OLEAN -- First, an ample self-serving of crow is in order. Last week in this space, I made some smart remarks about the commencement speaker at St. Bonaventure University, where I teach. Scheduled for the address was Edward Bastian, the president of Delta Air Lines and a Bonaventure alumnus.
I made some printed wisecrack to the effect that maybe he would explain how Delta had fallen from a once-superior airline to one that routinely strands passengers, raises ticket prices, and last year lost almost $2 billion.
Well, guess what? He did. It was one of the best graduation speeches I ever heard, and I've sat through a bunch of them.
In soul-searching, I realize my not-so-subtle animosity stemmed from several incidents. In one, somewhere around the turn of millennium, I was trying to get back to the Washington area from the west coast, and stupidly scheduled myself on a return flight necessitating a change of planes at the modern, busy and highly-touted Dallas airport. Upon hitting Texas soil we were all informed the connecting flight was delayed, then -- after about two hours of teasing and incredibly vague Delta address system announcements -- canceled. No explanation. No more information.
Of course, my fellow travelers and I tried to collar any available personnel wearing a Delta uniform to seek information and instructions on securing another flight. No dice. They weren't even interested in talking to their customers -- turning away, shrugging, scurrying off, sneering, answering in rude, curt tones. Some of them whispered among themselves. Futilely, I tried to overhear. (I learned later from business articles in leading aviation periodicals that many airline employees in such private conversations routinely referred to passengers as "geese.")
Finally, a caustic and brusque attendant at a "flight information" desk came up with the excuse that the Dallas-Fort Worth area had been hit by a sudden spring ice storm which "caught everyone by surprise." She made it sound like the apocalypse.
That particular airport has vast interior spaces that give little view of the outside, except for the ubiquitous trams shuttling passengers back and forth between several terminals, and one has to stroll about for a bit to get a peek at the skies. I finally found a window with a view of the runways. It looked pretty sunny out to me. I took the trouble of going outside to check. (This was pre-9/11, so the security wasn't as tight as today.) It was a beautiful Texas afternoon, and fairly warm.
Upon returning inside, I visited the men's room. Next to me were two Delta pilots in uniform. They were bragging loudly that their sudden "slowdown" movement -- replete with walk-offs and refusals to fly under obscure and much-ignored FAA rules -- had virtually shut down Delta's flight operation for hours, and had showed the bosses "who was boss." It was a labor action, not a weather front.
I was so angry I called a Dallas TV station and notified their news desk, and soon a camera crew was bracing uniformed Delta employees up against corridor walls and asking tough questions. Ha. My nasty little get-back didn't do me any good flight-wise, however. I had to stay over in some cheesy hotel and take a mid-morning flight east the next day. In ensuing years, loved ones have had similar experiences and strandings -- up to 48 hours in some cases -- in Delta's hub airport, Atlanta.
Me? I haven't flown Delta since. I may give it another try. Bastian not only acknowledged the mess his airline had been in those days, but apologized for it.
Apparently, my perception of the serious rift between employees and management at the huge airline had been accurate.
He quoted the airline's founder C.E. Woolman -- who started Delta eight decades ago in Monroe, La. -- as famously repeating to managers this sound advice: "If you take care of your employees, then they will take care of your customers."
The opposite is obviously true. The speaker detailed Delta's recent business spiral with great candor, and what Delta did about it.
"When you go through difficult times," Bastian told the 700-plus graduates, "it is easy to become so preoccupied with your difficulties that you lose sight of what you do have -- and that's what happened at Delta. At Delta we have the greatest employees in the airline industry.
"But when you are needing to cut jobs, pay and benefits, those same employees start to feel as if they are only a cost, a burden, part of the problem -- rather than the greatest asset you have. As a result, trust starts to erode. And after trust goes, so does service -- and pretty soon your customers start to leave in droves."
Bingo. Just like me. I had flown Delta often in covering national stories -- that is, before becoming disenchanted in Dallas due to angry, lying employees. The speaker hit the nail on the head.
"I have seen this happen time and again in business," continued Bastian. "If you lose the heart of your people, your company will lose its soul."
It wasn't always this way with Delta. The airline was once -- three decades ago -- the engine of resurgence for the New South. Along with Coca-Cola, it virtually made Atlanta, Ga., the big important city it is today.
In the mid-1970s, as the Old Confederacy was finally starting to come alive in terms of economic progress after more than a century of post-Civil War dormancy, two Southern cities had a shot at becoming a modern, lucrative, national transportation hub -- Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala. (home of the distant media company that owns The Other Paper, by the way).
Birmingham and Atlanta were finalists for growing Delta's headquarters location. The two cities were then about the same size. The Delta decision depended on which one would build a new, modern airport with capacity for what was obviously a coming age of super air transportation.
Atlanta took the bold step and began building Hartsfield Jackson International Airport. Birmingham backed down. Atlanta is now the eighth largest metropolitan area in the United States. Birmingham isn't even in the top 50. Delta is now the largest employer in the state of Georgia.
So after the boom years, what went wrong with Delta besides employee discontent?
Bastian listed several things -- "run over by record fuel prices, fallout from the tragedy of September 11, incredible pressure wrought by discount carriers" -- but emphasized lack of attention to two ways in which the airline's business plan had grown rusty. One was globalization.
"For being a large airline we were not a very global company," he said. "Eighty percent of what we operated was in the United States. The most difficult market in the world to be an airline and make a profit is here in this country."
The other was the very thing that had worked so well for 30 years -- the huge "hub and spoke network" of flying almost everyone into Atlanta (or sometimes Cincinnati) to change planes for their final destination, no matter where they were going.
"Discount carriers with new aircraft were over-flying the hub, bringing people direct to their destination -- whereas Delta wanted to bring everyone, or so it seemed, to Atlanta or Cincinnati first," noted Bastian. "We were slow to adapt. Now our mission is to connect the people of the world together, not to connect them in Cincinnati."
Now Delta is the fastest growing international carrier. It sends its planes to 325 destinations in 55 countries. When its merger with Northwest Air Lines goes through, that will be 400 destinations in 70 countries.
Delta had also become too fat. It lost billions on billions in recent years. Finally, it declared bankruptcy reorganization, and laid off 25,000 employees -- those remaining took 30 percent pay and benefit cuts.
"We caught ourselves in this negative line of thought," said the airline president, "and really started to turn the corner two years ago when we decided to make our employees part of the solution, rather than the problem. We didn't have a lot of money, but we gave them ourselves -- and found out that was all they wanted in the first place."
Bastian and his executives began bringing Delta's remaining 40,000 employees -- 400 at a time, "day after day and night after night" -- to Atlanta: "We invited them personally to forgive any perceived wrongs and rededicate themselves to serve our customers and fellow employees. ... We apologized for mistakes made and asked them to give this great company one last shot. We sought their input on changes they thought we should make.
"You would see people transformed in front of your very eyes. One by one our people realized their voice mattered -- that they were being brought in as part of the solution. They forgave the company. They forgave themselves."
Bastian believes "our house is back in order. As we started living within our means, we now have started to grow again. We can now afford pay increases for our people and to rehire many of the people we needed to furlough."
He didn't mention it, but a couple of television news shows this week showed many Delta employees so improved in outlook that they spend flight layovers and downtime when they'd normally go home staying over in a special lounge room at the Atlanta airport. They are happily donating their time -- in Delta's name -- sewing colorful quilts for charity children's hospitals across the land. A far cry from previous behavior.
Bastian also heaped a lot of good advice upon the graduates, including these three promptings:
"Develop a strong belief in the goodness of life and the God-given worth of every individual. Stay true to yourself. Never compromise your values.
"Foster and celebrate practices that nurture living and learning, enhancing the quality of life in the world around us.
"Dream big, follow your passion, and be open to your calling."
He also left them with a quote from renowned spiritualist and monk Thomas Merton, who attended St. Bonaventure University: "The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little."
So, my thanks to Edward Bastian for dampening my embedded cynicism a bit, for setting me straight on a big company's struggles and problems, and for inspiring young people, which is supposed to be my job, too.
And for those of you wondering whether as journalism school marshal I pulled off any of the commencement-day pranks I alluded to in the last column (handing the dean the wrong student identity cards, having the students wear funny hats, etc.) the answer is -- of course not. I behaved. But apparently I did manage, inadvertently, to maladjust some of their complicated hoods and sashes, just as I feared I would.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | May 20 2008 |