Monarch "Holiday Airline" ITV1 show

[brockenspectre]

Hmmmmm just watching this "docusoap" and a parent whose child will be 2 on the return flight was kicking up a fuss because he was not allocated a seat for the child on the outbound flight.

As an ex travel agent I KNOW that if the child will be 2 on the return flight then that infant-child is charged a FULL child price for the entire vacation.

That this parent should have been told by Monarch that the infant was an infant on the outbound and Cosmos/Avro was not paid for that seat on the outbound but there would be a seat for the child on the inbound seems very wrong to me!!

Do airlines have different rules from those they require travel agents/tour operators to observe? (ie a child is a child paying full fare for both flights if 2 or above on return journey)...

:D

[Sagey]

Is it just me or is Holiday Airline even worse than the Easy version. Last nights edition spent more time filming people eating a full English than they did about the Airline.

People getting angry over delays, people losing their passport is just not interesting every single week. A bit of diversity would be great. IE one week do 30 minutes in the flight deck. Next week follow role of cabin crew etc.

Sagey

[sky9]

Reminds me of the old joke. Why are Monarch painted canary yellow? - because the holidays are cheap. :D OK not really that funny but we have to question why there are so many TV programmes following the same theme year after year - I suspect, because they are so cheap.

Cannot think why any airline managers ever allow them to be filmed - I suspect for the same reason; cheap publicity, and that is exactly what they get in both meanings of the word.

[Whiskey Zulu]

Yup sky9, tell that to MR. Stellios as his load factors double with each series!! You know nothing about marketing an airline so make a well known phrase out of the following words ... neck, wind, in, your! :p

[Hannibal Smith]

I always watch these airline docu-soaps in the hope that we may catch an insight into the daily routine of the pilots but alas, I am usually dissapointed. It has become abit of a bore seeing the same old customer service hassles and 'basic' passengers who don't know their backside from their elbows stuffing pie and chips in Malaga or where ever they go on their holiday 'abroad'.

I suspect (and this comes from a pal of mine who's kinda in the know) that the pilots are a little bit 'anti' having cameras following them around. Is this the case guys and gals?

One reason that viewing figures are as high as they are for these shows is because people watch in the slim hope they may catch themselves on TV!! TV executives know this so they keep on showing the same ole cr@p because it sells.
It would make better all round viewing if we could see as much of the pointy bit as well as 'Sharon' and 'Tracy' copping a load off the pax.

[Steepclimb]

What interested me, was how they covered the delay. First one goes tech then another. At last the masses could see both sides although I did feel they should have put more emphasis on the problems OPs were having in their genuine attempts to dig up an aircraft for the moaners.
The woman who claimed they'd been lied to looked a fool when you could see what had been going on in the background.
Why do people persist in thinking aircraft are like buses, oh yeah, that's right, the airlines want it to appear that way.

Wasn't that a lovely (and large) family in Spain. I was waiting for them to complain that it was too hot and full of foreigners.

Well we're promised an emergency next week, the Captain in the trailer said.'We have a problem' That could mean his coffee was cold but we'll see.
By the way, it's no use complaining that it shows little the life from the aircrew perspective. That is not what these type of programmes are about. It's all about ordinary people and the stressful experiences they endure travelling, not flying, in those big buses.

[rover2701]

In addition to showing the problems of Customer services, how about showing some thing of the problems of Engineering. I must admit that I dont as a rule watch these programmes but the ones I have seen you would think that the aircraft maintain themselves. Us engineers are getting fed up of being the forgotten part of this industry.

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[Hannibal Smith]

I think the general public needs to broaden their horizons, especially in the UK. We seem all too happy to have our entertainment watered down and easy to digest, the Concorde documentary on Thursday being a prime example.
Nobody seems to want to go the extra yard to increase peoples knowledge and worldly awareness on interesting matters, opting instead to show 'human interest' style cobblers. That's one of the reasons primetime TV will always show simple 'normal people' type documentaries such as Airline. We should take a leaf out of more cultural places like France and Spain.

Television is the most powerfull influence on western people and a big opportunity to increase mankinds intelligence is being missed these days.

[ 08 September 2001: Message edited by: Hannibal Smith ]

[mark_mitchell]

i feel the same as all of you,
why dont they show more intresting parts to an airline like pilots, enigineers than the the cr@p they do. everytime its the same a passernger forgets their passport, delayed passerngers fighting etc.
the thing that makes me laugh is that the delayed passerngers are ignorant fools. when iam delayed i dont go round the airport shouting and drawing attraction to my self.

[swashplate]

Couldn't agree more chaps, but maybe it's all to do with 'bums on seats' and advertising revenue.....

In out 'dumbed down' culture, how many folks would want to watch a more technical documentary???

Money rules, as always.....

[timmcat]

Thats hit the nail on the head..look at the 8:30 Friday screening time.. I think the ad men call it a rate card.. surely can only get more expensive during Corrie.. Anyway, we have all fallen for it, maybe due to a common interest, but all my kids sit glued to it, so perhaps it has got mass appeal (although perhaps they are trying to see themselves when we flew MAN - ALC in August with Monarch).

[Hannibal Smith]

I do believe the so called flight deck emergency to be featured next week involves the same captain (Dave Steely?) as the 'Flightdeck' programme on the A.320 shown on Discovery every now and again. Obviously he doesn't mind cameras in his office.

[What_does_this_button_do?]

Flight Deck Emerg is a routing problem. Being "fuel efficent and only taking what is needed" has stuffed the plans. They only get FL230 instead of FL370 and Capt thinks they won't have enough juice to get to Spain.

[longarm]

WDTBD- The "Emergency" is a problem with the route. However the flight was not to Spain it was to Orlando. If they had have carried fuel for F230 they would have been overweight for landing !

[loggerhead]

Dave Steely is the Fleet captain...what does that say?

[STAGE COACH DRIVER]

99% of the crews in Monarch said no to being filmed thats why you have a fleet Capt on the show.Even the ops controller on last week isn't one as no one in that dept wanted to do it either.

[sky9]

Whiskey Zulu,
Please tell me you are not a pilot, I'd just hate to work with you, no sense of humour and an attitude of forever being right.
:)

So far all your messages have been slagging somebody off.

[Whiskey Zulu]

sky9 Quote:
---------------------------------------------
So far all your messages have been slagging somebody off.
---------------------------------------------

The words pot, kettle and black immediately sprang to mind? If you read your initial post again, you may just understand why I have a problem with YOU only.

And as for always being right, well when your right, your right.
:p

[loggerhead]

I work for said company and to be honest I love the program, There are not many other industrys can you work in that has a documentary, all be it a fly on the wall docusoap following it. Every time I go to the airport to work I feel good. Beats working in an office with a view onto the high street.

That’s one point of the program, So many people would love to work in the industry, they watch and dream...so be proud of it. :cool: :)

And if your on this site and your not in the industry, remember, you wish you were... right?

[ 10 September 2001: Message edited by: loggerhead ]

[Hannibal Smith]

So are the pilots against camera crews following them purely in case they highlight a slip up or what? I suppose, thinking about it, if I was a pilot I wouldn't be too comfortable with a crew following me for just that reason.

Pilots care to comment?

[Rolling Stone]

HANNABAL, for info Dave Stealey is the Airbus fleet captain (A320,A321 and A330). The reason he is the one being filmed is because there were no volunteers from his fleet. Rather than force one of his troops to be subjected to the filming he elected to do it himself. He would rather not have been there. Don’t sit on the edge of your seat for the next week in anticipation. “The Emergency” in question is being given a flight level of 280 by Shanwick on the Oceanic clearance on the way to Orlando. Fmc of course said they did not have enough fuel to get there. Oh course when the next level was obtained they miraculously make it. What suspense! Although there is a funny bit. Watch for the fleet captain to say, "F*@k" on camera. Am told they did not know the camera was rolling at that point!

Steepclimb. Agree with you. Thought LWT missed the chance to show the way the delay was handled from all sides. Such as, the reason for using the A300 was because there were A300 pilots on Sby in Florida. That this would cause minimal disruption to the inbound passengers rather than them having to go into a hotel for the night and wait for the DC10 crew to come back in hours. But as usual they only focused on the one set of passengers who were there to be interviewed. Are we surprised? One of our A330 pilots who positioned out on that flight was telling me that he observed the film crew talking to a family who had been sitting quietly in the departure lounge. A short time later said pax started a big ruckus at the gate with the Manch Handling agents. On queue the film crew just happened to be right there to film it. He does not put it past them to have given the family a bit of extra spending money for their holiday in return for the outburst. :mad:

Loggerhead. You Like it? You are sad. :D The only good thing about the program is the fact that LWT did not get enough footage and so concentrated more on the passengers. Which in turn means there is very little about us.

[ 10 September 2001: Message edited by: Rolling Stone ]

[ 10 September 2001: Message edited by: Rolling Stone ]

[loggerhead]

OK Rolling Stone, I am a bit SAD...you got me there. :D But will you carry on watching it?