Virgin Blue calls the cops on annoyed customer
 

Interesting...

Virgin Blue calls the cops on annoyed customer – Plane Talking

Despite what the Uni Degrees and text-books (probably) say, a lot of this industry is not "black and white". Situations like these need tact, experience (if no experience lots, of good training), commonsense (which comes from good training and/or experience) and understanding. As the pay goes down, so does the age and life-experience of the players and the training has to go up.

As for control of the cabin and "disruptive pax" it all stops with the person in seat 0A. If the circumstances were anything like as described, I'm disappointed that the cops were called.

How dare some minion question her authority.

I thought there was a law in this country that required water to be freely available and free of charge where alcohol is being served.

The comment by stophostyhate was brilliant! Articulate, insightful and to the point, cutting through all the PR spin.

Why don't these people rise to managerial positions instead of some of the crap that does? Because they highlight incompetence, aggravate insecurities & get then blocked at all levels by those people that they have unwittingly threatened. Finally, they usually get sick of beating their heads against the proverbial brick wall & leave.

I only wish Mr Borghetti would read his/her comments.

This all reminds me of the first 10 mins of the movie 'Anger Management' YouTube - Dave Buznik gets a Small Misunderstanding. It would be funny except for the seriousness of the incident. I read that a customer who was erroneously accused of shoplifting at a Sydney department store successfully sued the company. Perhaps this passenger should consider the same thing. After all, the passenger has been falsely accused of disruptive behaviour on an aircraft.

I don't agree. Articulate, yes, but lacking insight in the role of cabin crew. I get the image here of a person who loves the industry, except for those pesky passengers. I agree with stophostyhate that the airline should provide free water. However the "unbundled" food and beverage service is exactly what the original Virgin Blue was about. This person then contradicts themselves by suggesting that a return to previous values would be a good thing. Either Virgin should give people free water or not. stophostyhate is not being consistant.

Further:

Some lateral thinking would have provided other options. Giving a passenger a glass of water does not automatically result in being "performance managed". Jeez..just give the passenger a paper cup and tell them to help themselves to the tap for chrissake! Needlessly calling the police instead of using some common sense: now that gets you Performance managed.

No stophostyhate, the passenger/guest does not have any questions to answer. Not to you or anyone. There is no place for such an attitude in customer relations. It is not the role of airline staff to interrogate passengers. I am sure that stophostyhate's employer spent a lot of effort in training Human Factors and it should be evident that a traveler who is thirsty and has had water taken from them (not all security checkpoint invoke a 100 ml restriction on LAGs. eg: LAX) is not going to be happy. The customer service role look after the passenger-who pays your wage?

There could be many reasons for this. Lack of currency for one. Maybe the shop was closed.

You cannot expect pax to know the rules for LAGs as thoroughly as airline staff. Last week I saw security take a bottle of water from cabin crew in Sydney. Nobody is perfect.


- Maybe the passenger maxed out their credit card in HKT. Maybe they lost it. Who knows.

The letter of reply extends an apology for bad customer service on the part of the crew and quite rightly, too. It is the only point in the whole sorry saga where the customer has been extended any justice or due consideration.

Just a couple of points that may not set the world on fire, but I'll make them anyway.....

1: Last time I was in HKT (as pax) I had my bottle of water removed when entering the terminal through the security point just inside the door. I then bought another bottle which was removed at the main security/passport area. Finally I purchased another bottle in the airside area to take onboard, which was then promptly removed at yet another security bag search at the entrace to the aerobridge, so this person may well have tried to take some onboard only to be thwarted by over zealous security.

2: I'm not sure if HKT is the same, but if a VB aircraft uplifts potable water in DPS it is not suitable for drinking and the tank must be steralised on arrival back into Oz. Maybe this prevented free water being given?

I suspect there is a lot more to this that wasn't written in the pax complaint. After all, nobody mentions the stuff that doesn't show them in the best light when making a complaint.

Who really cares :rolleyes:

Free glasses of water on DJ flights is obviously not a 'must have', just a 'nice to have'.
As for the flight attendants on this particular flight, they really didn't exercise 'flair' did they !

Yet they allow us to drink this water in tea/coffee?

It's a state law in some states as part of their liquor acts. It's not consistent across the country although IMHO it should be and free water should be available at bars.

Which begs the question, on a VB aircraft where is the liquor licence issued from? On any aircraft for that matter. Would it be Qld as that is head office? In that case do Qld liquor licensing laws apply?

After it is heated thereby killing bugs! Noting that water boils at a lower temp at 8000' cabin altitude.

VB tanker potable water from Australia as you can't uplift it from Indo due to the quarantine issues

So up to possibly 170+ other pax (guests) were able to accept the fact that their ticket did not include water, blankets, pillows a bottle of Dom or a foot rub. :ugh:

I don't know of an Airline Captain anywhere in the world who would call the police on a pax for simply asking for water. So what really happened? Sounds to me like a Flight attendant was cornered in the rear galley; Aggressive posturing and threatening overtones? :hmm:

The fact that crew had quarantine issues is entirely irrelevant to the complaint and smacks of desperate character assassination. :=

I think it's somewhere in Civil Aviation legislation, similar as with airport bars where the conditions are specified in the federal Airports Act and the state laws don't apply.

Not always, on a few occasions potable water has been topped up in DPS by mistake by ground crew. In these cases, a PA is made (or it should be made) to pax advising that there will be no hot drinks, and water from the aircraft taps is not to be consumed. On arrival into Aus, the potable water tanks have to be drained and treated before the next departure.

In that case it's not really potable water, is it, since "potable" means fit for drinking.

When almost all the airline magazines and passenger advice videos include the lines "make sure you drink plenty of water", it's about time airlines were mandated to provide a minimum of 250ml of water per passenger per hour on any flights over say 90 minutes. Consuming water may also be of assistance as part of a DVT prevention protocol. Giving it away might be cheap insurance.

Haven't flown in a heavy for a while but they always used to have water fountains with paper cups in each section near by the toilets. What's happened with that?

Sounds to me more like one of the old boilers working for QF mainline than an angry DJ pax !!

Monumental culture shift required to be a business class player.

When I read that I don't think the full story has been covered. Id like to hear flight attendants side of the story. But in saying that airline is worried about contamination is more or less saying, "You are going to buy our bottled water and if you don't like it fly with someone else". Flew on a relatively new Emirates A340-500 recently, water stations with cups everywhere.

Dinned out in about 10 restaurants in Melbourne over the NYE period and asked for a glass of iced water at all of them, still they all came through and served me water from the tap.

Now this just makes me think in my whole life how many restaurants have said, "I'm sorry sir you can only buy bottled water for health & safety reasons".... not even one.

Personally I think it is a health hazard not to offer passengers water whether they buy it in a bottle or not due to the humidity in the cabin environment. I wonder how long before some tight-ass passes out because of lack of fluids?

I'm not sure which is worse. That you have spent your life, and new years eve going to restaurants for the shear pleasure of drinking their tap water. Or that you honestly believe that Melbourne tap water is comparable in quality to South East Asian tap water. :ugh: