Originally Posted by
ranmar850
Apart from the repugnant elitism obvious in that post, you do realise that half of you would be unemployed if the "great unwashed" just stayed home, as befits their lowly status, and we went back to only ladies and gentlemen flying?
Well, anyone that's spent time at somewhere like Avalon Airport and seen the totally unacceptable and disgusting way people doing their jobs are treated by an element of these so-called 'unwashed', would beg to differ.
It is not elitist to expect a reasonable level of civil behavior from people, not all, but many, who cannot take responsibility for turning up too late, bringing too much baggage, not reading their itinerary or listening to the conditions and rather than take some responsibility they lash out and threaten violence and use the most lowly and abusive language... the sort of language that would clear the front bar at Young and Jackson's in it's heyday.
Some people are truly at the shallow end of the gene pool and have no concept how to conduct themselves in public. Airport staff shouldn't have to be at risk of violence or abuse for doing their jobs. I have personally witnessed some years back Police having to be called to a small airport to sort out a number of disgusting individuals on numerous occasions.
Many ports like AVV (not sure if it's changed) have no Federal Police presence and no security other than the people scanning baggage, etc. I'm happy to be corrected and will be happy to know if that's changed because if you combine strict rules about baggage and flight close times with extremely low fares, you attract a number of people who don't know how to conduct themselves in public and the result is significant levels of stress and virtually no back up other than Police sometimes 30 mins away to fall back on.
I can only say that from observations, the eventual arrival of Police in these situations supports the old adage "You get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word"
Let's face it, one airline in particular when it launched deliberately pitched it's product at such people by featuring a comedian characterized as uneducated and daggy. Let these airlines appeal to that market but restore the services to the premium carriers and raise the prices slightly. Many people will pay a marginal amount extra to avoid being stranded due to delays that are tenuously blamed on weather and the like.
Having said that, from a domestic point of view at least, why people complain about Qantas I will never know. They have introduced technology way ahead of their competition, electronic bag tags and kiosks/bag drops that actually work (not require the customer to tag their own bags then line up to show their boarding pass to deposit them like another airline - why bother doing the self check in in the first place???) and baggage systems that pretty much ensure bags will be loaded correctly.
On top of that both the Qantas and Virgin inflight product domestically is so far in advance of the rest of the world's domestic standards it's in its own universe.