CSA Czech Airlines - how to commit commercial suicide

[Final 3 Greens]

I arrived at STN last night to take the 1830 CSA flight to Prague and discovered it had been canx at 1500, due to 'bad weather' (snow) at Prague.

There was no contingency plan, just a commitment to provide further information at 1815 and the possibility that CSA 'might' arrange a bus to connect with the 2100 flight out of Heathrow, subject to 'operational' circumstances. In other words, useless.

Fortunately, easyJet had some space left on their 1815 service and I sorted myself out.

Even though the aircraft was late back in from its previous sector and the original captain was taken ill and a standby replacement called in, a departure delayed by nearly 2 hours was much better than the CSA uncertainty.

easyJet are obviously competing hard with CSA on this route and in this instance the 'full service carrier' behaved like a 'loco' and vice versa.

If this type of behaviour becomes a regular feature, easyJet will no doubt mop up - I was travelling on business (am a FQTV with CSA) and non arrival could have had severe consequences.

[GlueBall]

Final 3 Greens says: "....and non arrival could have had severe consequences.

Scheduled, on-time airline service isn't guaranteed at any airline anywhere. Go and read the fine print on your ticket.

Perhaps you are rostering your business (and your life) without sufficient margins and contingencies. Certainly a recipe for stress and high blood pressure.

Be thankful you hadn't lived 100 years ago; a time when you'd be traveling on a springless donkey cart.

There are no desperate situations, only desperate people. :ouch:

[Final 3 Greens]

Glueball

Have you been drinking heavily when you posted????

Re-read the title of the thread. It is not entitled 'emotionally terrorised' or 'traumatiised' or any of those ridiculous Amercan whinges, its called 'How to commit commercial suicide.'

Let me explain it using very simple words.

If you have a business and your competitors outperform you, they win and you lose.

If a business is 'full service' and the competitor is 'low cost' and provides a better service , then there is something seriously wrong in the full service business, which only exists so long as there is a differentiation perceived by its customers to justify the price differential. Terms and conditions are irrelevant.

Got it now?

As to your ridiculous assertion about contingency, you really do not understand my business nor its circumstances and therefore your opinion is valueless.

[Richard5]

In the intrests of balance, this evenings (29th Jan) Easyjet Stansted-Prague service was cancelled due bad weather, however the CSA service did operate on time, and took over 50 of the stranded easyjet passengers at a very reasonable cost.

All these passengers were very happy for the CSA service and vowed never to fly easyjet again due to the lack of information and general poor servce and attitude of the people in Orange.

Many couldn't believe how cheap and excellent the "full service" of CSA was, and vowed to use them again!

[Final 3 Greens]

Richard5

I fly CSA a lot and think that their service is usually excellent

I could forgive them for the cancellation, but not having a timely 'plan B' is unforgiveable for an operation that presents itself as a full service carrier.

easyJet are a self declared 'loco' and one must expect the to cancel when it is expedient - people should read the t&c's carefully. Ryanair are the same - pretty upfront about it too.

This is why I won't generally use easy for business - been bitten, athough they were quite entitled to cancel, I would not knowingly put myself in that position again.

If you are percieved as being loco, then people will accept this sort of thing - one had only to watch Michael O'Leary on BBC Hardtalk recently, to see that :24 million people cannot be wrong" was the repeated message, disregard the individual, manage the mass numbers .... and it is a valid argument.

But why bother with 'loyalty schemes' as a full service operator, if you are going to mishandle FQTVs?

As I said in the first post, it is a way to commit commercial suicide and I am aware that the STN PRG is by no means always full for CSA (by observation .. I have travelled on the sector 13 times in the past couple of months and I wonder what the yields are like

Good news travels quickly, but not so fast as bad news.

[FlightDetent]

Final 3 Greens:
I agree with your views, CSA has still a long way to go to provide seamless and full-size service and learn to fight for the customer on every-day basis. It is and will be a painstaking process for we (sadly) niether have the guts nor the money to have someone experienced sow us how. And pulling our bootstraps just works slowly.

FD.

[Boss Raptor]

I like CSA, never had a bad experience on them up to now and willingly pay the (little) extra to go 'full service' to PRG on CSA than on one of the LCC's that now ply the route

[FlightDetent]

3Gs:

Frankly, except for buying you an EZY ticket on CSA's ex-pence :} (now seriously, of course this could have been done), I can't see no other choice.

Please, bear in mind we are a single hub airline, our 737 fly about three ROUND trips a day. When the base is SNO-CLO, the options are severely limited.

Having a Dublin service rerouted to pick you up? Perhaps, but you yourself say that time is often critical. That would not be a suicide, our Irish customers might just decapitate us themselves.

Still, I stand by my previous post.

FD.

[Final 3 Greens]

Flight Detent

Don't be too hard on CSA, the service is generally very good.

But full service scheduled carriers need to have a 'plan B' for business travellers. That plan B could have been a bus to LHR to connect with your 2100 flight or (worse option, but survivable) a hotel and the 0740 the next morning (I would have been prepared to pay for the hotel under the circumstances.)

I understand the challenges of running a single hub operation, with a relatively small fleet, but from my point of view that doesn't really cut any slack when I have 20+ people scheduled to attend a meeting at the Kongresscentrum the next morning - indecision is not acceptable to a business traveller and at 16h30, the CSA people at STN simply didn't have a plan, although I guess that they did not have the power to make their own and were dependent on another CSA station for that.

As for SNO CLO, well it didn't stop easyJet did it, so I guess flying that night really depended on how much you wanted to support the route?

From my perspective, it looked and felt as if CSA wished to avoid the possibility of an expensive unscheduled nightstop and having seen the shortness of the passenger manifest, I could understand if this were the case.

But to return to the original point, doing this regularly on the STN PRG would be committing commercial suicide.