magicing customer service agents
somebody earlier said there were only 3 agents to process hotac and flights for several hundred people. Then an airline person replied it was impossible to magic up a load of agents at short notice.
This answer is actually indicative of somebody who would rather ignore the problem, rather than spend 2 minutes thinking well how could we do it?
I did this, and the answer is p1ss easy. Create a wheely carousel like a sunglass display carousel that has 5 phones mounted around it. When airline X goes t1ts up, program the carousel so when a phone is picked up it dials the airlines call center, even abroad. Put GSM modems in the carousel so it can be wheeled from storage to the area of the terminal it's needed. Tada. Airport bills airline X cost of calls and £500/hour carousel rental.
The people in the call center can do the same as the people at the desk, and hopefully for a larger airline they'll be able to staff up a call center by having people come in earlier, leave later, skip tea breaks, get supervisors and trainees working frontline etc etc, so they can create capacity quickly.
Or, have business cards to hand out to delayed passengers for the airlines toll free number in that country. People on their mobiles call the number and get put through to the call center at no cost when roaming abroad. Not difficult, just needs a will. Again for a larger airline their call center software will distribute the calls to the agents that are available across the different continents. Some call centers have staff that work from home, they push a button on their home phone and the call center PBX logs them in as available for incoming calls.
G