posted 9th August 2004 07:59 ___ _ _ __ _
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Because the airline is a struggling airline does not give the staff the right of providing bad customer service.
Absolutely right, even more when you have to pay more to fly Swiss. It's not an excuse but the fact that the airline is struggling is the very explanation for some cabin crew members getting rough or unpolite : in the course of the last two years, they were submitted to so many cuts and received so many orders and counter-orders as to what service to provide to the pax, what routes will be flown and how often (and so on), from a less than reliable management that they are now slowly but surely running out of patience. They don't even know if their carrier will make it over next winter, lived and worked with the same anxiety for more than a year! (The "Chapter 11" words spread already in August '03). Can't expect much smiling and motivation under those circumstances.
The latest Swiss trafic figures show that the long-haul did very well, while the continental network took a big deep. Insiders (and cabin crew) know that Swiss sold its South-Asian Tickets three months ago for a bargain, leading to the actual follwing results:
- longhaul planes are full, which makes the job even more demanding than ever,
- the very same fully booked planes bring no reasonable earnings to the company in comparaison to the concurrence, which knew (as every one did) that South Asia would pick up in sommer and adjusted their prices to take advantage of it,
- feeding trafic to Zurich over the continental network falls because many holidayers travelled to Zurich with LCCs or cheap offers from rival FSCs.
-last minute travellers find no more place available on the long-haul routes and have therefore no reason to travel over ZRH
(remember: despite it's huge capacity reduction, Swiss is still having an average of 50 to 60% pax in transit !!!)
In the business segment, Swiss is not competitive anymore. ZRH-FRA-to the US West coast costs around 2000 Swiss Francs (1500 euros) more compared to Lufthansa and there is no such difference in service, frequencies, destinations whatsoever to explain such a gap (on the contrary). No wonder if even high-yield customers start their journey rigth away from Zurich with another airline...
To make a long story short: Are you still expecting crew members to smile, knowing their bosses are killing their job?