easyJet, Ryanair, Monarch - shame on you! [Archive]

candoo

5th Dec 2010, 15:07

Well read it how you like:

Booked to fly EZY to Dortmund at 7:00 a.m. last Thursday, no plane, delayed and finally departed at about 13:00 great start to the day.

This is after a rather bizarre experience of being called to the gate by some concerned "Menzies" employee who insisted I had missed my flight at about 11:00. and they had been looking for me. Complete bull, had to wander around the apron by myself until I found arrivals area. Then had to be escorted through arrivals back into main concourse and advised that I had forfeighted my right to fly by doing so.

Back through security after some heated discussion, flight had not departed.

As above left at about 13:00

Return from DTM Friday scheduled at 20:45

It did not happen, the last few days are a bit of a blur but can recount the following (and do appreciate that this is not all Easy fault)

At check-in for return flight was advised that no plane available and we would be coached to Cologne for a 22:00 departure to LTN had to go through security to get on the coach. Arrived Cologne about 22:00 and checked in, through security again sent to gate.

A deafinging silence followed for a few hours with various rumours flying around - oh what to do? I decided to stick with it despite other passengers going back and forth through passport control.

Eventually the poor handling agent had to announce there would be no flight that night and we would be put up in an hotel for a departure the following day at 13:40 back to LTN.

Reluctantly agreed to this as because of the Spanish action all other options were becoming limited. Now we were in trouble, I had checked my bag in and wanted it back - not so easy at midnight in Cologne. Anyways got bag and followed the herd to get hotel information, now about 1:00 a.m.

I opted to go to the local Holiday Inn at this point as was local, got there about 2:00 a.m. and now had some new friends, we emptied the beer vending machine by 4:00 a.m!

Although I paid for the hotel myself a few fellow Easy passengers were freebied it at about 3:30 a.m.

Saw great news yesterday morning that our flight was displayed as leaving at 13:40 as promised - no our Spanish friends decided to keep the plane in Barcelona.

Paid a couple of hundred Euros to fly back with Lufthansa to Heathrow complete with free beer and sandwich and never happier to touch down in Blighty.

I am not a good writer and am sure my experience was Easier (sic) than many others. I felt particularly sorry for those who did not have company backing in order to get home. The last I heard yesterday was that passengers were being bussed back to DTM for today's flight back, I hope it happened.

What I would criticise Easy for is the complete lack of information and support. We were left high and dry without any food, water or clue for many hours.

Oh and also BA were profiteering - I was quoted £800 for a single from DUS to LHR yesterday afternoon.

Parapunter

5th Dec 2010, 15:19

I was delayed for four days wth ezy in Geneva last time we had snow. I understand it's not easy's fault if the airport can't operate, but similar to above, we were left in a departure lounge for four hours with no announcements whatsoever, then had to make our way back through arrivals to collect our bags. It was such pandemonium that I considered leqving without my snowboard since it took two hours to be brought through, then to cap it all, GVA put three people on the desk to rebook flights & dish out Hotac for several hundred people. I lost faith to such a degree that in the end, I cadged a lift all the way back to England.

On my own, I would have just found bar & stayed there until it was all over. but I was travelling with my three year old daughter
so the experience was so distressing that this year, I've opted to go by train. Turns out that on my route it will actually be quicker once you factor in driving to & from the airport, parking, check in, the ridiculous security, flying & the same rigmarole at the other end.

Air travel is such an unedifying experience nowadys, that even when it works, I won't use it if I don't have to. I doubt the airlines are actively trying to drive away cusrtomers, but the slightest disruption certainly gives rise to the impression. Sorry Ezy, never again with you - once bitten...

Rusland 17

5th Dec 2010, 16:24

The experience was so distressing that this year, I've opted to go by train. Turns out that on my route it will actually be quicker once you factor in driving to & from the airport, parking, check in, the ridiculous security, flying & the same rigmarole at the other end.I recently chose to travel from London to Geneva by train rather than fly, and it was a delight. Eurostar to Paris, then TGV to Geneva, and just under 7 hours end to end. At about £145 return it was a little more expensive than flying, but worth every penny.

Agaricus bisporus

5th Dec 2010, 16:42

Sorry Ezy, never again with you - once bitten...

Cut off your own nose to spite your face then, why don't you?
You'll find the grass the same shade of green elsewhere.

Do people really believe that airlines do this fo fun or deliberately to annoy, or to "make profit" er - how????

PP, if GENEVA only put 3 people on to serve several hundred does it not seem likely that is all they had available? Or do you suppose the rest were having a nice game of cards in the backroom? Tell us, please, where do you magic armies up from when you need them now? And what has Easyjet to do with this? As you said it was Geneva airport, not Easy.

Just cut them a little slack, can you? The Ops deps is only human, and there isn't an extra army of traiined people to be magiced up at an hours notice to help when it all goes wrong. They have 200 aircraft scattered who knows where, some useable, others not, some with crews (liase with Crewing to find out) some without. Replacement crews may be positioning or stuck elsewhere (check with someone else), the bloody spanish have thrown a strike. It would take a hundred experts 48hrs to sort that mess out, and you fondly imagine the 15 or 20 (who knows, I'm guessing, but it isn't scores) have got the time to tell every single airport details of progress of every single flight (when they don't even know it themselves) and then check to make sure the Servisair Geneva have passed it on? And do that ahead of sorting the problems out first?

What colour is the sky on your planet?

Few airlines have yet found a way to get handling agents downroute to pass delay messages on reliably even when all is going well, let alone with a continent in complete meltdown (or perhaps frozen seizure)

You're being uttery unrealistic, my friend.

Parapunter

5th Dec 2010, 16:52

Do i come across as unreasonable? I didn't thnk so. The sky is blue in my world.

PP, if GENEVA only put 3 people on to serve several hundred does it not seem likely that is all they had available? Or do you suppose the rest were having a nice game of cards in the backroom? Tell us, please, where do you magic armies up from when you need them now? And what has Easyjet to do with this? As you said it was Geneva airport, not Easy. It's a good question isn't it? The fact is they didn't have enough & I had to queue for over three hours on three occasions with a three year old child. Still, I like the way you ask me what Easyjet has to do with it, only to agree that I wasn't complaning about them in the first place!

It's not my job to understand the processes involved in running the operations side of an airline. My job is to pay for it & in return, use the service. Throughout this website, an attitude prevails that the paying customer is an inconvenience that gets in the way of whizzing round the skies & your comments absolutely capture that state of mind perfectly.

Easy failed miserably on that occasion from operations to customer care to refunding me. How I loved watching Swiss, BA, Iberia & others depart on the third day while easy couldn't say when they would be able to supply an aircraft. Ultimately, I have the choice and as with any product or service, if it lets you down badly, you may be minded to avoid it in future. That is for me to assess & assess it I have.

Capetonian

5th Dec 2010, 17:48

Oh and also BA were profiteering - I was quoted £800 for a single from DUS to LHR yesterday afternoon

It's not profiteering, it's simply the way yield management systems work, to maximise revenue on each seat. As supply goes down, price goes up.

757operator

5th Dec 2010, 18:20

Spotty, I can only report what I saw on Manchester Airport website at around 3pm. Every Monarch flight to a Spanish destination had been cancelled. Meanwhile Thomas Cook and Jet2 each had a couple of departures.

I take your point that charter carriers are different, in that they tend to stick with it because they have to move their passengers in the end. But there's nothing to stop a scheduled operator doing the same, as Jet2 demonstrated.

Nicholas49

5th Dec 2010, 20:05

Agaricus Bisporus - you make good points. Of course the Operations department cannot be expected to work miracles and inform everyone about everything all the time.

And yet and yet. Having had a look at the Gatwick departures / arrivals board online, almost every single easyJet flight today has a delay, some up to 2 or 3 hours.

Yes there has been snow and yes there has been a strike in Spain. And yes delays are most certainly not all the airline's fault. But easyJet does seem to struggle to run its schedule as efficiently as other carriers. After all, your director of operations was fired and this very matter got Stelios rather hot under the collar. Let's hope Carolyn is on the case.

For the record, I'm not anti-easyJet. I like the airline. And despite a six-hour delay last year on the same route, I am happy to, and have booked easy flights to/from Geneva in January. Bottle half full.

Mr @ Spotty M

5th Dec 2010, 20:12

757operator, Yes but you did not say that in your first post.
Monarch were flying grateful passengers, not out of MAN but out of Spanish airports, some of which were into MAN.
Did you also make sure that these flights did eventually operate, as l understand Spanish airspace was not going to open until at least 1800 Hrs.
Airport departure screens are not always 100% accurate, the same going for arrival screens also.

757operator

6th Dec 2010, 08:42

Spotty, of course Monarch started to fly back as soon as the airspace opened, they are hardly likely to leave crew sitting around abroad!

Agaricus bisporus

6th Dec 2010, 12:08

Nicholas, I expect Easy's problems are largely because thay are an order of magnitute bigger than most other carriers and operate a vastly more complex route structure at a much higher intensity with much tighter margins on available resources. This keeps the cost down but also makes for vulnerability when things do not run smoothly. Its true there have been meltdowns in the Operations system and I doubt very much that they've been completely resolved, but the Gordian knot that occurs when 200 aircraft and their crews are scattered to the four winds by a week's worth of multiple airport closures and a big strike simply takes a long time to untie. Simple routes like BA, Monarch, AF etc which just work in-out-in-out are hugely easier to reinstate than Easy's complex dependant route structure. That too is no doubt partly to blame.

PP, sadly some people will never listen to reason nor accept that they can't have something simply because it is not there. Much of the negative press airlines get on these occasions is because of unreasoning and frankly infantile attitudes of the I want! I want! I want! Me! Me! Me! generation. Your extraordinary statement that the passenger is felt to be a nuisance is purely in your imagination, its rather sad that people can't see the vast amounts of hard work, pride and dedication that goes into runing airlines and, in my experience, is even more so in lo-cos. Of course things can be improved but if you choose to buy a budget ticket please don't wail that there aren't hordes of staff there to wet-nurse you when you think you're being ignored. Suggest you look at the Geneva thread nearby this one and read the comments of the customer who's ticked off at national carriers and says "Easyjet next time". You too are making general macro-accusations from very specific and particular personal micro-events, and that's not logical, rational or accurate.

I have no idea what business you run, but I doubt you'd justify employing four times the number of staff required simply to cope with customer inconvenience on the three or four days per year when they are all needed. Heck, maybe you would...but imagine your prices? Just how, exactly, do you expect a budget airline not to be constrained by that same economic law?
Oh. It's just occurred to me! Do you work in the Government or Civil Service?

Sadly I don't think we'll ever convince some people that the impossible cannot be achieved right now on demand.

Capetonian

6th Dec 2010, 12:31

Having experienced disruption last week, I take my hat off to both EZY and BA for handling it all as well as they did, although I have a minor criticism of EZY's ethics on this - later.

I had an EZY flight booked out of LGW on Wednesday night. Within 5 minutes of the announcement that the airport was closed, I had a text advising of the cancelled flight. I was eventually able to rebook for a flight on Thursday night and that too was, in due course, cancelled. Oddly enough I got no text for that but did get the relevant email.

Having played around with all sorts of other options to get to my destination, including Eurostar + rail, I booked BA - despite having boycotted them in the past for various reasons - with a flight out of LHR T5 on Saturday afternoon. It was delayed 2.5 hours and there was no apology or announcement until we boarded, which I thought was pretty bad but the indicator boards were continually updated.

My comment about EZY is this. As my flight was disrupted I was able to log in and click on a link and rebook free of charge. They showed nothing available until Sunday. When I logged out and cleared cookies, they were suddenly showing availability for earlier dates on the route I wanted, but only at fares considerably higher than I'd paid, so they were offering a lesser value rebooking option to existing passengers. Whilst this doesn't come close to the frankly scandalous policies of an infamous Irish LCC, it's a little sharp.

Parapunter

6th Dec 2010, 16:13

As a matter of fact AB, I do run a business & the one I run is a logistics outfit. We send freight to the four corners of the kingdom on unnegotiable ultra tight deadlines on an industrial scale, so I would be less than delighted to take lectures on running routes & networks over long distances, I've been doing it for thirty years & I know for a cast iron fact that if I posessed Ezy's punctuation record, I wouldn't be keeping my customer's for very long.

The principle holds though, irrespective of whether you believe me to be infantile, irrational or in receipt of wet nursing - you take the customer away & show me what you have left of a business - do you think airlines are immune? Don't ask me to quote from hundreds of examples of failed companies that lost sight of their customers. And let's have it right, the original complaint was not about a lack of aircraft, it was about a failure to manage a crisis. There is a difference.

So, boiling down the rest of your missive to it's bare bones, you appear to be suggesting it was all my fault for not buying a more expensive ticket? hardly a ringing endorsement of Ezy is it??!! especially when you consider the cost was indivisible between BA & Ezy.

I'm sure you're someone very important and to be respected, but I have to be honest, if you worked in my organisation, you would be kept well away from paying customers!

candoo

6th Dec 2010, 17:25

At the end of the day

We were left, abandoned, no water, no food, no information, I felt really sorry for the peeps without Company credit cards but when you is tired and emotional a ticket home by whatever means is best.

I would add that I met many great people that I would not have otherwise, there is something about Brits in the face of adversity.

Evanelpus

7th Dec 2010, 15:45

We were left, abandoned, no water, no food, no information, I felt really sorry for the peeps without Company credit cards but when you is tired and emotional a ticket home by whatever means is best.

Company credit cards and Easyjet in the same sentence. Poor show if you ask me, BA all the way with my CCC.

757operator

8th Dec 2010, 07:20

Could someone at EZY please explain why they felt it necessary to cancel everything that day, while other scheduled airlines such as Jet2 and BA got airborne from UK asap when the strike was over?

It seems that EZY were either incapable or unwilling, which was it?

Avionker

8th Dec 2010, 08:00

Candoo posted:

This is after a rather bizarre experience of being called to the gate by some concerned "Menzies" employee who insisted I had missed my flight at about 11:00. and they had been looking for me. Complete bull, had to wander around the apron by myself until I found arrivals area. Then had to be escorted through arrivals back into main concourse and advised that I had forfeighted my right to fly by doing so.

If I interpret this correctly then a passenger was left unsupervised airside.....
That to me is the biggest concern raised in this thread.

Nicholas49

8th Dec 2010, 11:17

757operator - I don't need to work for easyJet to tell you the most likely reason (say 95% probability) everything was cancelled was to give the Operations Department some leeway to restore a normal service the following day.

If he re-appears on this thread, I'm sure Agaricus Bisporus will second that!

geordiejet

8th Dec 2010, 16:22

The aforementioned airlines are not the only ones who cancel flights. BA domestic during the snow problems despite other airlines operating to and from NCL during the snow.

BA cancelled ALL flights for the day ahead. Every airline has it's problems! Really bugs me people with this "you wouldn't get this on BA crap" - like they don't have problems. I suppose BA do this to protec the rest of their operation. EZY, FR and ZB were obviously doing this to protect theirs!

The slightest suggestion of trouble and the entire BA domestic network shuts down. Yet, EZY, FR, BE and others are operating fine.

groundbum

9th Dec 2010, 12:48

somebody earlier said there were only 3 agents to process hotac and flights for several hundred people. Then an airline person replied it was impossible to magic up a load of agents at short notice.

This answer is actually indicative of somebody who would rather ignore the problem, rather than spend 2 minutes thinking well how could we do it?

I did this, and the answer is p1ss easy. Create a wheely carousel like a sunglass display carousel that has 5 phones mounted around it. When airline X goes t1ts up, program the carousel so when a phone is picked up it dials the airlines call center, even abroad. Put GSM modems in the carousel so it can be wheeled from storage to the area of the terminal it's needed. Tada. Airport bills airline X cost of calls and £500/hour carousel rental.

The people in the call center can do the same as the people at the desk, and hopefully for a larger airline they'll be able to staff up a call center by having people come in earlier, leave later, skip tea breaks, get supervisors and trainees working frontline etc etc, so they can create capacity quickly.

Or, have business cards to hand out to delayed passengers for the airlines toll free number in that country. People on their mobiles call the number and get put through to the call center at no cost when roaming abroad. Not difficult, just needs a will. Again for a larger airline their call center software will distribute the calls to the agents that are available across the different continents. Some call centers have staff that work from home, they push a button on their home phone and the call center PBX logs them in as available for incoming calls.

G

TightSlot

9th Dec 2010, 14:27

Interesting idea - my initial thoughts

Five phones on each carousel - possibly not enough? When it goes wrong, everybody wants answers, and wants them now: If you're unlucky, you'll have 4 or 5 people before you per phone. This means either more phones or more Carousels and therefore more cost.

Who owns and maintains the Carousels? - The airports either won't want to, or will only want to at a cost that is prohibitive, or (most likely) will charge a prohibitive price and then fail to maintain them or provide the staff to provide the carousels when needed. Airports like disruption - It increase the money made on retail and car parking

If there is extensive disruption affecting several or all airlines, how many Carousels would be needed? Would each airline own a Carousel, or would there be some way of routing calls from a generic Carousel to the appropriate airline number.

Adding capacity at the call centre adds cost, and may not be viable i.e. sufficient capacity cannot be made available sufficiently quickly.

People hate call centres at the best of times - when cross, call centres tend to make people more so: Given the option, most people would prefer to talk to another human being

Finally, there is the cost issue. Those airlines that care about their customers will already have some sort of procedure in place to assist: Those airlines who have a cost model that restricts such behaviour will not be looking to implement anything at all. For example - my (to be fair, small and predominately long-haul) airline pulls everybody out of the offices when we have a major delay/diversion and front-lines them. We take the hit on cost because the corporate ethos is such. Our view is that a well-handled disruption actually generates positive feedback and word-of-mouth. Other airlines may be operating a low-cost system, which they feel works well for them without the need for such profligacy - why add costs to a model that specialises in pulling costs out of the business and makes a virtue out of selling on price rather than loyalty?

Please be aware - I'm not seeking to defend poor customer service, or airlines that treat customers with contempt, or worse, airlines that claim to do neither and actually do both, while charging the earth for it. I'm simply raising a few practical questions about the proposals made in the post above.

groundbum

9th Dec 2010, 14:45

this happened to me this January when Easyjet cancelled our flight at no notice. Cue 150 people tramping over to the two people on the desk. Whilst I left my poor wife in the queue as insurance, I got on my internet phone and sat in a coffee shop and rebooked us via the easyjet website for 2 days hence. Funnily enough the queue grew quite fractious soon after as it emerged all flights for the next week to Malta our destination were fully booked. My slightly flash phone paid for itself that day. I did think if Easjet wheeled out a laptop or two many people would have cheerfully rebooked their own flights rather than wait in line.

But I would say a call center augmenting the people on the desk is the only way to go from operations normal to operations mad in a few minutes flat.

G

Agaricus bisporus

9th Dec 2010, 20:00

Sadly no matter how skilled people are at parcel deliveries they do not necessarily posess a magic solution to the ailments of the aviation industry, no matter how convinced that are that they do.

If one of Mr Logistic's vans gets stuck in the snow the next 8-10 drops it has to do today will be delayed, then eventually cancelled. Then tomorrows drops are going to be delayed too, plus the backlog from today doubling the workload. But the van is still stuck on the M25 because the council didn't clear the roads and the driver is out of hours. I gather this doesn't happen in the "logistics" world, and I wonder how this is an unfamiliar concept there.

You have 200 such trucks. Most are in this situation. For every missed/late delivery/pickup there are 150 irate customers who all want information now about when the van will arrive. The depot they're waiting at is expecting a dozen other such deliveries from other companies with 150 people to each, the number of phones is finite, as are the number of staff employed by the depot, which has no particular allegience to (or often interest in) one delivery company any more than the others. In normal times 4 agents handle these deliveries. Suddenly, due to events 1000 miles away they find themselves buried under thousands of customers and 50 staff wouldn't help much. How much of this do you suppose they think is their problem to sort out? I suppose they thoughtfully pop down to the employment exchange and fetch a busload of skilled people along at 30 minutes notice, but I am only guessing as I don't work in the delivery business, I'm just an airline pilot so what the heck would I know...Not sure who's going to pay them though, or plan it, authorise it, find the info to equip them with...these are not empoyees of the van company remember, they work for one of the 200 often pretty basic depots you deliver to and they are poorly paid and sometime- not always - similarly motivated. After an hour of irate abuse do you really suppose even the keenest will stick around? This is in a business, remember, where it is too hard and time-consuming to even reliably or regularly persuade the depot to give any, let alone extensive detail about late deliveries (beyond a blackboard saying "On time", "Canx" etc) even when everything else is running normally. This is due to depots being institutionally poorly equipped to disseminate information and their staff often not caring - it's a warehouse thing, delivery companies have been tearing their hair out over it for decades. Perhaps if depots weren't subject to unprofitable contracts by cutthroat delivery companies...perhaps if the customers were willing to accept huge price increases...perhaps if the hauliers wouldn't lose their market share by doing so...

The angry people waiting for their deliveries all try to phone the logistics company to find out when their parcel is arriving, but who knows when the council are going to clear the M25, but that depends on when the M1 is cleared to get a new driver down, but he's waiting for the van from the Wirral to get him there and its still snowing in the Wirral. Then there are the 8 deliveries from yesterday to do before yours. Or do they cancel those to please you at the expense of everyone else? Does that then please the people waiting for the other 7? Plus todays deliveries that are still in the warehouse? The van company employs 50 people in 2 shifts to track and run the operation normally, which actually allows them a reasonable amount of slack for eventualities. Today they've got 150.000 people all calling at once to chase their orders. That's hard work for 25 people when they'd need 100 to even get a rough picture of the state of the network, (let alone 2000 to field all the customer calls) bearing in mind that the contractor staff in all the depots are too busy to answer the phones, no one's been in the office for hours anyway, it is still snowing, and the council (most of whom are still at home, snowed in) don't know where their gritter drivers are coming from as they're all out of hours too. Is that Mr logistic's fault? Is he in a position to do anything useful about this? No and No!

If the staff chase councils, depots and the met office there is no one to talk to the customers, but they don't have four, six, ten times the usual number of trained staff hanging around on standby to come in (how?) to answer questions to which there is no answer in the first place.
Is it really their "fault"? Does it make the company uncaring ot inept because it cannot cope with impossible odds? That is Canute's way of looking at it.
Those at work bust their arses sometimes for days on end, often sleeping at work to try to get this sorted.
And then get lectured how useless they are by someone with a paper-round...

So yes, there comes a point where you retreat like an army facing hopless odds to regroup and try again later.One hopes lessons are learned, but reinventing Clausewitz (spelling) and retraining everyone from Generals down (including the defense contractors, parliament etc over which you have no control) takes time, even for a delivery company...

PP, you cannot keep an airport open regardless of how many ploughs you have if it's snowing hard enough, you know that. The councils can't keep the roads open either as you know full well. If not only your call-centre but also the depots you deliver to suddenly needed (on your behalf) to increase productivity by 5000% I doubt even you'd manage it in less than 3 months or so, let alone the few hrs you seem to expect airlines to achieve. And at what cost? The problem with aviation is the large number of critical outside agencies and inputs upon which you depend utterly- any one will stop a flight in it's tracks, any two failing will stop many, lose several - or one global dependancy, ie weather, and your problems grow exponentially to a level that no system can cope with.

As a businessman you could make £squillions if you were able to solve this problem, and I gather from your posts that you feel you well able to do it better than the airlines.
I challenge you to try, though if your business skills ar a poor as your judgement of my customer concerns and awareness (of which you know nothing) I wouldn't bother.

I'm simply amazed something as obvious as this needs explaining!

strake

9th Dec 2010, 20:06

I do wonder if some of the people who post this twaddle on here actually fly with these airlines or are just engaging in fantasy.
I have been flying far and wide over the past two weeks and have been delayed severely whilst on KLM, Ryanair and Easyjet aircraft. I'm talking 2 and 3 hours on the tarmac in snowstorms at Schipohl and Berlin. In all cases, I've been impressed by the attitude and care of cabin crew and ground staff, the attention to providing information from the flight deck and good humoured passengers. If you have been flying and been delayed, sure, it's a royal PITA but it's winter out there and sh1t happens.

Parapunter

9th Dec 2010, 20:17

It sure does. I hope this wasn't your experience, because it was mine.
ZpOzCiAs6mY

Agaricus bisporus

9th Dec 2010, 20:41

Believe me, PP, none of us are proud of this and we wring our hands in anguish that we can't do better. Of course we foul up sometimes, and sometimes we improve our systems before the next event. We too get stuck away from home, and a bloody sight more often that you do. It's no more fun for us! But we do as good a job as we can but the complexity of a big airline, does make the system capable of stoppages and meltdown under extreme provocation.

Sorry, that's just the way it is without jacking prices sky-high and having a hundred snow ploughs rotting at Gatwick for 28 years before they're needed. Which won't help when the next problem is volcanic ash (oops! We've been there!) OK, make it a plague of frogs...

Miracles are achieved on a daily basis, it's the impossibe we have yet to overcome, so please, how about a bit of patience when no one can do anything about it?

Parapunter

9th Dec 2010, 22:19

Why is it in this networked, smart phoned world of instant communication, we cannot use a little imagination to surprise and delight our customers?

I used to fly gliders, hence the username. it means I retain an interest in aviation. So I understand what pilots mean when they talk about staying ahead of the aircraft - anticipating what's required of the pilot next, in order that surprises are avoided and the flight flows as one would wish.

Now, this whole thing I'm talking about at Geneva this year was not Ezy's fault, I'm repeatedly at pains to say this. yet at the same time, wx is predictable. Indeed, we have pretty people inahbiting the telly & radio who make whole livings out of predicting it! So what I'm asking is what's stopping the airline being ahead of the customer?

Why is it that having been cancelled on day one, I was obliged by Ezy to get up at 4am to take a bus to GVA in order to check in at 5:30, get to the departure lounge at 6am, sit there for four hours, left to my own devices to work out that the flight wasn't actually going, then spending a further two hours reclaiming my bags before queueing for a further three hours to rebook a flight followed by a further two hours queueing for hotac, finally getting to a hotel (after another hour or two waiting in line for a taxi) around 22:30 - a lovely 18 hour day with a small child in tow before repeating the ridiculous exercise a further three times before finally giving up on the Tuesday and taking a ride to Calais in a car.

Why then, can't ezy text me to say don't bother, it's dead, we've booked you on the next one. Why is it such a leap of imagination for the ops dept to press a button on the keyboard that says these 200 aren't going, send the message, boot them onto the next one, jiggle it around, stick another ten guys in the call centre & write the day off.

Cut some slack? No, I go out of my way to solve problems for my customers, then again, if I don't my competitors will. It's a strong motivation. BTW, that video was the scene when I was there.

Four days at GVA is not wholly's Ezy's fault. I do get it. I see it's a complex enterprise between the Lord, Geneva airport & Easy jet, but acts of god aside and irrespective of the ticket price, ehich I really think is neither here nor there in the context of providing/not providing a scheduled service, the guys at easy land could do better. Maybe I'm wrong, but they're -1 customer in any event.

Hipennine

10th Dec 2010, 10:54

I have to say from direct experience, that at a mangement level, the commitment to customer service across most of the logistics industry far exceeds that in the pax air transport world. That may be because pricing in the logistics industry makes the Loco airline world look like a breeze, and service is the only thing left to compete on. That commitment translates down the line into policies of empowerment to the ops people, backed up by specific procedures to be followed in the event of service failure (for eg, in at least one of the major UK parcels operators, if a time sensitive package is missed off a trunk from the hub, they will hire in a man with a van to take it directly to the customer, even if the revenue on the package is less than 1% of the cost of the man with the van). Suppliers have also invested massively in customer facing information systems providing real time status from any web-linked computer.

Yes the industry does lose consignments from time to time, and things do go wrong, but is insignificant compared to the incidence of lost pax bags or pax left wondering what is happening to flights with no info whatsoever.

When the chips are down, these sorts of companies will throw much more resource at sorting it out, and keeping their customers informed. I have no doubt that the ops controllers at Easy and other airlines do a tremendous job under the circumstances, but it seems that strategically, they are let down by their management's unwillingness to invest in providing even basic credible information to their customers.

I find it ironic that there is a much higher level of care and service associated with inanimate objects travelling around the country/world (usually at ridiculously low prices) vs that given for human beings.

Parapunter

10th Dec 2010, 12:17

All true. I find that in general, you can link the degree to which a business looks after it's customers to the level of competition in it's industry. Anyone remember how long it would take to get a phone line installed from the GPO in the seventies?

My business is cut throat, hyper competitive. My customers receive on average four or five approaches per month from other suppliers and these are just the ones I know about.

So I find this whole 'what do you expect us to do about it?' attitude from Mr. Mushroom very telling. Telling in that he can't see anything wrong in what happened to me, that I had to mill around a packed airport with a toddler for four days - you know, it's winter, it happens, tough. That I should dare to be angry and fed up with that seems anathema to the airline industry in general & AB in particular. As I said before, my one weapon is to vote with my feet, keep my money away from Ezy & that's what I've done. Right or wrong, it's my choice.

groundbum

10th Dec 2010, 13:28

I've travelled domestically in the US by air there, and they seem much better at this kind of thing.

What I've seen is there are planes that go from, say, Phoenix to Minneapolis. Essentially the plane takes the next 150 people at the gate and goes to Minn. Same with all the flights, they take the first XXX people at the gate.

Now this seemed weird to me, with allocated flights and tickets and all as I sat near the gates and kept seeing people just appearing and trying to get on the flight to Y. I mean there were staff, bumpees from earlier flights, people with real genuine tickets, businesspeople trying to get earlier flights, people rerouting from closed airports, etc etc. The gate agents handled the scrum well.

So maybe we have too complicated a system and some point OPS should just say you plane and you crew bash up and down Geneva/Gatwick twice today and lets get the system moving and we'll gradually get back to our slick optimised W operations over the next few days.

"A battle fought and won today beats the perfect battle never fought"

G

PAXboy

10th Dec 2010, 17:19

I think that I can see the arguments put forward by AB and PP as both being valid. May I suggest that the pax shipping business is at the kind of juncture that the freight shipping biz encountered some years ago?

The pax biz has been strapped down (pun intended :p) since it began and the restrictions have been removed slowly, piece-meal, inconsistently and - for the most part - unwillingly.

The attitude of the Airports, as so well set out by AB, is based on very old civil-service type thinking of 30 years ago. Whilst many have been turned into commercial organisations - the culture can be remarkable well 'built in' to the organisation.

And the SAME goes for carriers. There are good reasons that the legacy carriers are called that. For many years, I was in telecommunications and dealt with old government departments that were now commercial (in the UK and other countries around the world) Even 15 years after the change, they still behaved like govt departments and getting good customer service out of them was hard work. I think that many of the pax carriers are in that position now.

Whilst govts the world over STILL want the perceived prestige of their 'own' carrier (even if no longer state owned) then we cannot move forward. For years, they did this with the pax shipping biz but then transferred their attention to their new best love of air travel. Given the costs of running a carrier, the natural path is consolidation but no govt wants to allow their carrier to be merged with another and they mostly continue to resist this.

Without consolidation, there will be less competition. That might seem counter argument, but the economy of scale is required, I think. Slowly the govts are being forced to stop subsidies and to sell off carriers. Some have pre-emptied that by failing. More will go down the path of merge or fail and the current financial crisis should help the process along.

Carrying freight (in so far as I know) has not had all of the restrictions of health regulations and govts messing about with 'their' carrier, just so that they can go in F when on holiday.

Lastly, when a freighter is delayed, the freight does not answer back and you have a one-way inquiry from the freight's owner/consignee. With Self Loading Freight, they have a habit of asking questions and, more inconveniently, they want to be fed, watered and sleep at regular intervals. Then you get their 'owner/consignee' ringing in to find out when they will arrive as well!

So, freight and pax are similar in operation but vastly different in fact.

Joao da Silva

10th Dec 2010, 17:39

Miracles are achieved on a daily basisDon't be silly.

Excellent recovery from disruption, perhaps sometimes, other times good people and training preventing disasters, but these are not miracles, just professional business operations.

This is the type of thinking that irritates people and leads others on the forum to compare parcel carriers to airlines.

As with some other posters on this thread, our business has severe competition; there are no excuses and only pain if we do not provide customer service excellence. (The product has to excellent, this goes without saying.)

Parapunter

11th Dec 2010, 08:15

Carrying freight (in so far as I know) has not had all of the restrictions of health regulations and govts messing about with 'their' carrier, just so that they can go in F when on holiday.
I can only speak for UK road freight, but in actual fact, it's highly regulated by government in terms of safety, operator repute & even competition.

The bit that has been missed in this debate and that I have slyly omitted to mention is that to a degree, we're not comparing apples with apples. A freight operator will have relationships on a personal level with it's clients, typically a couple of dozen for the average small operator, whereas an airline demonstrably can't do that. Yet I don't think it excuses failure to assist on the scale that I endured this year. I'm old fashioned like that.:p

Joao da Silva

11th Dec 2010, 08:26

Parapunter

A significant factor, I would have imagined, is that the entry/exit barriers to the airline business are very high and this does moderate competition.

However, it still occurs and the rise of Ryanair demonstrates that.

Unfortunately, Ryanair's strategy is cost leadership and that has set a trend in a market where the pax have limited choices.

Hipennine

11th Dec 2010, 09:08

J da S,

I think its more about a mindset that in Logistics the focus is on moving the consignment door to door rather than point to point. Even with small scale road-freight, there are now legally enforced barriers to entry in europe through the Operators Licensing system on capability and financial standing. However, also remember that air-freight is a major component of some logistics systems, but the ops controllers at a higher level will primarily work on how to minimise the impact on total door to door movements, rather than getting the aircraft back in the right place to stabilise the operation. If the pax side of the airline industry had this focus, things might be rather different.

Joao da Silva

11th Dec 2010, 09:28

Hi Pennine

I don't disagree at all with the point you make, the airlines are not great at service recovery.

For example BA (not bashing the company, but quoting a fact) cancels domestic services first when there is disruption, because the travellers have other options!

I have also been told that my European flight from Heathrow was cancelled for the same reason, to allow long haul flights to operate - well I suppose I could drive to Santander, take the ferry to the UK, but it is not quite a great solution.

And throwing airmiles at me doesn't really help, if I need to be somewhere, sometime, then I need to be there.

PAXboy

11th Dec 2010, 11:47

Joao da Silva. Unfortunately, Ryanair's strategy is cost leadership and that has set a trend in a market where the pax have limited choices.I don't think the pax see it like that. For many FR have extended choice rather dramatically.
BA ... cancels domestic services first when there is disruption ...To the best of my knowledge, the main reason (there will be others) why BA cancels the domestics first when weather or other events prevent normal ops is:- Heathrow.

In bad weather, or if one runway is closed, there is no spare capacity. The airport operates way above any sensible balance of traffic loading. It has zero spare capacity and, consequently, even a small disruption, can cause enormous problems. If an a/c cannot clear a runway (for any reason) then that is 50% of capacity gone. At FRA it would only be 33% and at AMS it would be (dependent on wind direction and length of runway required) 16.6%. Since their second hub, LGW, has a single runway, they have nowhere to go.

I sit to be corrected on that, on which, thanks Parapunter for the update on regulations in your field and the apples/apples point - which was part of my point! Nonetheless, the airlines are still mid-way in their change from legacy to whatever they are going to be in 20 years time.

Again I refer back to the great shipping lines. Cunard, P&O etc ruled the world and then along came the 747 to take their pax and then the shipping container took their freight. They merged or went bust and had no idea what to do. Now? They cruise the world, they have built bigger and more complex ships that have many enticing features (for some, not me!) and they are making money. That's what humans do and the airline world has done very well on the widebodies over the past 40 years but the LCCs, and now the deep global recession are another matter.

Joao da Silva

11th Dec 2010, 14:15

Paxboy

You misinterpret my meaning, Ryanair has applied cost pressure to the shorthaul airline model and the legacy airlines have reacted by taking cost out of the business, at the expense of service.

On most shorthaul routes, there are only 2-3 airlines competing and they tend to offer a very similar service, thus the lack of consumer choice.

As to you point about Heathrow being the cause for cancelling short haul services, I am sorry but that does not make sense. to me

If BA chooses to operate in a constrained environment, then it is accepting that customer service may be impacted and it chooses to do this to domestic and short haul travellers, year upon year.

This is the point that Hipennine made eloquently in his last.

Chuchinchow

11th Dec 2010, 18:37

For example BA (not bashing the company, but quoting a fact) cancels domestic services first when there is disruption, because the travellers have other options!

Try telling that to the hundreds of thousands of us who live on Britain's off-shore islands.

We are perforce ingenious folks, but not a single one of us can walk on water - yet.

Back to you J da S.

PAXboy

12th Dec 2010, 23:56

Joao da SilvaYou misinterpret my meaning, Ryanair has applied cost pressure to the shorthaul airline model and the legacy airlines have reacted by taking cost out of the business, at the expense of service.Indeed. One company tried more service and found it was, after all, price. In about 2002/3 (I think) American removed several rows from their economy service and said that you now had more leg room for the same price. It didn't work and they put the seats back in again.

Airline seats have become a supermarket item and, if I compare the big three supermarkets in the UK - we find that on some products they charge the same; some are loss leaders; some are higher than their competitors and some are less. They have loyalty systems and self service tills and online shopping with home delivery.

That's the mass market and in the worst recession since the depression, price will win. If the recession gets worse, which I think it will, there will be fewer pax and fewer options.

As to you point about Heathrow being the cause for cancelling short haul services, I am sorry but that does not make sense to me.

If BA chooses to operate in a constrained environment, then it is accepting that customer service may be impacted and it chooses to do this to domestic and short haul travellers, year upon year.I'm certainly not going to defend BA (who are not my first choice of long haul carrier for more than 20 years now) but the UK govt has made no serious decisions about key airport infrastructure for (guess) 30 years. No politician has wanted to fight the public to expand LHR or to build a new, as it were, 'central' facility for the the South East of England. They preferred to let regional fields be opened up and provide some competition and service on short and medium haul.

They sold off the govt department that ran the airports and washed their hands of this vital resource. They set no policy, other than 'Just keep toddling along and keep your head down'. LHR is slot constrained and always will be, so is LGW. So, if BA decided to go elsewhere, where would they go?

That said, I agree that their service recovery is poor and, almost certainly getting poorer. THAT I ascribe to the overall attitude of UK companies in the past 20 years to remove all possible 'stand by' capacity. Whether it be directly at the front line, or fewer back room staff who can help out in a crisis.

Also, if you outsource many functions, give them strict rules of engagement with zero flexibility - then service recovery will be poor. In the UK, a remarkable number of companies now do this. They prefer not to have 'insurance' but to fix it when it goes wrong. You can only do that just so many times.

Lastly, as has been said here many times, many of the legacy carriers are at the end of their natural life span as companies. In due course they will fold, be bought up and then change can happen.

I have just read this headline on BBC News - Search and rescue fleet 'could be privatised' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11978628)
More than half of coastguard stations across the country could be closed as part of the government's spending cuts. The UK's search and rescue helicopter fleet, which is currently run by the RAF and the Royal Navy, plus civilian helicopters through the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) will be taken over by a private company.
The government is expected to confirm further details this week.
Dani Sinha reports.

So the UK govt is taking resources out to save money and outsourcing the machines to save money. I am by no means of the 'govt must own everything' group but I have never been a fan of outsourcing, I won't bore you with the reasons why. So UK govts continue to see money not value. What chance pax services?

[Probably constitutes thread drift]

Entaxei

13th Dec 2010, 06:16

Yep, good old Gorden sold off the rights to a private consortium as a PFI (Private Finance Initative?) before he left for Northern climes - so the RAF and RN among others will lose all skills and knowledge in future of operating in this very specialist field - interestingly, it is being said that the new choppers to be used, whilst faster, possibly won't have the same range/capability of the current Sea King's - have a look at the threads in the MIL area of PP. A further reduction in the capabilities of our armed forces.

In any event, there's another new syndicate and financial opportunity for someone, created by Labour, after they had spent all the countries money. :mad:

Parapunter

13th Dec 2010, 08:46

Indeed. One company tried more service and found it was, after all, price.This is what I have been getting at for a while. My industry sells a commodity & commodities don't have qualitative differences, by which I mean, a chunk of iron ore served up on a silver salver is very much no more useful than a chunk on a wooden pallet.

So, what goes on in my game is suppliers fall over themselves to differentiate from one another, whether it be live gps consignment tracking, electronic signature capture & real time billing, bungs in brown envelopes, anything.

What is salient though is that technology has exceeded by some margin the old turn up at an airport model, check in, answer a few questions & hang around for a couple of hours & get on a plane. It really isn't that much of a leap to think that an airline, faced with a weather crisis couldn't at the point of booking take a working mobile number and/or email address & text or mail pax to inform that flight xxx is canxd, don't come to the airport, get a cab instead to hotel yyy & keep your phone on for further updates at 1234 hours, alternatively, these are the services running, text a, b, or c to this number to be booked on a different flight/refund, whatever.

Pretty much cost free or certainly cheaper than staffing a desk with half a dozen people all day, definitely an improvement over what happens now & a hundred times easier for all involved.

If you think about it, companies like Ebay, Amazon, DHL run global operations this way, there is no impediment that I can see for the airlines to get onboard with it, especially, when you consider that what they do is simply fly from one point to another - the rest of it could easily be engineered for the benefit of the customer & that ultimately translates into benefit for the airline. State of mind innit.

PAXboy

13th Dec 2010, 12:28

Parapunter Now we are in agreement! Having been in technology for 25+ years, I agree that the carrier's have a dismal use of technology. They think that checking in on the (over hyped) iPhone is all that is needed.

On a trip through MUC six years ago, after check-in, we had a gate change and was advised via an SMS, just in case we did not check the displays. Simple! On the other hand, I had an LCC who told me that they had emailed me about the reschedule of departure - but they hadn't.

However, it is my view that the old fashioned thinking in the airlines, the entrenched way of doing things will make it very difficult for them to introduce such changes.

groundbum

15th Dec 2010, 08:27

I popped in my GPs (local family Doctor for non-brits) and made an appointment for next Monday. Walking out the door I get a text, it's from the GP's computer telling me the appointment time etc. Great, I keep it in my inbox as a reminder.

It's a bit scry when the NHS is ahead of the private sector..

Still behind the trains though. In the recent snow the next train to Leeds was platform 2, the slow one. Then the fast one comes into 3 so we all troop to 3 as instructed. Sit on the train for 3 and then watch 2 set off, and we're stuck behind it all the way to Leeds. Argh! Why couldn't the conductor say on the tannoy jump over to Platform 2 PDQ to get to Leeds sooner..

G

PAXboy

15th Dec 2010, 11:02

groundbum Ah yes, that's a railway special! I think that part of this is the whole move in the UK to separate functions. This started in the very late 1980s, following the USA. Firstly, they made the departments of an organisation more 'independent' and 'able to make their own choices' etc. This was intended to foster better service but I won't bore you with the empire building and inter-departmental rivalry that then ensued. Secondly, there was the dreaded Outsourcing, which I first saw at my then employer's NYC head office in 1989 and I didn't like it from the off.

All of this has led to fragmentation of the organisation. Often there are now legal contracts between 'departments' in separate buildings (even countries) that used to be colleagues who met in the canteen at lunch to sort things out.

The airlines have fallen for this game like everyone else has because it can be shown to save money - on paper. Since the recession of 1990/92, the accountants have been running the asylum. The situation will not change for a long time.

Lastly, I think that giving departments more 'choice' over their actions has also allowed senior management to avoid blame. They can pass the blame (for anything) to the lower manager and then get rid of them if they choose. The same has happened in UK politics - no minister resigns any more, because they have shifted the blame lower down. The UK govt equivalent of this is the 'Agency' game. They are still govt but not central govt and so the minister escapes.

Icare9

16th Dec 2010, 21:16

I'm coming to this late, but I flew out of Gatwick to Spain on 5th Dec and have just returned. Let me just tell you my thoughts on the events at Gatwick.
OK, I knew from the Wednesday that exceptional amounts of snow had fallen on Gatwick, the M25 and M23. From BBC News aerial shots, it appeared that Gatwick had only 4 snowploughs working to clear the runway. With continued snow, then fog, it looked as if my flight from Gatwick would be "unlikely" without a rapid thaw. Consequently I emailed asking if the flight might be possible from Stansted, if it wasn't already socked in at Gatwick. The email system was a pain, redirecting to the FAQ and hoping that resolved your question. It didn't and I repeatedly contacted them to discover whether the flight was likely to be possible either from Gatwick or Stansted or wherever, as I didn't think it fair to expect my disabled wife to drive me through icy conditions to Gatwick at 3 o'clock in the morning if the flight was then cancelled and have to make another trip to collect me, in perhaps even worse conditions. I never had a response.
That was fairly galling, but then the Spanish ATC all contracted Spanish Flu (or Not Flu) so no flights on Saturday, and Sunday flights from 7 am.... with my departure being scheduled for 7:20 am... so still unsure whether to go to Gatwick or not. Decided that we'd give it a try, so set off and roads were clear, as was Gatwick. My flight was scheduled so I got out to Spain with about an hour delay. Not too bad considering some of the nightmare experiences related in this thread, but still one where I was left uncertain what to do. OK, so no doubt there was a heavy workload on the staff that were able to work, but much of it could have been avoided by clearer and unambiguous messages on the website.
On my return, the incoming flight was 2 hours late in arriving, yet my wife was saying the airline was showing it departed on time and in fact had even landed, whereas I could see empty tarmac!
Even boarding was a bit of a farce; we were fed through to airside but to an area too small to accommodate us all whilst the aircraft slowly unloaded. It looked as if the reason was that a small regional airliner parked adjacent had started its engines, so why park another aircraft next to it, when there appeared to be plenty of empty stands. That's not the airline, but the airport, nonetheless, it still held up any attempt to make up lost time.
When we were finally released to board, there were a number of wheelchair and disabled passengers, carried on an extending transporter, so access to the door was possible. Instead of clearing the first rows for these disabled passengers and letting the rest of us on, the disabled passengers were loaded on through the opposite front door and obviously took some time to be comfortably accommodated. Meantime, the rear door passengers filled up and by the time we were able to look for seats a lot of overhead bins had been filled, not just a single case, but many extra carry on and duty free bags. Consequently it took longer than necessary to board and that meant a later departure slot.
The reasons for delay given by cabin crew to various passengers ranged from a faulty PA system, fog at Gatwick, heavy traffic at Gatwick or Greek ATC strike...
In essence, what it needs is for some clear contingency planning for a designated person to be fully informed as to any specific situation and then be given courses of action so that the message gets quickly to those affected.
It ought to be clear to all by now that given the correct information, most passengers can work out alternative plans for themselves, or fit in with one recommended by the carrier. Good, reliable information is the key, so perhaps great minds in the airline industry should make it a high priority for their passengers. You wouldn't expect pilots to put up with uncertainty, so why should passengers?