And now the airlines take a hit

Wall Street Journal article today -- in the online version you can catch it at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123362464275141955.html . The title is "When the Airlines Make the Rules" and discusses the arbitrary and customer-unfriendly rules of the airlines. The author, Scott McCartney, highlights some particularly nasty policies at both American and Continental. New policies, new rules. As if the old ones weren't bad enough.

How would you like your company to take hits like this. In the Wall Street Journal no less. But to add more heat to the fire, the online version allow readers to comment on the article. Relatively quickly there were 25 vitriolic reader comments. Not one in defense.

And the anecdotes in both the story and the comments, well, they make driving look like a pretty acceptable alternative.

How long can the legacy carriers continue to anger their customers? Don't their BODs ever hold managers' feet to the fire, asking, "Why aren't we more like Southwest?" (which was widely complimented in the comments.) Why would you ever want to hold the stock in these companies?

The "big" three automakers never quite maddened customers the way the airlines have. Look how far Detroit has fallen. The legacy carriers can't be too far behind.

And then they'll wonder why. Talk about failures of marketing.