This Is Your Elite Flier Speaking

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 7, 2007

HOUSTON

Scrunched in the packed coach cabin, J.P. Maxwell eyed the lone empty seat in first class. An elite flier on Continental Airlines, he was upset. Maxwell was convinced he should have been automatically upgraded for the recent four-hour trip.

During the flight, the Internet entrepreneur hacked out a 526-word missive that he later posted on a popular online chat room, http://www.flyertalk.com. "I consistently pay several hundred more to fly [Continental] and this is what I get?" Maxwell vented on the site.

Lurking in the chat room was Scott O'Leary, a customer service guru at Continental who spends several hours each day prowling such Web sites for customer complaints. O'Leary quickly discovered that Maxwell had never been told that he had been upgraded and had been left to languish in coach. With the passion of someone who had discovered a major flaw in the airline's operations, O'Leary alerted company executives to prevent similar foul-ups, ensured that Maxwell got a free upgrade and posted an explanation for the mistake in the chat room.

The recent exchange highlights the growing importance that airlines are putting on monitoring travel chat rooms, often the only forums where far-flung travelers can trade horror stories and swap tips. Flyertalk alone has more than 130,000 members, and thousands of others visit the site each day to read the postings.

Representatives of Continental's competitors say they also monitor the blogs and chat rooms to quickly pick up on problems. US Airways, for example, is eliminating a $25 fee it used to charge its top fliers to switch their flights at the last minute in response to complaints posted in chat rooms, said Elise Eberwein, a senior vice president at the carrier.

American Airlines' customer service managers and spokesmen visit the sites because they "give you a quick pulse check on the industry," said Roger Frizzell, vice president of corporate communications, adding that the company is careful in how it responds to online commentary because the anonymous nature of the sites can sometimes lead to "wild accusations without any fact or merit."

United Airlines' customer-service specialists have similar concerns about the anonymous nature of the airline blogosphere. To get a better gauge of what its customers think, the airline created its own version of the chat rooms in April and invited 200 of its highest-mileage fliers to join the private discussions, the carrier said. United representatives said they pose online questions to the customers and monitor their complaints. "We view it as a very rich way to get data," said Barbara Higgins, vice president of customer experience.

Still, none of the carriers has weighed into the often passionate, quirky and nit-picky airline blogosphere like Continental. The airline has a long history with customers who populate the blogs and chat rooms, particularly those who frequent the Continental forum on Flyertalk, a free-wheeling site for road warriors founded in 1998.

The airline has sponsored two events in recent years for Flyertalk members (known as Flyertalkers) at its headquarters in Houston, drawing more than 200 people who paid their own way to each get-together. At the meetings and in private e-mails, some Flyertalkers pestered Continental chief executive Lawrence W. Kellner to get his company more involved in the chat room.

Kellner eventually acquiesced, but only after finding the perfect candidate to join the forum, where customers spend hours chatting about upgrade policies, the best airport lounges and strategies for earning extra frequent-flier miles. It did not take Kellner long to turn to O'Leary, 35, a Continental marketing director and admitted airline geek whose sole career goal growing up was to work for a major carrier.

O'Leary, who had already been monitoring the sites for fun, has gone to extreme measures to fulfill his airline obsession, a common trait among many on the Flyertalk forum.

In the late 1990s, he traveled to Beirut to fly on one of the last Boeing 707s in commercial service. Since 1985, he has kept a computerized database of his flights -- including the registration number of each plane -- and the airports (not cities) he has visited. He has logged more than 2,952 flights and 2.4 million miles. He has visited 401 airports in 80 countries -- all marked with tacks on two maps hanging on his office wall. His computer hard drive is full of what he calls "airplane porn" -- photographs of planes in flight.

O'Leary traces his airline obsession to when his family was getting ready to leave on a trip to Florida on April 5, 1979. At his parents' urging, he wrote to American for some memorabilia and received glossy photos of airplanes and brochures. He also got "a nice handwritten letter of encouragement saying I was the youngest person to write asking for this stuff," O'Leary said.

Since being assigned to monitor Flyertalk, http://www.airliners.net and blogs on various Web sites, O'Leary has solved dozes of problems that irritate road warriors. He has posted more than 500 comments in the past year alone on Flyertalk, most answering questions, shooting down rampant rumors or highlighting a change in the airline's frequent-flier program.

"These are free focus groups," O'Leary said. "Every airline executive in his right mind is reading Flyertalk and other sites. If it is bothering these customers, it is probably bothering others who don't post on the sites."

Using the chat rooms and internal customer-complaint databases, O'Leary has easily spotted problems that sparked debates in the online forums. He has closely tracked discussions on how passengers prefer to print their boarding passes, the timing of the airline's automated upgrade system and the cost of premium wines offered at its exclusive airport clubs.

Most of the issues would appear relatively minor to the average flier, but O'Leary said he can't let them fester in today's competitive environment.

"The easy stuff is done," he said. "We are down to these finite details: the printing of individual boarding passes versus printing all boarding passes."

Last summer, for example, a Flyertalker complained about security procedures for Continental's elite travelers transferring from an international flight to a domestic one at the carrier's hub in Houston. The traveler could not understand why there was not a separate security line for elite fliers as there is in the main terminal.

O'Leary, who meets with Flyertalkers about once every three months at impromptu gatherings all over the country, investigated and found out that nobody had thought to put an EliteAccess blue carpet in the security area in the international section or designate a line for the special fliers. Within days, it was set up.

In another instance, he waded into the charged debate over who can get exit rows, a perk generally reserved for those with some sort of elite status. O'Leary discovered that there was no consistent policy at the airline. After initially deciding to allow only the top fliers to reserve those seats, he noticed fliers with lesser status complaining on Flyertalk. The policy was amended to include those fliers, too -- a direct result of feedback on the site, O'Leary said.

Flyertalkers generally agreed that they enjoyed having O'Leary on their forum because he doesn't overwhelm them with company propaganda and usually answers their questions. They said O'Leary's background as an airline fanatic gives him credibility because "he has been through as many airports and delays as the rest of us," said Richard Baum, a frequent visitor to Flyertalk.

O'Leary, who says he admires the Flyertalkers' passion, has not always been their best pal.

Last fall, someone on Flyertalk found relatively inexpensive fares on Continental between Minneapolis and London and posted details about the ticket price in the chat room. The fare was improperly coded, resulting in a $219 one-way ticket that came with too many bonus frequent-flier miles. Flyertalkers couldn't resist. They quickly bought nearly 1,000 round trips -- one traveler purchased 12.

Continental stopped the fare sale only after O'Leary spotted the chat and alerted company representatives.

Still, O'Leary remains embarrassed by the episode. It took him three days to notice the costly discussion.

He was too busy having fun -- hanging out with Flyertalkers in Cleveland.