Originally Posted by
SWBKCB
This is a common theme on these threads - think Jet2's 'old' 737's, TCX's leased Airbusses, the Primera 757, RYR Stansted meltdowns. Any evidence that these bouts of technical difficulties do actually have any long term effect?
i wouldn't say it's a perception they are having an impact, I'd say they are actually having a tangible impact. Talking from our experience, it's convenient for my business to shuttle our guys in and out of flights from SEN. However, we've dropped SEN and have our guys use City or Gatwick instead. As a business we've stopped accepting any travel requests where our staff want to fly Flybe as an example. We simply refuse to buy their services now on any route at all, that's how fed up we've become with them. We definitely don't let our staff use Stansted for reasons you've alluded too cause they've been caught up in that crap before.
We spend quite a lot on staff flight needs each month. We use BA, Cityjet, Easyjet, Swiss and Aer Lingus to help us get our staff to where we got business and meetings. We've experienced terrible reliability from the Stobart / Flybe tie-up using those E195s and we've missed meetings cause of their issues. So yes, to answer your question, it translates to brand damage. Flybe won't get a single red cent from our place on any flights on their network that's for sure, same goes to Stobart, such has been their poor performance. Plenty of good service providers out there, well capable of understanding what a reliable and trusting service actually means. Enough said, we all know how utterly sh!t that JV tie up has become. Sadly, it's got to be indirectly impacting the SEN / Stobart brand visibility in some shape, form or fashion.