A walk in the airport at 3 am

I had set my alarm at 3am to spend a day in an airport agent’s shoes.

I thought I knew our customer processes back then, I had written some of them.

4:30am, airport terminal floor.

The first passenger asked me where to check in her luggage.

The second wanted to know if she could take her cabin bag onboard. My instinct was to ask what fare she bought, then check if she paid for the cabin bag option. She didn’t know. 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝘁 𝗛𝗤 𝘄𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿.

A mom with her three-year-old from New Zealand landed at CDG, connecting to Toulouse, asking me to help them check in.

A lady asked me to help her use the kiosk because she was lost.

Each request was reasonable, none of them fit the procedure neatly.

Then a family arrived a few minutes late. I had told them to hurry when they first asked me where their counter was. The agents at the check-in counter refused them. They came back asking for a manager and for a commercial gesture. They had been warned. The system still failed them.

We design check-in kiosks and digital touchpoints assuming passengers know how to use them.

But on a real morning, the reality is families traveling for the first time, parents managing stress and exhausted children, people who haven’t flown in years.

𝗡𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗨𝗫 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱.

One day at the gate taught me more than a week at the office. I keep thinking : how often do the people who design these processes spend a 4am shift watching them break ?