EASYJET - use the technology!

[paull]

The Web's favourite airline cancelled NCE-GVA this morning and no-one knew until we all queued up at the airport.
Given that they must have everyone's email and mobile phone, why not let people know with a short message? After all, this plane comes in from GVA and that was cancelled so the return was sure to be cancelled hours before anyone would have left home.
If they had done that I would have driven to Geneva for my connecting flight, as it is I am seriously out of pocket and a day delayed.
Cancellations happen, it is how they deal with it that gives them the chance to impress or disappoint. They started out as innovators, they are now lagging behing and still do not get the "service" bit even if it costs nothing.
I'll be on flybaboo from now.

[Getoutofmygalley]

How do you know the flight was cancelled hours before you left home?

The block time for the flight from GVA-NCE is 1 hour, the flight might have gone tech in GVA once all pax were onboard, and as your flight was due to depart at 07:25GMT, you would most probably have been on your way or at the airport!

I have never heard of any airlines sending text messages to inform pax that flights are cancelled, so when flybaboo cancel your flight from now on, expect not to be informed by them!

[PAXboy]

It could have been that, when the inbound went tech, they planned to use another a/c for the return but might have been unable to get standby crew in time or a host of other things. Depending on the route, if they have more rotations later in the day, they would plan to txfer pax to that/those. This is standard for any company.

If they told you that the flight was canx and then COULD operate it - what would have been your reaction? I am not saying they did it well but they appear (by your report) to have done what most would expect.

As an example, I have a long haul booked and discovered by chance that the departure time had gone forward by 95 minutes. It took the carrier another ten days to telephone me. I asked them why they could not have sent me an email (I am FF with them) and they could not answer it. Since that is a main line carrier and I am in a premium cabin and it has trashed my onward connection, you could say that I am not pleased. But I don't try and spread bad stories on the web about every little thing that goes wrong in my life.

[paull]

PAXboy - I can assure you that I do not post every problem I have on the web. I run at about 5 posts/year on this site, you are running at around 500/year.

Swiss have sent SMS flight updates for years, I was offered the same (from BA I believe.) when I booked a flight last week. My point is that EZY had and perhaps still have the best website for booking, they could have continued to set the standard, in my opinion they no-longer do and have always had a blind spot w.r.t. customer service.

Only an Easyjet employee will be able to find out when they took the decision to cancel NCE-GVA but the employee I talked to at the airport said it was already cancelled when she came on at 7:00am local time, that timing puts me still at home AND even after 7:00 the information is still useful because the objective is not to stay at home but to get on another flights (Zurich, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam that would get me to Leeds/Bradford.

I understand that there might have been other options with crew/planes. I know the timetables quite well, I doubt it was an option. I would just be nice for them to do what they can, and the technology allows it to done at little cost/effort but with good Customer Sat.

Not wanting to be seen to pick on EZY, let me volunteer my vote for the worst website. BMI without a doubt - your votes?

[pacer142]

Not wanting to be seen to pick on EZY, let me volunteer my vote for the worst website. BMI without a doubt - your votes?


KLM's is pretty lousy but getting better, though still causes too many javascript errors. EZY's is one of the best I've used; I especially like the "boarding card on booking" feature rather than having to go back for it 24 hrs before, though this is probably only feasible for airlines (like EZY) that don't normally overbook.

The only problem I had with EZY was the awful punctuality of the 1545 AMS-LTN. This has now been resolved...by cancelling it permanently. Nice one, leaves me with KLM to/from LCY as the only real option. While it is my preferred option, it does crank the price up a bit... :(