Chile
Where is my red carpet?
Back in the 80s when I was about 14 I boarded a Fokker F27 from TAM Airlines for the first time. The company was just another small regional airline in Brazil and to compete with the big ones part of the strategy was to provide a high-quality service. The memory of those early days is preserved by the phrase “The Magic Red Carpet” painted next to the cockpit windows of present-day planes.
Red carpets were actually placed by the stairs of each Fokker 50 during the boarding process, but this was just part of a broader plan. TAM gradually acquired other airlines and also became a CRM master, at a time, no other company in Brazil was technically prepared to explore this kind of personalized interaction with clients.
Among other magic moments, TAM call center would answer calls knowing the passenger’s names and agents would wish us a happy birthday at the check-in desk. It was remarkable, and it worked perfectly with other strategic moves. By the time I was finishing university, TAM was about to become the biggest airline in the country.
It is time to go to Cuba
The fact that President Obama is focusing on reestablishing diplomatic ties with Cuba is a significant development, but it also means that there is a good chance that things will begin to change there at a rapid pace. That’s why we decided it was time to visit Cuba and see the country as it is now.
We are currently living in Chile, but our passports are from Brazil, which created an interesting story.
The consular officer typed a form—yes, you heard that correctly, with a typing machine—and asked me to check if my personal information was correct. When I told him that I was born in Brazil, not Chile, he looked at me like I had done something horrible and started typing everything again.
After I said all the information was correct this time, he went back to his desk, typed another thing I couldn’t see, attached it to the wrong form, and filed everything. That was something I was not expecting at all. It is a level of bureaucracy that I thought I would only see in a comedy movie.