SAA recovery programme??
SAA to start charging for 'no-shows' and cancellations
October 29, 2004
By Audrey D' Angelo
Cape Town - SAA would start charging "no-shows" and passengers who cancelled flights - as some European airlines already do - as part of a range of cost-cutting activities designed to turn it around and restore it to profitability, Khaya Ngqula, its new chief executive, said yesterday.
Other measures ranged from cancelling prepared meals to economy-class passengers on short domestic flights to reducing the number of colour printers and desktop printers used by staff.
Cost-cutting decisions announced by Ngqula included working with air traffic control to ensure that all the airline's planes landed nearer to terminals in off-peak times (to avoid using buses), cutting out unnecessary staff travel, reviewing the garage card expenditure by managers and reviewing the need for managers to have laptops and desktop printers.
Measures affecting passengers would include "appropriate fees for cancellations and no-shows, related to expenses charged to SAA". It was suggested that these should be charged to travel agents.
Vanya Lessing, the chief executive of the Association of SA Travel Agents, said it would be unfair to charge a travel agent if a ticket had been issued and the passenger failed to turn up.
A "spoiled inventory" in which a booking was made but no ticket was sold and the agent failed to cancel the booking was another matter. This would be discussed with Adrian Hamilton-Manns, SAA's vice-president (commercial) today.
Ngqula stressed the need for consistent good customer service. He said that over the next six months, "all of us will undergo training in customer care".
The accolades and awards SAA had won showed what it was capable of, but "it is the consistency of such customer care that we will be judged on rather than the stars that shine from time to time".
Management would have to check that standards were being maintained every day. The process "will not be a once-off public relations exercise, but an integral part of how we will conduct our business from now on," Ngqula said.
"If we streamline our people management by rewarding and training SAA people properly, we get our customer care right and with this combination of successes we will be on our way to profitability."
IOL 29/10/2004