Sitting in the back of a hot (and getting hotter) 737 on some remote parking area of O’Hare Airport, I’m getting increasingly agitated. I’m not really sure why. I have no particular rush to get to the gate and get home. I don’t have any physiological needs that are becoming urgent. Perhaps the heat is getting to me? No, it’s the fact that I have no idea what’s going on, and this is increasingly frustrating me to the point where I’m now almost as angry as the passengers I hear around me grumbling “what’s going on?” “Did they forget about us?” “Did we land at the wrong airport?” “Is there a security thing they aren’t telling us about?” I’m also beginning to have the same questions, but shouldn’t I know better? Don’t I know, fundamentally, that it’s just an occupied gate and the crew just doesn’t have any new information to share? So, why do I feel like I’m just another “uninformed passenger?”
No matter which airline you fly for, most will have a common policy of updating passengers every 15 minutes during extended ground delays. On the surface, this makes sense, and most pilots agree that 15 minutes isn’t a terrible burden when you’re parked doing nothing but monitoring systems. But what often happens on the flight deck, is after one or even two of those updates, the mentality shifts to “well, I have nothing new to add, so I’m just not going to say anything.” On the surface, this feels like a descent solution. We type-A-personality pilots only want actionable intelligence and listening to someone drone on and on sounds like excuses and not results. Or the overabundance of updates with no substance will somehow cause more anger than a non-update update.
To be fair, I think all of us would agree that a pilot coming on the PA every minute to give a “non-update” would start to have people eyeballing the emergency exit handles by minute 20. However, we also know that the number one cause of passenger complaints during a delay is lack of any update at all from the flight crew, especially when you are sitting stationary for more than 30 minutes. So, why do people want a non-update at all?
It’s all psychological. Flying is inherently scary/nerve wracking for most of the population, whether they travel once a year, or every week. This fear and unease, ramped up after having to deal with driving to and around the airport and then going through security, is amplified by the fact that every passenger must give up control of the situation and trust the flight crew to get them from point A to point B safely. Passengers handle this stress in many ways. Some become overly compliant, some become belligerent, and others “check their brain” at the door of the airport either consciously or with the aid of a narcotic or alcohol. All this anxiety then gets crammed into an aluminum tube for hours at a time in close proximity to many others feeling the exact same way.
Finally, we get to the gist of this article. You and 150ish of your closest friends for the last number of hours are stuck waiting for a gate at your destination. You park, tell them you are waiting for your gate to become available, and 15 minutes pass. It’s now decision time—do you give them no update, or do you tell them you are still waiting. While it seems pointless, telling the passengers that you have absolutely no update other than your promise that you will get them to the gate as soon as you can, will help bring the temperature down. Why? Because you are giving them back some control. Even though there really isn’t anything they can do, they FEEL as though some control of this has been given back to them. They are no longer on an island trying to deal with this alone, they know the pilots are thinking of them and to some extent, understand their frustration. Some people call that “empathy,” and empathy goes a long way in customer relations, and with relationships in general.
Does the 15-minute update have a shelf-life? Absolutely. After an hour, especially if you’re late, there really isn’t much you can do to keep people happy. However, updates at regular intervals, even if they are “non-updates,” will help stave off the worst anger, and buy you and your company time to work out a solution. And don’t just take my word for it, as a passenger in the back of the plane, I’ve seen this happen in a bad way. We landed 30 minutes early on our flight and then proceeded to park in a remote stand at the airport. No PA, no information from the flight attendants, nothing. We wound up taxing to the gate 25 minutes later and arrived right on time. The anger in the cabin, and the angry words from passengers as they walked out, was palpable. The flight arrived on time, and everyone was mad, even me.
The old adage “no news is good news” may apply to circumstances surrounding medical tests, HR complaints, and war. But in this case, whomever originally said that had not been stuck on a remote stand at an airport for 30 minutes with no word from the people in control of their lives.
