It is just appalling customer relations. I have no dog in this particular fight fight, but how hard would it be to respond to the Doctors letter with something like the following.
My Chairman Lim Kim Hai has received your letter dated 30 May 2012 and has asked me to extend his apologies and has instructed me to respond as follows:
1.Occasionally we do have failures of equipment and this has a knock on effect across our network. Safety is paramount to us and unfortunately delays and cancellations are sometimes unavoidable. We are are truly sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. Mr Lim Kim Hai has requested a review of how this matter was handled by our ground crew with a view to making improvements where necessary.
2.Your entitlement to compensation is governed by our conditions of carriage which you have accepted when purchasing a ticket. In this case compensation is not applicable under our conditions of carriage.
3.We will not be providing statistics specific to our Griffith service however if we are pleased to direct you to the following link
www.rex.com.au/.../304_MR%2020120221%20- ...
which shows Rex as having the lowest cancellation rate of any airline in Australia for the 2011 year at 0.4% for which we are justifiably proud and an On Time Departure Rate of 84.9%. I assure you Rex will continue to work hard to further improve these statistics.
5. I am not aware of any particular pattern of cancellations/delays. If this could be foreseen our policy is to contact our passengers in advance to lessen any inconvenience.
We appreciate your taking the time to contact us and again apologise for the delays in this particular flight. We will continue to work hard to provide high quality Air Transport to our customers throughout the regional areas we service.
Regards
Irwin Tan
GM Corporate Service
Anyway that is how I would of responded but alas I am only a dumb overpaid pilot, not a highly qualified and well paid management type.
Good luck to you boys and girls at Rex.