Had friends down for the grand final who were "guests" of
VB and affected by the IT problems.It was interesting hearing their perspective compared to the usual media spin.
They are long time
VB travellers and use them for buisness as well as lesuire travel after QF basically gave them no option than fly J* from their home town, but thats another story.
What did they think? Very well handled at the start but after 3 hours of waiting things got out of control, with most people way out of their depth. A huge lack of information, and as they said its nice to have attractive young things serving you, but when they have no training or support in this type of situation it looks very amatuer. Lots of staff on the ground apologising, but none were really of any help. They were actually told by one of the staff that it is affecting ALL airlines, so dont bother trying the "others".
Oh, and they also made an interesting observation in regard to the "guest" thing. Apparently a lot of passengers got annoyed at being constantly reffered to as being "guests", it actually became an ongoing joke in their que. Most wanted to be treated like paying "customers"!
They still like
VB compared to their other option and are excited about the new buisness offerring and like most people there understood that sometimes these things happen, it was obviously a huge problem that doesn't happen everyday.
My observations from what they told me, give your ground staff a bit more confidence in dealing with this type of situation, and give them a pat on the back for trying, i would have hated to be in their situation.