After losing his luggage on a business trip to Russia last month, customer service expert John Tschohl says he won't fly on Aeroflot again. He says his luggage has been lost multiple times by Aeroflot, and the airline's customer service on the ground is abysmal.
"Almost every time I fly Aeroflot out of JFK, they never put my luggage on the plane," says Tschohl, a consultant and president of the Minneapolis-based Service Quality Institute who flew on business-class tickets on the Russian airline. "I speak and write on customer service and cannot do seminars and media interviews in jeans and tennis shoes. There is a lot of stress when the luggage is not at the final destination on time."
Tschohl is the author of various books about customer service. His book, Loyal for Life, tells companies how they can use service-recovery techniques to transform unhappy customers to loyal customers for life. Another book, The Customer Is Boss, tells people how to complain and why it is so important to complain.
Tschohl says he had a 3 1/2-hour layover last month — and a 10-hour layover in January — before his Aeroflot flights from JFK, but his luggage wasn't put on either flight. His luggage was also lost during a third Aeroflot flight to Russia this year and during one of two flights last year, he says.
When Tschohl arrived in Moscow last month, he says he cleared immigration authorities in three minutes and then spent two hours waiting for his luggage and filling out lost-luggage forms.
"You have to fill out five forms," he says. "In Russia, Aeroflot is in the stone age. They do not use carbonless paper for multiple copies. I guess there are no printers in Russia that do this. The questions on the forms are super stupid. Where is your permanent address? I filled it out, but, no, they meant, "Where will you be staying?'
Tschohl says he has had to buy clothes for work when his luggage has been lost, and Aeroflot has not reimbursed him. When his bags have been found days after arrival in Russia, Aeroflot will not deliver them, he says, and a trip to the airport to retrieve them is necessary.
Aeroflot "has undergone a transformation over the last decade, and we have put high-quality customer service at the heart of what we do," the statement says. "We have invested heavily in staff training as a core component of this and regularly win international accolades from industry and passengers alike for the quality of our service."
The Russian airline says it carries millions of passengers and their luggage every year, and the "vast majority" fly "without incident.
"Our average baggage mishandling rates are below the average for European carriers and comparable with those of other major global airlines," Aeroflot's written statement says. "We are also leveraging technology to further reduce incidences of bags being delayed or lost and to make it easier for passengers to track their bags in those cases when they do go astray. At the end of 2017, for example, we became the first airline in Russia to provide real-time location information for all the baggage we handle with the introduction of an end-to-end baggage tracing system."
Tschohl says he has encountered many problems since then when flying on Aeroflot.
"Aeroflot, at times, was very good," he says. "In the air, they are fine. The problem is on the ground. There is no airline where great service in the plane and lousy service on the ground works."
Tschohl says he has complained to Aeroflot CEO Vitaly Saveliev and not gotten a response. Delta Air Lines, which has an alliance with Aeroflot and 18 other airlines in a SkyTeam marketing alliance, has "a bad SkyTeam partner," he says. "It is time for Delta to get a new partner."
Many Russia-bound travelers fly on Delta to a big U.S. airline hub where they connect to a Moscow-bound flight on Aeroflot, the only carrier providing nonstop U.S.-Moscow service. Round-trip tickets on Aeroflot are much cheaper than those of other airlines providing one-stop service to Moscow — the reason, Tschohl says, his clients ask him to fly on the Russian carrier.
On Oct. 9, the cost of a round-trip New York-Moscow coach ticket — for an Oct. 26 departure and a Nov. 2 return — was $568 on Aeroflot and $2,255 on Delta. Delta's ticket required a connecting flight in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Tschohl's service concerns and his comment about Delta needing a different marketing partner than Aeroflot were brought to the attention of Delta spokesperson Debbie Egerton.
"While Delta no longer offers nonstop service between the United States and Russia, our customers are still able to fly between the United States and Russia connecting on Delta via our SkyTeam partners Aeroflot, Air France and KLM," she says. "Delta is committed to delivering strong customer service across its alliance network, in part by creating a more seamless customer experience with our global partners."
Delta "has invested in several tools to improve its baggage handling to its current industry leading position, and we continue to work with alliance partners on solutions to ensure consistent baggage transfers," Egerton says. "Additionally, as warranted, Delta can work to provide customer-specific resolutions where unique issues frequently occur."
SkyTeam members must meet more than 120 requirements, she says, and the 20 airlines in the partnership are "regularly audited to ensure compliance and delivery of strong customer service."
For decades, until at least the 1990s, Aeroflot had a reputation for poor customer service and unsafe aircraft. Operating Russian-built jets, including many that were old, the airline had one of the worst fatal accident records in the industry, according to data compiled by this journalist for Condé Nast Traveler magazine.
In 1990, Aeroflot bought its first Western airliners, purchasing five A310s from Airbus. Then, the airline began buying many more Airbus and Boeing jets, the aircraft it now flies between the USA and Russia.
Aeroflot's website today proclaims that the airline's fleet of about 250 planes "is one of the youngest in the world" and "the youngest of any airline worldwide that operates more than 100 aircraft." The majority of the fleet consists of Airbus A320, Airbus A330 and Sukhoi SuperJet 100 aircraft, and the fleet, which flies to 146 destinations in 52 countries, carried 32.8 million passengers last year, Aeroflot says.
