I was just heading out to the office and I happened to catch an NBC Today Show interview with the CEO of Continental Airlines.

You can click here to view the video.

Matt, say it isn’t so, our friends over at Consumerist.com said you asked the tough questions with the CEO of Southwest Airlines in early August — your interview with Jet Blue CEO a few days ago was definitely toned down a bit (on purpose or required?)

Your interview “Today” with the Continental CEO was — to put in mildly — the yawn of the century.

I have opined before about these types of segments in the past, because what passengers want is answers and action on the tough issues.

I should start off by saying that by all accounts there are several things going in Continental Airlines favor:

• Recent J.D. Power Award (for what its worth)
• Wall Street with Higher Stock Price Targets
• Environmental Headway & Accolades
• Profitability

Where in the World was Matt Lauer? when the interview started out with “it is going to be easy because Continental is doing so well” and “I don’t have any hard questions,” — did the Continental Media Specialist lay down some ground rules? or was it your researchers got carpal tunnel and couldn’t use Google or Lexis-Nexis.

I have no qualms with Continental. In fact, they are one of the best in the same day refund guarantee bake off I did recently, and I have nothing but praise for the call center I contacted a few times. But when you have the CEO of one of the 7 major airlines in the U.S. in your cross hairs, at least lob a few grenades instead of just tossing softballs like July delays (weather is such an easy response) and how Continental was lobbying hard to keep Virgin America from flying in the U.S (which most the public doesn’t really understand or care about other than San Franciscans).

The Southwest CEO interview (and precursor segment) had a great question on the “slot” issue, where 20 flights all “depart” at 8am (how does that work exactly) — this time it just sort of fizzled.

Hmm, let me see if we can think of some questions …

In the past few months there have been 2 Continental passenger horror stories, documented in hundreds of media sources. Obviously isolated incidences but they provide good context for several more interesting questions.

• What should be done about people being stuck in planes on the tarmac for 5+ hours (Continental had Passengers Finally Revolt on a flight diverted to Baltimore on its way to Newark, and Toilets stopped up and overflowed on a Continental flight traveling across the Atlantic — both documented in the NY Times just down the street).
• How Continental, along with other major carriers, has reduced domestic capacity in an attempt to drive up prices (to the delight of Wall Street) thus packing planes to the gills and magnifying 10 fold delays and cancellations because there was no place to put anyone
• New York State just passed a passenger bill of rights — because the Feds couldn’t/wouldn’t — what was his take on that?

Hey Matt, next time you need some more tougher questions just give us ring …