I have absolutelty no agrument with the need for communication in a delay situation.
Going back to the original HTI example, from being a "res" person in my time I can tell you there are enough bookings out there with little or no contact information. This makes it very difficult for any airline (even the untouchable Q) to get a 100% hit rate when calling out a delay. One of Australia's largest chains of (discount) travel agents is notorious amongst the industry for this. The problem made is more difficult when the decision to cancel is made in the middle of the night and you have skeleton reservations/ops staff to deal with the reaccommodation.
What gets me is Jetstar has a sniff of a disruption, the media is on to it, along with all the Jetstar bashers of pprune.
As stated in my previous post, I have being involved with or witnessed some appalling handled disruptions at other airlines. Incudling passengers being left for hours and hours with little advice and no offer of accommodation. Until the realisation in the wee small hours of the morning that maybe the pax need to be accommodated. And this from a "full-service" carrier.
Disruptions and delays are terrible and certainly cause no joy for anyone, passengers and frontline staff alike. And as many people in here have mentioned its how the situation is handled that makes the difference. No arguments from me at all.
I just find it intriguing distruption at Jetstar is for some reason far more newsworthy than distruption at Qantas, Virgin, or anyone else for that matter.
And yes, congratulations to Jetblue. The EU also has a set standard for passenger compensation in distruptions.
For the sake of transperancy for passengers of ALL AIRLINES in Australia something similar to the EU rules here in Oz would be a positive move.
