I was unfortunate enough to be a passenger on a nice Air Scandic a300,the other day,and upon arrival on stand 10,no airbridge,in fact stand 8 and 6 both out of action and coned up too.
The Groundstar steps arrived{just 1 set for 317 pax}and after 10 minutes of messing about the crew were unable to lower them,and went off for more.
This was followed by a rather sarcastic comment from the number one to the extent of"Sorry for the delay but Ringway Handling a wholly owned subsidiary of Manchester Airport,who are the only ones who provide this service here,are unable to provide us with steps ,we {air scandic}have complained at this unacceptable service,and would hope that if any passengers would like to complain,please address the letters to Geoff Muirhead here at Manchester...................}
Didnt know whether to laugh or cry as i work for the aforementioned company,and unfortunately what she says is true.
It is now embarressing to say where you work,what once was a proud and pleasant place to work,has unfortunately turned into a laughing stock,dictated by a few greedy money men at the top hell bent on maximising profits{for themselves in bonus and payrises}to the detriment of staff,and especially to customers.......in fact customers are the lowest of the low in there eyes,seen as cash cows to squeeze as much as possible out of them in there captive little areas,with extortionate car parking prices,ridiculous food charges{5 pounds for a coffee and cake}and unbelievably shoddy facilities,where people are herded into inadequetely small areas they laughingly call gate areas,if youve anything bigger than a Jungle jet in your airline,thats half full forget it.
I agree with Indiana Jones about the airports stuck in the 60s,no one had the vision to plan for the future and thats why here at Manchester were suffering,were now on our 3rd baggage system in 5 years in terminal one and 2nd in 10 years in terminal 2,and theyre still not learning from their mistakes instead of scrapping and starting again theyre adding little bits on here and there and that goes on for the whole of the airport so that we end up with 2 or 3 different systems in different terminals not just baggage systems but escalators,lifts,check-in desks.
And of course the current management team cant or wont see this,the money that is wasted on these silly little ventures instead of an overall long-term stratagy
Could go on for hours on this as im sure a lot more of the groundstaff could but the upshot is that its not only in the airline side that the business has been affected but right through the industry,and everyones trying to get along on a shoe string,if the passengers are paying less,the airlines are getting less,therefore they need handling at the lower end of the scale,and what they are paying for at the moment is reflected in the quality of service theyre getting