Racedo, I'm curious about something. I think Ryanair were totally correct in this instance, but in other cases were bending the rules might be better than the
PR nightmare of not doing so, such as the case of that surgeon who had to change his flights to bury his family and was charged, or any situation where Joe Bloggs has to change his flights due to a family emergency, are local management authorised to make exceptions to the rules or is it a case of by the book regardless? Cheers
Don't work for FR so cannot comment on rule flexibility.....
In case of surgeon he arrived at airport before news media were even reporting the story. That one is kind of a hard one.
Problem in allowing local flexibility ends up where what someone allows in Dublin is not what is allowed in Lisbon or what someone allows in Ciampino.
It ends up then with each airport making up their own rules and even with an airport two members of same team will apply different rules because they interpret guidelines differently. This angers pax even more because of lack of consistency.
Using the well worn phrase of "well leave it to common sense" would mean what though ?
What you would interprest as fair and reasonable in making a decision may be seen as you been a
by pax because they heard that in airport X another passenger had got Y allowed or changed.
The benefit of having clearly laid down SOPs means there is little room for manouvre and I think for staff it means they have a back up in being able to rely on these.
I know nothing frustrates people in any occupation more than having applied the rules as per guidelines. A screaming abusive customer then gets a senior manager to override that decision by being abusive knowing their behaviour will force the result they want. This undermines people and allows bullying to get away with it.
There are times when some flexibility is needed but allowing that call to be made after the event by someone divorced from the incident and time at least allows people on the ground to feel that have backup.
Customers are not always right, neither are staff.