Bad on you, mate, for making a botched schedule worse
ST Forum
Bad on you, mate, for making a botched schedule worse
417 words
19 June 2008
The Straits Times, Singapore
(c) 2008 Singapore Press Holdings Limited
THE recent spate of delays and cancelled flights by Australia's national airline, Qantas, which is causing untold inconvenience to its passengers, is not because of the pay strike by the airline's engineers.
The inconvenience is because of Qantas staff's bad service attitude. I was a passenger on QF10 from Singapore to Melbourne, on May 31.
Along with some 400 passengers, I was told that our 7.45pm flight would be delayed until further notice. We waited until 1am before we were finally told that we could stay in a hotel - or go home. The rescheduled flight was at 9am, for which we had to be ready by 6am.
But at 6am, we were told that we had to wait until after lunch. At about 2.30pm, we found out that we were to fly on Singapore Airlines to Sydney, and then transfer to Melbourne via a domestic flight. We were assured that Sydney's Qantas staff members would assist us with our transfers when we arrived.
After almost 24 hours of waiting, about 100 passengers, including myself, went onboard the Singapore Airlines plane. The other passengers had to take the midnight flight. But, we were still rather forgiving. The nightmare began when we reached the Sydney airport and had to wait at the domestic transfer zone for three hours for our boarding passes for the Melbourne connection.
But when some passengers got to the counter, the Qantas staff told them that their names were not in the system. They added rather rudely that the problem was not theirs to solve. A heated argument ensued between some passengers and the Qantas staff members. After a further three hours, the customer service personnel arrived and our boarding passes were finally sorted out.
This ugly episode would not have arisen if Qantas had been more efficient. Its customer service was lacking and its recovery programme rates a zero.
The airline's Sydney staff appeared to take no pride working for the airline. They chose to reprimand rather than help passengers. Their attitude was one of utter indifference.
What happened was not just an embarrassment to the airline but to Australia, especially for many of the passengers who were visiting the country for the first time.
As for the airline's promise of a letter of apology, which I was told had been dispatched some time ago, I'm still waiting for it.
Amy Van (Ms)