The One Travel Rule Ex-American Airlines CEO Doug Parker Won’t Let His Family Break

by Gary Leff on December 19, 2024

Former American Airlines CEO Doug Parker co-hosted this week’s Airlines Confidential podcast and was asked for his best travel tip. He offered don’t ever check a bag.

There are no silver bullets that I know that others don’t. I can tell you though what I tell my family. Number one, don’t check a bag. Wherever we’re going, you can buy stuff when you get there. Do not check a bag. It’s not that the airlines don’t know how to get there, but it’s incredibly complex, it makes your experience much more difficult. So anyway that’s my major tip to anybody, is just figure out a way no matter where you’re going to get it into your carry-ons and don’t check a bag.

It’s long been said that there are only two kinds of bags, carry-on and lost. But not all airlines are created equal here.

American Airlines loses more bags than any other airline. They won’t invest in RFID tracking, even as other airlines are integrating with Apple AirTag.

It’s not easy to avoid checking a bag of course if you don’t board early, since everyone else is bringing bags on board to avoid checked bag fees. You may be forced to gate check through no fault of your own! And this can happen even when there’s plenty of bin space left. Fear of potentially having to gate check bags at the last minute and delaying a flight a minute or two is why agents require customers to gate check even when there’s still bin space left.

Parker though goes on to offer something much more important, “probably a better tip is just be nice to the people that are out there working. It’s not just pablum. While it’s hard for the traveler, that makes it harder on the people that are out there.”

He offers that it feels better to be nice, but host Scott McCartney notes and Parker agrees that employees will take better care of you if you’re nice to them.

There is merit in the old saying “you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.” It breaks down a bit when you start thinking too hard because there’s nothing nice that you’re ever trying to do with flies when you catch them. All it means is you’re more likely to get people to do nice things for you if you’re nice to them than if you’re a jerk.

The saying dates back, as I understand it, to Torriano’s Common Place of Italian Proverbs and entered the United States via Poor Richard’s Almanac (Benjamin Franklin) in 1744.

• Whomever you’re dealing with is rarely the same person who caused the problem you’re dealing with.
• They have lots of people complaining to them all day long. You set yourself apart by treating them as a person, with their own emotions and motivations.
• If the person in front of you in the customer service line is getting upset and taking it out on the agent, the agent is all the more ready to expect you to do the same. They’re not going to want to listen to your story or spend time working every angle to find a solution. They’re going to want to move you out of their line as quickly as possible. Basic human nature.

You want to turn that on its head. Acknowledge the difficult job they have. Acknowledge even that you’re adding to it. If they ask you how you’re doing, as bad as your travel day is, it’s probably not as bad as listening to complaining passengers all day. Make them smile. Make them laugh. They’ll be happy to do more to help you.

Even if you don’t care to treat the agent as a person for its own sake (because they’re a human being and it’s what’s due them) if you want to get better treatment you should start by interacting with the person on the other end as a person. From a purely self-interested perspective it’s better not to be a jerk.

If you have a beef with the airline, take it up with executive management or the Department of Transportation. Don’t take out your frustrations on a junior employee. It’s not their fault, and they’ll be less inclined to help you if you do.

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