Contour CEO addresses Cape Girardeau airport board on flight delays

Airport Advisory Board members confronted Matt Chaifetz, CEO of Contour Aviation, about the 15% delay rate that affected flights over the last 90 days.

Katrina Amos, airport manager, provided the board at its meeting Tuesday, Aug. 8, with the airport operation report for the past 90 days. According to the report, Contour Airlines maintained an 85% on-time arrival rate and a completion rate of 97%. There were eight cancellations and 45 delays, 27 of which were greater than two hours, and nine were more than four hours.

Board members' main concern was the communication with customers during irregular operations.

"The vast majority of complaints are not so much of the delays but the communication about the delays," Amos said. "Customers want to be able to make a real-time decision on whether or not they should rent a car or whether or not they should hang on for the delay."

One reason the airline has had problems communicating the delays and cancellations is there are four different systems where the delay must be entered into, Chaifetz said. There is the operational system used to run the flights, the reservation system used for customer communication, the screens at the airport that rely on movement messages and the update to the website.

"We're working with the reservation system to create a process that, once a delay is entered into the reservation system, it creates the movement messages that then gets distributed out to all of the other third-party interfaces," Chaifetz said.

Board member Mark Bliss shared his personal experience of a flight to Nashville, Tennessee, that was first announced canceled then changed to delayed. He also expressed concerns about customers who have connecting flights out of Nashville.

"The flight did come in and everybody made their connecting flights, but the big problem was the communication. Had we all accepted the first statement, which was 'the flight has been canceled' not that 'the flight has been delayed', we would have left," Bliss added.

Responding to this concern, Chaifetz said customers can seek information from the airline representatives at the airport. The airline relies on the agents to communicate information to the customers, especially in the absence of technology, he said.

"There is absolutely no reason why agents at the airport cannot pick up the phone and call our dispatch if a customer is requesting information or an update," Chaifetz said.

Chaifetz told the board that operational decisions are made based on a set of dynamic circumstances. For example, when there is a mechanical issue, the airline is unable to inform the customers how long it takes to resolve the issue as it first takes hours of troubleshooting to determine what the problem is.

"If this was easy, the largest airlines in the world would have figured out how to do this effectively by now. I'm not saying that there isn't room for improvements. What I am saying is that the idea of communication, the timeliness of communication, and the accuracy of communication is something that every airline struggles with," he said.

Contour Airlines is investing in its application and website, not only for communication during delays but also to enhance the functionality so customers have more autonomy over changing or modifying their travel plans when there is an irregular operation, Chaifetz said.

"There is a lot of good elements and positive takeaways in this. However, the conversation is how can we improve the experience of those who have been impacted by a six-hour delay," Amos said. "We want to feel comfortable that we are promoting something that we can 100% defend and support."

Contour Airlines operated its first flight out of Cape Girardeau on Oct. 18 replacing former carrier SkyWest. The airline currently operates two flights per day at Cape Girardeau Regional Airport.