PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Passengers kicked off Qantas Perth flight because 'plane was too heavy'
Old 14th Jun 2017, 10:11
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old,not bold
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: uk
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TangoAlphad You know what? You just don't sound like someone who "respects our passengers".

You just can't help it, can you? Your sentence
Now, occasionally some pax see this as an open invitation to release some frustration despite our attempts to explain to them.
is just sarcasm, and tells me that you simply don't understand that they are not "releasing some frustration", they are bloody angry that you have sold them a ticket to fly on a particular flight, and now you are saying "Sorry, we screwed up, don't worry, we'll chuck you on a later flight."

I would be angry too, not least because I too have operated small aircraft and know that if on a particular sector you "occasionally" have to reduce the payload, you only allow confirmed reservations on that sector up to that reduced weight, and wait-list after that. If your company is unwilling to do that then your passengers have every right to be angry when denied boarding as a result.

You will find, if you adopt a slightly different approach to your "pax", that 95% understand perfectly that all aircraft (not just yours, by the way) are what you loosely term "weight-limited" and that unexpected weather can reduce payloads. But they also understand perfectly that if an airline, no matter how small or friendly, deliberately issues reservation confirmations in the knowledge that there is a known probability that they will be denied, it is doing so out of greed and contempt for its customers.

So, sunshine, I am not in the slightest bit offended by your comments. But I do hope that you will ask yourself if you are in the right job. People, by and large, don't buy a ticket because they want a ride in an aeroplane. They do it so as to be in a particular place at a particular time, and all sorts of other arrangements involving many other people may depend on that. They will take a lot of trouble making sure they are at the airport, ready to go, at the time stated on the ticket. To be met by a grinning fool telling them that they have been chosen to be "chucked on to a later flight", while "explaining" that the "aircraft is weight-limited" because it's too windy, or the wind is in the wrong direction, or whatever is about as anger-generating as it gets.

In my experience, passengers understand the technicalities perfectly well; what they do not understand or forgive is why the airline allows the situation to develop in the first place while doing nothing to prevent or mitigate it. That applies to Twin Otter operations just as much as A380 operations. And that's what makes them "release their frustrations".

Last edited by old,not bold; 14th Jun 2017 at 10:21.
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