How the Airlines Make a VIP Feel Like, Uh, a VIP : Service: Pan Am found a cigar for a king; United provided true grits for an executive’s wife. The extras for influential corporate types and politicians can mean more business later.
Once, when King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden was flying to the United States on Pan American World Airways, a special request he made caught the crew by surprise. After dinner, the king pushed back his seat, stretched his legs and summoned a flight attendant.
And then his majesty asked for a cigar.
Pan Am doesn’t stock cigars; smoking them on an aircraft is prohibited. But this was no ordinary first-class passenger. So, after some scurrying about, one of the flight attendants found a passenger in the economy section who had some cigars. Placing the stogies on a silver tray, she offered them to the king. He happily lit up.
“You don’t tell the King of Sweden he can’t smoke a cigar,” explained Sho Ohkagawa, system director of protocol for Pan Am. “True, God created all human beings as equals. But God also created title and status, and that is where my department comes in.”
Never mind that the rest of us--in the metaphor favored by one airline’s advertisements--feel increasingly like cattle booked for steerage when we board an aircraft. Even as the nation’s airlines scrimp through what for several may prove a life-and-death struggle to survive the recession, most stop at nothing to pamper the rich and famous.
It isn’t just that most very important passengers pay full first-class fares. The VIPs--from rock singers to kings, cardinals to corporate chiefs--can generate favorable publicity, influence company travel purchases and, in the case of politicians, write laws that favor individual carriers or the entire industry.
“That is how American business works,” says an industry spokesman. “Airlines are no different. In most cases, they treat their best customers preferentially. These are the people who provide the most money. They don’t buy cheap, cheap tickets.”
For all its financial woes, Pan Am--now operating under Chapter 11 of bankruptcy law--remains a major international carrier, with many flights into and out of New York, home of the United Nations. So it is especially responsive to VIPs. In 1990, the Pan Am passenger list to New York included two kings--from Belgium and Lesotho--22 presidents, 12 prime ministers, one premier, one vice president and 49 foreign ministers.
But heads of state are not the only quarry airlines are stalking. Company bigwigs are also important prey.
To accommodate such executives, Continental Airlines has recently launched an exclusive Chairman’s Circle. Members must be corporate chairmen or chief executives; only one membership per company is permitted. In just a year there are already 350 members, the carrier says--a bit of good news for an airline company that, like Pan Am, was recently forced to file for bankruptcy protection.
Continental maintains a special 800 number--which it won’t reveal to the uninitiated--to be used by CEOs’ secretaries to make their travel arrangements. The Houston-based carrier tries to load circle members’ baggage last and unload it first to make sure it reaches its owners without delay.
There’s more. An airline representative greets VIP passengers at curbside as they drive up and at the jet-way as they deplane. The carrier maintains a computer database that includes such information as the executives’ seating preferences. And the airline tracks the progress of the VIPs’ flights, so that if there are delays, Continental can arrange other connections.
“The chairman of the board or the chief executive officer of any Fortune 500 company certainly influences a great many travel buyers,” explains Earl G. Quenzel, staff vice president of marketing programs at Continental.
Perhaps the littlest touches make the biggest impression.
Recently the head of a major corporation mentioned to a flight attendant as he boarded a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Australia that he had turned 50 that day. The crew sent a message ahead to Los Angeles, where the flight was making a short stop.
There, one of United’s “concierges”--a program started in 1987 to cater to VIPs--put a cake and some decorations on board. As the plane flew over the Pacific, the flight attendants decorated the first-class cabin, uncorked some champagne and lit the candles on the birthday cake.
Another top executive who flies frequently between Florida and Tokyo on United happened to tell concierge John Renfrow that his wife, a native Southerner, could not get grits in Tokyo. Renfrow called Quaker Oats Co. and ordered several cases of grits delivered to the executive’s Tokyo home. Renfrow went a step further. On the woman’s next flight, she was served grits, Renfrow says.
The airlines also go out of their way for entertainers, whose foremost concern often is preserving a modicum of privacy. Some fly under assumed names, wear sunglasses, pull hats down over their faces or otherwise try to hide their identities.
At the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport, for instance, Walter Hagen, American Airlines’ manager of special service, has been catering to the famous for nearly five decades. To prevent pandemonium, Hagen pops celebrities into electric golf carts “to keep them out of the mainstream” during plane changes.
The veteran airline employee has also learned the idiosyncrasies of some of his passengers.
Comic Red Skelton, for example, loves the oversized hot dogs sold at the Texas airport, so Hagen always has several waiting when he steps off a flight. But Hagen encourages Skelton to finish the franks before boarding his next flight.
“If he eats a hot dog on the plane,” Hagen explained, “it doesn’t look good for our food.”
Unlike many VIPs, Skelton shows his appreciation. An accomplished artist whose specialty is clowns, Skelton on each flight draws one on a napkin, puts numbers in a hat and raffles it off to the crew.
Politicians--in particular the Washington officeholders whose decisions help determine the airlines’ fate--are also handled with kid gloves.
Members of Congress, for example, frequently don’t know until the last minute when the Senate, House or a committee hearing will recess so they can return to their home districts. To assure them seats, American, which maintains a special congressional desk as part of its government affairs office in Washington, holds space on succeeding flights. If a congressman misses one flight, an aide calls the airline, which books a seat on the next flight out.
American--which among other items is waiting for the Transportation Department to approve its purchase of Trans World Airlines’ London routes--recently created a department called Team Washington to give special attention to policy-makers. Members of Congress--in fact, all federal employees--fly at reduced rates.
The airlines, however--keenly conscious of their on-time performance--won’t delay takeoffs for VIPs. Says Bill Burhop, American’s vice president-federal affairs: “I wouldn’t hold a plane for Bob Crandall”--his boss Robert L. Crandall, the chairman of American Airlines.
A few airlines say they don’t give special recognition to celebrity travelers. “On Northwest, every passenger gets the same treatment,” says Robert Gibbons, spokesman for the Minneapolis-based carrier.
Struggling TWA, which until a few years ago went out of its way for prominent passengers, says such activities are now too expensive. “You wouldn’t find that under Carl Icahn,” says general counsel Mark Buckstein, referring to TWA’s no-frills chairman.
Pampered VIPs may get a lot of extras not included in the price of their ticket, but they do pay their way--with one notable exception. Pan Am says that when Mother Teresa travels, she is the airline’s guest. Indeed, when the famed nun makes a trip, her fellow passengers usually take up a collection for her order, the Sisters of Charity.
Then again, some VIPs pay extra.
Concert cellist Myung-wa Chung, who travels throughout the world, buys a seat for her 250-year-old Stradivarius. Pan Am says cellos or other instruments fly for the same fare as people.
Chung recalls a time in Minneapolis when her cello caused a bit of confusion, delaying her flight. Though all of the passengers were in their seats, the plane’s doors were not closed. No one knew why. A flight attendant kept walking up and down the aisle, counting the number of passengers and always coming up one short. Finally she figured out that the musical instrument in the seat next to the musician was listed on the passenger manifest as C (for cello) Chung.
The cello does not earn frequent-flier credits.
Neither did the two koala bears that traveled first class recently on now-defunct Eastern Airlines from Los Angeles to Florida, where they were to take up residence in the Miami Metro Zoo.
The other passengers enjoyed the company of the koalas “more than if there had been movie stars on board,” according to Karen Ceremsak, a spokeswoman for Eastern, which is being liquidated by a bankruptcy court.
Eastern treated the animals like royalty, serving them their favorite meal: eucalyptus leaves.
And they didn’t ask for cigars.
