All these terms and conditions are one thing, but don't they (ALL the Airlines NOT just Tiger) have some sort of Common Law responsibility to actually look after their Customers? Something like a Duty of Care?

IF they don't, then they certainly should.(ALL Airlines) :(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europea...ation_261/2004

This is the link to a description of the EU Regulation that covers this topic. I live in NZ now, where I am sure the regulations are similar to Australia. If Australia and NZ do not have an equivalent to the EU Regulation they need it. How long has the idea of Duty of Care been around? Did Stagecoaches cancel trips because one of the horses had died?

Probably. ;)

my dear friend
 

in NZ they have some of the lowest regs globally. the libs thought it is a good idea so the dismantled the former aussie system and put in the joint tasman aviation regs. :ugh:

Yep - but duty of care extends to customers who are in your premises or using you product or service. The only thing forcing any company to look after its customers outside the bounds of warranties/contracts (like the Ts&Cs most passengers agree to but don't read) is retention of market share (goodwill).
For some airline models, this is less important to profitability than other drivers (maintaining a low cost base etc.)
The problem here is not what the airline should have done, it is in the perception the travelling public has of what is reasonable. At no point do we tell them that "When you buy a ticket, we take that as our responsibility to get you to your destination by whatever means necessary". No airline can maintain that degree of assurance, yet most passengers seem to believe this is what they are paying for.
The only way to get the type of service these people want guaranteed ...... a First Class Ticket with a boatload of travel insurance.

Bravo Tiger, bravo.

:D:D:D:D:D


Perhaps you lot will have a new outfit to bag out on PPRuNe.

If you want all the extras, and to be looked after in the event of disruptions then fly full service and pay the extra money. Full service airlines generally aren't so tightly stretched for aircraft availability and can work around a breakdown alot better than a low cost. They are also much more inclined to provide meal vouchers and hotel accommodation in the event of a delay or cancellation.

I fly a mixture of full service and low cost for private travel. If the wife and kids are travelling alone definately full service, I want them looked after if things go wrong. Me and the wife on a short break flying a route serviced by other airlines, low cost is fine. A delay won't affect us too badly without the children getting bored and if the flight is cancelled there are other options to get back.

If the low cost is half the fare of the full service airline why not ? Always shop around though, with no child discounts on LCCs and expensive last minute fares, full service can often be cheaper or only marginally more expensive.

Ryan Air, Stanstead - Dublin perfectly acceptable as they have many flights per day on this route and both places are main centers with transport and acommodation options. I would be hesitant to fly with them to an out of the way place they only serviced once a day where I would have few options if things went wrong.

Basically you get what you pay for, shop around, read the terms and conditions. If you want to save money by going low cost have a back up plan just in case.

-" but duty of care extends to customers who are in your premises or using you product or service. The only thing forcing any company to look after its customers outside the bounds of warranties/contracts (like the Ts&Cs most passengers agree to but don't read) is retention of market share (goodwill)."


The idea of what you get for given what you pay has many shades of grey, particularly for airlines where prices vary enormously for seats on the same flight, people are used to discounts, and there is no consistent set of price-quality tradeoffs.

Regarding terms and conditions, given all airlines have them, and all of them protect the airline to a fair degree, that Tiger had them would not signal to customers that the level of support offered with a problem will be minimal. We all have seen firms offer T&C which are not enforced and most people are used to that.

For someone flying an LCC I would firstly see a $40 fare as being either a promotional offer aimed to get me to use the new airline and gain long term market share or a sale on seats that would elsewise go empty.

Second for most customers who ask why a fare is cheap they will expect it to come from reduced ammenity levels such as seat pitch, no free food, no airbridge etc; this would be consistent with how the LCC market themselves and their ability to drive down costs. I have never seen a CEO of an LCC say they deliver a cheaper product due to low punctuality (as opposed to low support when punctuality is absent which I have seen).

If the customer gave any though to punctuality they may accept planes being later by an hour or even two than on a full service airline, but they would still expect a plane to eventually show up on the day.

I find it unfair that an LCC can hold a customer to a 30 or 45 min checkin dealine and no refunds for cancellations if the customer cancels; while simulataneously not holding itself to either eventually deliverying a flight or making things right.

While the T&C may allow an airline to offer only a refund for a last minute flight cancellation, it is hard to think customers would buy a ticket envisaging this as a likely last minute outcome. If it was an expected outcome you would have to ask why the industry sells tickets in advance. Even if the fare was cheap the customers did pay for a flight.

A lot of T&Cs give the airline flexiblity to change flight times, and I have seen airlines use this to justify putting me onto a later flight (due to MX and a lack of LAME at the airport to fix the problem) without compensation ie the fare was only for carriage from A to B on the day and not a guarantee of flight time. However this argument is quite at odds with the fact I paid a premium for a morning rather than a midday flight ie the premium was paid on the promise and expectation of a morning flight which was not delivered.

Seems to me like a lot of pax are quickly learning the difference between moral obligations and legal obligations .. and LCC's are a whole lot more inclined to fall back on the latter when they are pushed.

It also seems to me that a lot of pax are flying literally by the seat of their pants, having to borrow money for sudden changes in plans, and allowing no time in case anything goes wrong.

There's lots of times I've travelled, whether it's by land, sea, or air, when things didn't go according to plan.
It's the nature of things, for important people to fall sick (the driver) at the worst possible moment, and for machines to break down (yes Virginia, 'planes are machines).

In the case of stagecoaches .. you not only stood a chance of the horse breaking a leg and dying .. you also stood a good chance of a brigand with a gun, relieving you of your valuables .. if you were lucky .. or your life, if you were really unlucky .. :(
I don't recall too many stagecoach co's getting hauled over the coals due to a severe lack of duty of care towards passengers. This is a late 20th and 21st Century phenomenon, raised, aided and abetted, by those who stand to gain the most - lawyers .. :rolleyes:

Bottom line is .. pax need to keep some alternative backup plans available .. need to be a little less stressed about a delay or two .. and need to accept that airlines aren't totally infallible.
If they want perfect punctuality .. they can always go for the LCC that follows the KLM punctuality example of the mid 1970's .. and we all know, where THAT modality got them, don't we .. ?? (Tenerife - KLM 4805 and PanAm 1736) .. :(

The easiest way for the public to understand LCC's is the level of service that you get equates to the fare paid. If you pay $40 for your ticket, dont expect the LCC to pay $140 to accomodate you if the aircraft breaks down.

If you pay cheap fares, get travel insurance or as stated before, pay a full fare on a full service airline.

Treat LCC's as you would travelling on a bus. if the bus breaks down you just sit and wait for the next one. I don't see bus companies feeding or accomodating the punters.:ugh:

Wondering?
 

I know they were all full service carriers, but did any of these issues occur during yesteryears with Ansett, TAA/Australian Airlines or East West?

JT

Hi Jenna...No, we never had delays at Ansett....(pffftt! only kidding!)

As the aircraft got older, & the maintenance downtime shorter, yes we had this on a daily basis. I can't recall whether AN/TN had legal obligations printed somewhere that obliged them to assist the punters, in the event of a delay, but assist we did.

Generally, we'd organise a meal voucher upon presentation of boarding card for short delays (a few hours), but I don't recall many punters getting put up in a hotel. Certainly, the INTL carriers (SQ included) would accommodate the punters from out of town for overnights. Locals got cab vouchers.

CO were wise to all the loopholes and, as alluded to by Icarus53, if they knew an overnight delay was on the cards, they wouldn't open the check in counters OR, they'd stop check in. If you hadn't checked in, then they weren't obliged to accommodate or feed you! (I think that's a US rule):confused:

Thanks Buster. Yes, delays were inevitable, but I wondered how it was all handled. I just dont remember these things being reported as news items as they are today.

JT

"The easiest way for the public to understand LCC's is the level of service that you get equates to the fare paid. If you pay $40 for your ticket, dont expect the LCC to pay $140 to accomodate you if the aircraft breaks down."

The problem often is that the person who paid $140 for a fare on the same LCC flight is treated no better than the person who paid $40. Both tickets would be in the non-refundable, non-etc category.

In this case the airline sold the $40 fare as a discounted std fare with the same T&C as its regular baseline tickets. This implies the fare is the same as the std fare, except for price (if not the ticket isn't discounted but simply a new lower class of ticket with different T&C). This is different to selling two fare types one which includes good support and costs more and the other which doesn't.

While an airline can not predict which flights will be cancelled, delayed etc it CAN predict that some will be cancelled etc and should plan for that.

It is normal for firms dealing in large volumes to expect to loose money on a small percentage of sales. For example when my vacuum cleaner broke down the retailer and importer both incurred warranty related costs which meant they lost money on the sale. A well run firm would include some allowance in each ticket/item price to cover them for such warranty type expenses.

Also when flights are cancelled, and passengers rescheduled onto later flights the airline will often save some money on fuel and landing charges.

Read the Terms and Conditions? Does this mean when you go to the Tiger website, you open EVERY box and read everything? How much time do you have? When you got paper tickets, did you read all the T & C - literally the small print, it was very small. I went to the Tiger site, yesterday, and my reading was that the insurance provided on their site by AIG does not mention cancellation of a flight by the airline as something they would cover. Would you want to be the Travel Agent who told people that they would be covered by that policy, because it will be expensive for you if you are wrong.

This is why Australia and NZ need an equivalent of the EU regulation that covers cancelled flights. The airlines will not look after you unless there is a regulation that forces them. If Ryanair cancels a flight, they must provide you with food and accommodation unless they can weasel out of it with reasons out of their control - a volcano or earthquake or a family of ducks crossing the runway.


It was bad enough being dumped at Gold Coast. If you are stuck at Bali or Saigon try to get yourself home from there.

If EU needed this regulation, this may mean that Common Law does not have a remedy for this. There might be an untested one, where a judge would award you all your out of pocket expenses - cost of hiring a bizjet to take you home. The airlines would not want to have a finding like that against them.

Duty of care?
 

Some people have a very warped understanding of what constitutes 'duty of care'.

The harm in this case doesn't extend to financial issues. If an airline refused travel and turfed people out of a terminal into a riot then they may have breached duty of care. Cancelling a flight in line with the previously advised terms and conditions would not in and of itself constitute a breach of duty of care.

I've got no qualms with saying that I think that airlines have a moral obligation to look after their customers- or at least ensure that their T&Cs are well advertised before people travel- but that shouldn't be confused with a legal requirement.

Bro who works on the ground for VB in Mel reports 140 pax transferred from Tiger to VB - MEL to OOL yesterday at considerable cost to Tiger.

The less we import the EU style of regulation the better.

I know that's a broad statement but I do not have the time or the inclination to write pages of explanation. Suffice to say the aviation regulations I have seen causes me just a little disquiet and concern should they be repeated here (or in NZ).

Leave EU solutions to EU problems in the EU.

tipsy

Does anyone know the "operational reason" for the delay? The Tiger spokesman said that it wasn't mechanical so my next guess (speculation) would be a shortage of pilots. Any inside info would be appreciated.

Hey Going Boeing....why do you want to know the reason? Is it that important? JEEEEZZZUUUUUZZZ H Christ you guys....give them a go!!! Aircraft are a mechanical piece of engineering and humans are humans! Just like any other airline, there will be delays, disruptions and cancellations. Get over it!