EZY Check in NCL

[reverserunlocked]

Please EZY, lay on more check in staff at Newcastle! Why is it whenever I fly from Bristol I can check in within about five minutes, yet whenever coming back to BRS I stand in a looooooong queue knowing at least a twenty minute wait is in store?

What's the deal?

[dgutte]

I noticed this a couple of weeks ago.

Approx 5 mins before the desks opened the queue (mainly for Belfast & Alicante) was so long it snaked across the terminal, causing an obstruction at one of the main entrances to the terminal.

When check in opened it was staffed by one person, which meant the queue hardly moved for around 15 mins until a few more staff ambled over.

I think NCL has a problem with staff numbers generaly. I have flown from/to there 4 times in the last month and on all arrivals we have had to wait 10 mins or so for ground support to let us off.

[Miss Indie Skreet]

No point in blaming easyjet for the problem. The contract for check-in and all other ground handling is handled by Servisair, widely (and usually correctly) referred to as Circusair within the industry.

The problem for lack of staff has a number of root causes, all of which are beyond the grasp of management to figure out:

1. Pay. Barely above minimum wage, and even less than this for temps (which many staff are as this keeps the wage bill down, and so management are always keen to find ways of extending temp contracts as long as possible to avoid paying permanent wage rates).

2. Working hours. Unsociable, subject to change at short notice, and rosters based on staff being mere labour units to be input into a computer programme. Result, staff rostered for shifts like 0400-0700 and then back again later in the evening. I can't understand why people don't leap out of bed filled with enthusiasm for the day ahead.

3. Treatment. Staff routinely facing disciplinary action, or threats of action, for meaningless triviality like the wrong coloured underwear, or not having the correct hair bobbles. Also spoken down to and treated in an insulting and inferior manner throughout the working day by management.

4. Lack of proper training. Memos do not constitute training. If staff are not trained and supported properly, then mistakes will occur and customers will suffer. Ultimately contracts will be lost.

5. Job satisfaction. Exactly where is the appeal of sitting at a check in desk for hours on end being refused breaks due to lack of staff? What is the appeal of the job that should keep us all here? Where are the rewards?

The net result of this is a viscous circle of ever-increasing absenteeism (or people just doing the right thing and leaving), leading to more and more overtime to be covered, leading to more discontent, leading to a more tyrannical and desperate manangement, leading to more shoddy treatment, leading to more absenteeism, etc, etc..........

Your visit clearly did not coincide with a station visit from easyjet, otherwise you would have seen more staff than you could shake a stick at, and our rarely seen management team out of the office and fawning all over our visitors, assuring them that everything in the garden is indeed rosy. The truth is the garden has had a good dose of Weedol.

Our managers need to realise the solution to the problem lies within their grasp. Workers may lose their jobs if conrtracts are lost, this is true. However, in our case it is called redundancy, and replacement jobs at this level are two-a-penny. For managers it is called sacked for incompetence. Guess who ought to have the greatest incentive for improving the situation? Wakey wakey!

[eastern wiseguy]

like the wrong coloured underwear



wtf???:confused: :confused:

[reverserunlocked]

Thank you Miss. It seems the check in staff's job is not a fun one. I'll never moan about standing in a queue again....:uhoh:

[Maude Charlee]

"What are the rewards?"

Erm, the handsome, debonair dispatchers of course. :D

(OK, being Servisair you have to put up with knackered old trolls like me). :}

[pieboyjr]

Do EZY not use the barrier-things anymore? When I flew to Paris last year and Barcelona the year before they had queue dividers to make sure people didn't disperse into the main concourse of the terminal building? Or were the queues so big they snaked out of these dividers?

[Maude Charlee]

Barriers still in use, but there are now too many pax to be contained. Having the check in desks in the old terminal which is tiny and crowded doesn't help either.

[Tudor]

An excellent post Miss Skreet, however surely the ultimate blame DOES lie with easyJet. They are, after all, the ones who decide to award the contract to Servisair and by offering so little it is, inevitably, the employees who suffer, particularly the front line staff.

In turn the passengers also suffer due to queing longer and been dealt with by people who (quite understandably) don't really want to be there.


:hmm:

[Skylion]

It's not just EZY who use Servisair. BA also use them at some places in Europe and thereby offer pretty much the same ground handling performance and style as EZY.

[Tudor]

I'm not familiar with the ins and outs but is it possible that BA pay Servisair more than, for example easyJet, and for this they are provided with an 'enhanced' service i.e. more check in staff etc

I ask this because when I was crew I lost count of the number of times I was told by irate parents that BA bring their pushchairs up to the aircraft door on arrival whereas we didn't which used to make me wonder that BA must get a far better service from their ground agent. Either that or they were all lying!

[Avman]

I suppose Easy looks for the cheapest deal so as to keep costs down. The result is a cheap mediocre service. Ultimately, we the users are responsible (well, not me because I'm always prepared to pay more for good service - within reason of course). The general public wants cheap fares. Businesses have to cut costs to the absolute minimum. Contract work is given to the cheapest bidders. They pay their staff peanuts and provide a minimum service to try and make a buck. End result is as Miss Skreet explains.

[WHBM]

A frequent error in contracting out services (as here from Easy to Servisair) is that once the client signs the contract they think their job is done and no more management attention is required. Which is not so. You have to keep looking at your contractor and seeing they are up to it, just like your own staff. This particularly applies if the contractor is being branded as your own operation (I believe S/air staff are issued with Easy uniforms for this work). There are things that got missed out, things that don't work, and bad managers at the contractor.

If BA get better service it could be two things. A more comprehensive/costly contractural arrangement, or more management attention from BA. Maybe both.

[Maude Charlee]

Just to clarify a point, BA are handled by Swissport at NCL, not Servisair. However, the airport authority definitely give preferential treatment to BA over other airlines when it comes to the provision of services such as disabled pax handling, coaching, stand allocation and even sequencing of pushbacks.

As for the customer (easyjet) monitoring the situation, they do make regular visits to NCL. However, these are announced in advance and steps taken to present a suitable impression to the client for the time they are there. Very rarely do we get covert audits from any airline customer, but when we do, we are invariably caught with our pants around our ankles and told in no uncertain terms to buck up our ideas. Since I've been there, we've lost 3 scheduled airline contracts and gained none.