Flying the Friendlier Skies

Purpose:

The purpose of this exercise is to give you practice in developing a lesson plan for the job of an airline reservation agent for a major airline.

Situation:

The airline has just hired 30 new reservation agents, and you must create a 3-day lesson plan for their training program.

Objective:

Airline reservation agents need numerous skills to perform their jobs. JetBlue Airlines has asked you, as the designated Training Manager, to quickly develop the outline of a lesson plan for its new reservation agents. The main duties of a Reservation Agent include the following:

Customers contact the airline reservation agents to obtain flight schedules, prices, and itineraries. The agent looks up the requested information on the airline online flight schedule systems, which is updated continuously. The agent must deal courteously and expeditiously with the customer, and be able to quickly find alternative flight arrangements in order to provide the customer with the itinerary that fits their needs. Alternative flights and prices must be found quickly so that the customer is not kept waiting, and so that the reservation operations group maintains its efficiency standards. It is often necessary to look under various routings, since there may be a dozen or more alternative routes between destinations.

In addition, as the Training Manager, you must be sure to include other aspects of organizational knowledge into the lesson plan. As an example:

"JetBlue Airways is dedicated to bringing humanity back to air travel. We strive to make every part of your experience as simple and as pleasant as possible."