I agree with all comments on modern airlines and cost cutting now clearly gone beyond common sense: airlines have moved to lower fares, due to low cost carriers, which meant less Agents on the ground, less staff at check in but most importantly less specialised agents at their ticket offices for reprotections, rerouting of tickets etc.
Having hundreds of self check-in e-machine at the terminals is great when everything goes as scheduled. If there is any type of disruption you cannot go and talk to a machine, the screen cannot do anything for you, only real people with ticketing and fare experience can really help and sort you out with your flights, hotels, car hire, etc.
The recent snow disruption has been massive, thousands of people got stranded at LHR but airlines must remember that clients are important as much as their own staff working on the ground, these people are left alone by Management: to leave a handful of ground agents alone facing thousands of irate passengers is simply criminal and it should be against Health and Safety regulations. I have seen ground Airline Agents literally crying, exhausted and humiliated by the infuriated crowds, left totally alone just at XMas.
Airlines should really act with respect, I do not understand why Unions do not step forward on this issue, these people are underpaid and they get hit badly whe things go wrong and BAA/Airlines are not prepared, Agents on the ground should probably earn more money than pilots and certainly more than cabin crew. They earn peanuts I have been told.
I have witnessed with my eyes crowds of irate customers releasing all their ferocious anger against these under-paid employees only because they have an airline Uniform, they had to call the police regularly to avoid serious injuries.
Our modern society is really upside down: Managers sitting in a leather chair watching SkyNews and incapable of organising a simple snow plan and the base of the underpaid workforce being directly penalised by these awful mistakes, people on 300K p.a. or more doing all wrong at the top, and people on 14K p.a. or less just being abused by irate customers at the bottom.
Would it not be better to pay a little more for a ticket and get the service back as it used to be only 15 years ago?
The world is gone mad.
I do not blame the airlines, I blame this crazy system now.
It has just gone out of control I think
