Spirit of Aloha | Message of Aloha | March/April 2007

It’s Sweet at the Top!

Aloha and welcome aboard! The year started on a happy note when Aloha Airlines learned from the U.S. Department of Transportation that we were No. 1 in the nation for on-time arrivals, fewest misplaced bags and fewest complaints in the month of November 2006. It felt mighty good to start with a celebration, rejoicing at our success in topping the performance results of the nation’s largest airlines, not just in on-time arrivals, but in all three key categories. The best part of it was, we got these kudos for doing just the kind of thing we try to do every day to please you, our customers.

Achievements like these—chalking up an on-time arrival rate of more than 90 percent, delivering bags as efficiently as any airline in the country and providing customer service a cut above the rest—don’t just happen. It takes teamwork on the part of our flight crews, the frontline people you see at the airport and all of the people you don’t normally see: our dedicated staff in our Systems Operations Control Cen­ter, our Re­ser­vations, Planning and Scheduling, Information Technology and Finance departments, and general administrative offices. In congratulating our 3,500 team members, I told them that coming out No. 1 on the Air Travel Consumer Report recognizes all the hard work they put in, doing their best to further our commitment to on-time reliability and outstanding customer service.

Of course, it feels good to be recognized as the best and stand at the pinnacle of punctuality and customer service in a government report. However, even when standing on high, we never lost sight of the fact that what counts the most is not what’s on paper in a monthly report; it’s what you—our cus­tomers—think of us every time you fly. Though we en­joyed basking in the limelight, we went right back to work, recommitting ourselves to offering you the best possible serv­ice in the caring spirit known as aloha.

Many of our key managers and frontline agents recently com­pleted a round of training to help them sharpen their customer service skills. The underlying concepts of that training were distilled into three words: SMILE, CARE and THANK. The word smile reminds us of the power a smile can have when we deal with other people. The word care reminds team members to treat customers with respect and understanding as they themselves would want to be treated. The word thank reminds us we should be grateful to our customers and express our gratitude to them for choosing to fly with us.

Let me add my thanks to you.

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