yeah, I struggle wearing anything less dressed down more than dockers on a plane. Not so everybody else on my plane.
Delia: One last question for you [Roddy] that I have is, what does a positive passenger experience mean to you?
Roddy: For me, a positive passenger experience starts with me finding a parking place that's not on the top deck of the airport, and lately I've been parking on the top deck again because, you know, we've seen a lot of people come back. It means a security checkpoint line that doesn't stress me out that I'm going to be too close to boarding time and miss that boarding time, because we know some airlines board early and when they feel like they're fooled, they leave and leave early and some board late the with gate changes. And some of that's on me, I have to be there in time, but a smooth process through security is always good for me. If I check a bag, and I had shoulder surgery last year, so I have to check the bag a few more times, since I'm not supposed to put them in the overhead bin. The other thing that really sends me into orbit. There's two things - One is why the pilot that gets off the plane doesn't tell the mechanics or something wrong with the plane. Why does it have to be the incoming pilot that comes on and goes, “Oh, you know the tires flat, the wing fell off” - whatever happens and it's new, and so we play that game. And then arriving at your destination and your gate not being ready or will they give you another gate and there's no agent to drive the bridge? And so, you're you're on the plane for 15 to 20 minutes at the gate, but you can't get off and, I guess, that that all speaks to me. I think we're upside down on customer service and maybe customer service has gone the way of the dinosaur on many airlines. My time seems to have no value to the air carrier. If they're late, I'm sorry if they can blame it on the weather will it’s on the weather, whether it's a mechanic or not, If we get there nobody there to run the gate over, sorry, you're late, and by the way, the most frequent arrival announcement I hear is, “Well, we're sorry related, so if you're if this is your destination please wait on the plane while people that are going to hurriedly try to make connections get off”, I hear that more often than “Welcome to you know your home”, but if I miss the flight because I'm late, it's all my problem and so I feel like as a passenger, it's never the airlines problem, it's always my problem and, from a customer service perspective, I struggle with that, and so I don't know if we're just becoming a group of customer services, less airlines and that's going to be the new customer service of the future, I'm unsure where we go, but getting back to your question earlier Delia, I feel like the Millennials and the Gen Zers seem to take some of that way more in stride than what I take in stride.
Neil: Yeah, as you kind of identified earlier, if the younger generations value a lower price and it being a very transactional process in getting to a place, then if the market is basically establishing what they're willing to pay, then the airlines have to react in kind, and that means dropping the fares, dropping the bottom line, and that means reduced levels of service from top to bottom and I directly experienced this. I think you know you mentioned earlier, you know one of your sons or your daughters they are getting airline fares for, like you know, £20 over in the EU, and I, I think in the EU I've not seen personally like that massive shift towards budget travel over in North America to the same degree that it is in the EU, right? You know there was articles written, you know, like 10 or 15 years ago, like it was cheaper for someone to go from say Manchester to get to London it was cheaper for them to go via Amsterdam on the plane than it was to take a train, right? …and that I think really is a great standout example of like how cheap air travel is in Europe so maybe that's bleeding more into the North American travel experience as well. With the younger folks as well, again, I’m 40, and I was born in 1981, so I’m elder Millennial. So, I kind of like straddle these two generations and I think everyone got their limit of or their idea of what is an unacceptable level of customer service. The younger generations certainly seem to have a lower threshold for that, but when that threshold is met, well, you know they've got the nuclear arms of you know I'm going to reach out on every social media platform I can, and I'm going to reach out to their chat bots and I'm going to do this and I'm going to get and I'm going to bleed them for everything I can. On the other end of it right, like? How do you [Roddy] deal with poor passenger, uh, poor customer service like what's your reaction to that and what’s the product of that like? What's the outcome?
Roddy: I have to be very careful and the few times that I that I will reach out to say their Twitter accounts, if I do publicly, I've learned not to do it because I get a lot of my associates laughing and saying, “Oh, we saw the trouble you had,” and so I have to pick my words carefully. So many times, I'll direct message them and just say, you know, my carrier of choice and say, “This is the issue, you know, how can we fix this?” …and usually just get the standard feedback back, every once in a while, you get somebody that tries to help, and so I felt, I feel like some of the best customer service comes from the direct messaging that I've experienced so far. On Twitter, for instance, as opposed to going to anything else. Now, you know, I have a high-status level with one airline, which gives me, you know, some different phone numbers and that they will sometimes pay a little more attention, but not everybody has that and that’s still very frustrating. Uh, most of the time I think you'd see me writing my frustration into some of the articles I write. Just trying to get it out and poke fun at some of the things that go on, but it, it's difficult and you know you, anybody in our industry, no matter if you're Millennial or not, you have to be careful these days because social media presence is around forever, and what you write, words hurt, and we've seen plenty of that over the past two or three years. So, I most of the time I just, you know, suck it up, buttercup, and go down the road. And, you know, what keeps me from changing my carrier of choice it's probably their customer loyalty program, the frequent flyer program, you know, if they drop that down enough, then you know I might make a different choice, and that's bad to say, but sometimes I deal with bad behavior because there's still a benefit to me, or at least I feel like there is.
Delia: All really great questions. We don't have the answers to them, but it's something we can continue to think about.
Wendy: Thank you so much that was awesome, that was so awesome, really enjoyed listening to that conversation, thanks Roddy!
[Outro]
Wendy: Thanks for joining us in The Hold Room for this special podcast series exploring the new passenger experience. You can find more from this series on the ACC Training Hub—that’s training.acconline.org/the-hold-room—or wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, etc. Follow us for more content from the Airport Consultants Council. You can support this podcast by leaving a rating or review and by telling your friends and colleagues about the podcast. Thanks again.
