easyJet, Ryanair, Monarch - shame on you!
Candoo posted:
If I interpret this correctly then a passenger was left unsupervised airside.....
That to me is the biggest concern raised in this thread.
This is after a rather bizarre experience of being called to the gate by some concerned "Menzies" employee who insisted I had missed my flight at about 11:00. and they had been looking for me. Complete bull, had to wander around the apron by myself until I found arrivals area. Then had to be escorted through arrivals back into main concourse and advised that I had forfeighted my right to fly by doing so.
That to me is the biggest concern raised in this thread.
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757operator - I don't need to work for easyJet to tell you the most likely reason (say 95% probability) everything was cancelled was to give the Operations Department some leeway to restore a normal service the following day.
If he re-appears on this thread, I'm sure Agaricus Bisporus will second that!
If he re-appears on this thread, I'm sure Agaricus Bisporus will second that!
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BA Too
The aforementioned airlines are not the only ones who cancel flights. BA domestic during the snow problems despite other airlines operating to and from NCL during the snow.
BA cancelled ALL flights for the day ahead. Every airline has it's problems! Really bugs me people with this "you wouldn't get this on BA crap" - like they don't have problems. I suppose BA do this to protec the rest of their operation. EZY, FR and ZB were obviously doing this to protect theirs!
The slightest suggestion of trouble and the entire BA domestic network shuts down. Yet, EZY, FR, BE and others are operating fine.
BA cancelled ALL flights for the day ahead. Every airline has it's problems! Really bugs me people with this "you wouldn't get this on BA crap" - like they don't have problems. I suppose BA do this to protec the rest of their operation. EZY, FR and ZB were obviously doing this to protect theirs!
The slightest suggestion of trouble and the entire BA domestic network shuts down. Yet, EZY, FR, BE and others are operating fine.
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magicing customer service agents
somebody earlier said there were only 3 agents to process hotac and flights for several hundred people. Then an airline person replied it was impossible to magic up a load of agents at short notice.
This answer is actually indicative of somebody who would rather ignore the problem, rather than spend 2 minutes thinking well how could we do it?
I did this, and the answer is p1ss easy. Create a wheely carousel like a sunglass display carousel that has 5 phones mounted around it. When airline X goes t1ts up, program the carousel so when a phone is picked up it dials the airlines call center, even abroad. Put GSM modems in the carousel so it can be wheeled from storage to the area of the terminal it's needed. Tada. Airport bills airline X cost of calls and £500/hour carousel rental.
The people in the call center can do the same as the people at the desk, and hopefully for a larger airline they'll be able to staff up a call center by having people come in earlier, leave later, skip tea breaks, get supervisors and trainees working frontline etc etc, so they can create capacity quickly.
Or, have business cards to hand out to delayed passengers for the airlines toll free number in that country. People on their mobiles call the number and get put through to the call center at no cost when roaming abroad. Not difficult, just needs a will. Again for a larger airline their call center software will distribute the calls to the agents that are available across the different continents. Some call centers have staff that work from home, they push a button on their home phone and the call center PBX logs them in as available for incoming calls.
G
This answer is actually indicative of somebody who would rather ignore the problem, rather than spend 2 minutes thinking well how could we do it?
I did this, and the answer is p1ss easy. Create a wheely carousel like a sunglass display carousel that has 5 phones mounted around it. When airline X goes t1ts up, program the carousel so when a phone is picked up it dials the airlines call center, even abroad. Put GSM modems in the carousel so it can be wheeled from storage to the area of the terminal it's needed. Tada. Airport bills airline X cost of calls and £500/hour carousel rental.
The people in the call center can do the same as the people at the desk, and hopefully for a larger airline they'll be able to staff up a call center by having people come in earlier, leave later, skip tea breaks, get supervisors and trainees working frontline etc etc, so they can create capacity quickly.
Or, have business cards to hand out to delayed passengers for the airlines toll free number in that country. People on their mobiles call the number and get put through to the call center at no cost when roaming abroad. Not difficult, just needs a will. Again for a larger airline their call center software will distribute the calls to the agents that are available across the different continents. Some call centers have staff that work from home, they push a button on their home phone and the call center PBX logs them in as available for incoming calls.
G
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Interesting idea - my initial thoughts
Finally, there is the cost issue. Those airlines that care about their customers will already have some sort of procedure in place to assist: Those airlines who have a cost model that restricts such behaviour will not be looking to implement anything at all. For example - my (to be fair, small and predominately long-haul) airline pulls everybody out of the offices when we have a major delay/diversion and front-lines them. We take the hit on cost because the corporate ethos is such. Our view is that a well-handled disruption actually generates positive feedback and word-of-mouth. Other airlines may be operating a low-cost system, which they feel works well for them without the need for such profligacy - why add costs to a model that specialises in pulling costs out of the business and makes a virtue out of selling on price rather than loyalty?
Please be aware - I'm not seeking to defend poor customer service, or airlines that treat customers with contempt, or worse, airlines that claim to do neither and actually do both, while charging the earth for it. I'm simply raising a few practical questions about the proposals made in the post above.
- Five phones on each carousel - possibly not enough? When it goes wrong, everybody wants answers, and wants them now: If you're unlucky, you'll have 4 or 5 people before you per phone. This means either more phones or more Carousels and therefore more cost.
- Who owns and maintains the Carousels? - The airports either won't want to, or will only want to at a cost that is prohibitive, or (most likely) will charge a prohibitive price and then fail to maintain them or provide the staff to provide the carousels when needed. Airports like disruption - It increase the money made on retail and car parking
- If there is extensive disruption affecting several or all airlines, how many Carousels would be needed? Would each airline own a Carousel, or would there be some way of routing calls from a generic Carousel to the appropriate airline number.
- Adding capacity at the call centre adds cost, and may not be viable i.e. sufficient capacity cannot be made available sufficiently quickly.
- People hate call centres at the best of times - when cross, call centres tend to make people more so: Given the option, most people would prefer to talk to another human being
Finally, there is the cost issue. Those airlines that care about their customers will already have some sort of procedure in place to assist: Those airlines who have a cost model that restricts such behaviour will not be looking to implement anything at all. For example - my (to be fair, small and predominately long-haul) airline pulls everybody out of the offices when we have a major delay/diversion and front-lines them. We take the hit on cost because the corporate ethos is such. Our view is that a well-handled disruption actually generates positive feedback and word-of-mouth. Other airlines may be operating a low-cost system, which they feel works well for them without the need for such profligacy - why add costs to a model that specialises in pulling costs out of the business and makes a virtue out of selling on price rather than loyalty?
Please be aware - I'm not seeking to defend poor customer service, or airlines that treat customers with contempt, or worse, airlines that claim to do neither and actually do both, while charging the earth for it. I'm simply raising a few practical questions about the proposals made in the post above.
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been there though
this happened to me this January when Easyjet cancelled our flight at no notice. Cue 150 people tramping over to the two people on the desk. Whilst I left my poor wife in the queue as insurance, I got on my internet phone and sat in a coffee shop and rebooked us via the easyjet website for 2 days hence. Funnily enough the queue grew quite fractious soon after as it emerged all flights for the next week to Malta our destination were fully booked. My slightly flash phone paid for itself that day. I did think if Easjet wheeled out a laptop or two many people would have cheerfully rebooked their own flights rather than wait in line.
But I would say a call center augmenting the people on the desk is the only way to go from operations normal to operations mad in a few minutes flat.
G
But I would say a call center augmenting the people on the desk is the only way to go from operations normal to operations mad in a few minutes flat.
G
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Sadly no matter how skilled people are at parcel deliveries they do not necessarily posess a magic solution to the ailments of the aviation industry, no matter how convinced that are that they do.
If one of Mr Logistic's vans gets stuck in the snow the next 8-10 drops it has to do today will be delayed, then eventually cancelled. Then tomorrows drops are going to be delayed too, plus the backlog from today doubling the workload. But the van is still stuck on the M25 because the council didn't clear the roads and the driver is out of hours. I gather this doesn't happen in the "logistics" world, and I wonder how this is an unfamiliar concept there.
You have 200 such trucks. Most are in this situation. For every missed/late delivery/pickup there are 150 irate customers who all want information now about when the van will arrive. The depot they're waiting at is expecting a dozen other such deliveries from other companies with 150 people to each, the number of phones is finite, as are the number of staff employed by the depot, which has no particular allegience to (or often interest in) one delivery company any more than the others. In normal times 4 agents handle these deliveries. Suddenly, due to events 1000 miles away they find themselves buried under thousands of customers and 50 staff wouldn't help much. How much of this do you suppose they think is their problem to sort out? I suppose they thoughtfully pop down to the employment exchange and fetch a busload of skilled people along at 30 minutes notice, but I am only guessing as I don't work in the delivery business, I'm just an airline pilot so what the heck would I know...Not sure who's going to pay them though, or plan it, authorise it, find the info to equip them with...these are not empoyees of the van company remember, they work for one of the 200 often pretty basic depots you deliver to and they are poorly paid and sometime- not always - similarly motivated. After an hour of irate abuse do you really suppose even the keenest will stick around? This is in a business, remember, where it is too hard and time-consuming to even reliably or regularly persuade the depot to give any, let alone extensive detail about late deliveries (beyond a blackboard saying "On time", "Canx" etc) even when everything else is running normally. This is due to depots being institutionally poorly equipped to disseminate information and their staff often not caring - it's a warehouse thing, delivery companies have been tearing their hair out over it for decades. Perhaps if depots weren't subject to unprofitable contracts by cutthroat delivery companies...perhaps if the customers were willing to accept huge price increases...perhaps if the hauliers wouldn't lose their market share by doing so...
The angry people waiting for their deliveries all try to phone the logistics company to find out when their parcel is arriving, but who knows when the council are going to clear the M25, but that depends on when the M1 is cleared to get a new driver down, but he's waiting for the van from the Wirral to get him there and its still snowing in the Wirral. Then there are the 8 deliveries from yesterday to do before yours. Or do they cancel those to please you at the expense of everyone else? Does that then please the people waiting for the other 7? Plus todays deliveries that are still in the warehouse? The van company employs 50 people in 2 shifts to track and run the operation normally, which actually allows them a reasonable amount of slack for eventualities. Today they've got 150.000 people all calling at once to chase their orders. That's hard work for 25 people when they'd need 100 to even get a rough picture of the state of the network, (let alone 2000 to field all the customer calls) bearing in mind that the contractor staff in all the depots are too busy to answer the phones, no one's been in the office for hours anyway, it is still snowing, and the council (most of whom are still at home, snowed in) don't know where their gritter drivers are coming from as they're all out of hours too. Is that Mr logistic's fault? Is he in a position to do anything useful about this? No and No!
If the staff chase councils, depots and the met office there is no one to talk to the customers, but they don't have four, six, ten times the usual number of trained staff hanging around on standby to come in (how?) to answer questions to which there is no answer in the first place.
Is it really their "fault"? Does it make the company uncaring ot inept because it cannot cope with impossible odds? That is Canute's way of looking at it.
Those at work bust their arses sometimes for days on end, often sleeping at work to try to get this sorted.
And then get lectured how useless they are by someone with a paper-round...
So yes, there comes a point where you retreat like an army facing hopless odds to regroup and try again later.One hopes lessons are learned, but reinventing Clausewitz (spelling) and retraining everyone from Generals down (including the defense contractors, parliament etc over which you have no control) takes time, even for a delivery company...
PP, you cannot keep an airport open regardless of how many ploughs you have if it's snowing hard enough, you know that. The councils can't keep the roads open either as you know full well. If not only your call-centre but also the depots you deliver to suddenly needed (on your behalf) to increase productivity by 5000% I doubt even you'd manage it in less than 3 months or so, let alone the few hrs you seem to expect airlines to achieve. And at what cost? The problem with aviation is the large number of critical outside agencies and inputs upon which you depend utterly- any one will stop a flight in it's tracks, any two failing will stop many, lose several - or one global dependancy, ie weather, and your problems grow exponentially to a level that no system can cope with.
As a businessman you could make £squillions if you were able to solve this problem, and I gather from your posts that you feel you well able to do it better than the airlines.
I challenge you to try, though if your business skills ar a poor as your judgement of my customer concerns and awareness (of which you know nothing) I wouldn't bother.
I'm simply amazed something as obvious as this needs explaining!
If one of Mr Logistic's vans gets stuck in the snow the next 8-10 drops it has to do today will be delayed, then eventually cancelled. Then tomorrows drops are going to be delayed too, plus the backlog from today doubling the workload. But the van is still stuck on the M25 because the council didn't clear the roads and the driver is out of hours. I gather this doesn't happen in the "logistics" world, and I wonder how this is an unfamiliar concept there.
You have 200 such trucks. Most are in this situation. For every missed/late delivery/pickup there are 150 irate customers who all want information now about when the van will arrive. The depot they're waiting at is expecting a dozen other such deliveries from other companies with 150 people to each, the number of phones is finite, as are the number of staff employed by the depot, which has no particular allegience to (or often interest in) one delivery company any more than the others. In normal times 4 agents handle these deliveries. Suddenly, due to events 1000 miles away they find themselves buried under thousands of customers and 50 staff wouldn't help much. How much of this do you suppose they think is their problem to sort out? I suppose they thoughtfully pop down to the employment exchange and fetch a busload of skilled people along at 30 minutes notice, but I am only guessing as I don't work in the delivery business, I'm just an airline pilot so what the heck would I know...Not sure who's going to pay them though, or plan it, authorise it, find the info to equip them with...these are not empoyees of the van company remember, they work for one of the 200 often pretty basic depots you deliver to and they are poorly paid and sometime- not always - similarly motivated. After an hour of irate abuse do you really suppose even the keenest will stick around? This is in a business, remember, where it is too hard and time-consuming to even reliably or regularly persuade the depot to give any, let alone extensive detail about late deliveries (beyond a blackboard saying "On time", "Canx" etc) even when everything else is running normally. This is due to depots being institutionally poorly equipped to disseminate information and their staff often not caring - it's a warehouse thing, delivery companies have been tearing their hair out over it for decades. Perhaps if depots weren't subject to unprofitable contracts by cutthroat delivery companies...perhaps if the customers were willing to accept huge price increases...perhaps if the hauliers wouldn't lose their market share by doing so...
The angry people waiting for their deliveries all try to phone the logistics company to find out when their parcel is arriving, but who knows when the council are going to clear the M25, but that depends on when the M1 is cleared to get a new driver down, but he's waiting for the van from the Wirral to get him there and its still snowing in the Wirral. Then there are the 8 deliveries from yesterday to do before yours. Or do they cancel those to please you at the expense of everyone else? Does that then please the people waiting for the other 7? Plus todays deliveries that are still in the warehouse? The van company employs 50 people in 2 shifts to track and run the operation normally, which actually allows them a reasonable amount of slack for eventualities. Today they've got 150.000 people all calling at once to chase their orders. That's hard work for 25 people when they'd need 100 to even get a rough picture of the state of the network, (let alone 2000 to field all the customer calls) bearing in mind that the contractor staff in all the depots are too busy to answer the phones, no one's been in the office for hours anyway, it is still snowing, and the council (most of whom are still at home, snowed in) don't know where their gritter drivers are coming from as they're all out of hours too. Is that Mr logistic's fault? Is he in a position to do anything useful about this? No and No!
If the staff chase councils, depots and the met office there is no one to talk to the customers, but they don't have four, six, ten times the usual number of trained staff hanging around on standby to come in (how?) to answer questions to which there is no answer in the first place.
Is it really their "fault"? Does it make the company uncaring ot inept because it cannot cope with impossible odds? That is Canute's way of looking at it.
Those at work bust their arses sometimes for days on end, often sleeping at work to try to get this sorted.
And then get lectured how useless they are by someone with a paper-round...
So yes, there comes a point where you retreat like an army facing hopless odds to regroup and try again later.One hopes lessons are learned, but reinventing Clausewitz (spelling) and retraining everyone from Generals down (including the defense contractors, parliament etc over which you have no control) takes time, even for a delivery company...
PP, you cannot keep an airport open regardless of how many ploughs you have if it's snowing hard enough, you know that. The councils can't keep the roads open either as you know full well. If not only your call-centre but also the depots you deliver to suddenly needed (on your behalf) to increase productivity by 5000% I doubt even you'd manage it in less than 3 months or so, let alone the few hrs you seem to expect airlines to achieve. And at what cost? The problem with aviation is the large number of critical outside agencies and inputs upon which you depend utterly- any one will stop a flight in it's tracks, any two failing will stop many, lose several - or one global dependancy, ie weather, and your problems grow exponentially to a level that no system can cope with.
As a businessman you could make £squillions if you were able to solve this problem, and I gather from your posts that you feel you well able to do it better than the airlines.
I challenge you to try, though if your business skills ar a poor as your judgement of my customer concerns and awareness (of which you know nothing) I wouldn't bother.
I'm simply amazed something as obvious as this needs explaining!
Last edited by Agaricus bisporus; 9th Dec 2010 at 20:31.
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I do wonder if some of the people who post this twaddle on here actually fly with these airlines or are just engaging in fantasy.
I have been flying far and wide over the past two weeks and have been delayed severely whilst on KLM, Ryanair and Easyjet aircraft. I'm talking 2 and 3 hours on the tarmac in snowstorms at Schipohl and Berlin. In all cases, I've been impressed by the attitude and care of cabin crew and ground staff, the attention to providing information from the flight deck and good humoured passengers. If you have been flying and been delayed, sure, it's a royal PITA but it's winter out there and sh1t happens.
I have been flying far and wide over the past two weeks and have been delayed severely whilst on KLM, Ryanair and Easyjet aircraft. I'm talking 2 and 3 hours on the tarmac in snowstorms at Schipohl and Berlin. In all cases, I've been impressed by the attitude and care of cabin crew and ground staff, the attention to providing information from the flight deck and good humoured passengers. If you have been flying and been delayed, sure, it's a royal PITA but it's winter out there and sh1t happens.
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Believe me, PP, none of us are proud of this and we wring our hands in anguish that we can't do better. Of course we foul up sometimes, and sometimes we improve our systems before the next event. We too get stuck away from home, and a bloody sight more often that you do. It's no more fun for us! But we do as good a job as we can but the complexity of a big airline, does make the system capable of stoppages and meltdown under extreme provocation.
Sorry, that's just the way it is without jacking prices sky-high and having a hundred snow ploughs rotting at Gatwick for 28 years before they're needed. Which won't help when the next problem is volcanic ash (oops! We've been there!) OK, make it a plague of frogs...
Miracles are achieved on a daily basis, it's the impossibe we have yet to overcome, so please, how about a bit of patience when no one can do anything about it?
Sorry, that's just the way it is without jacking prices sky-high and having a hundred snow ploughs rotting at Gatwick for 28 years before they're needed. Which won't help when the next problem is volcanic ash (oops! We've been there!) OK, make it a plague of frogs...
Miracles are achieved on a daily basis, it's the impossibe we have yet to overcome, so please, how about a bit of patience when no one can do anything about it?
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Why is it in this networked, smart phoned world of instant communication, we cannot use a little imagination to surprise and delight our customers?
I used to fly gliders, hence the username. it means I retain an interest in aviation. So I understand what pilots mean when they talk about staying ahead of the aircraft - anticipating what's required of the pilot next, in order that surprises are avoided and the flight flows as one would wish.
Now, this whole thing I'm talking about at Geneva this year was not Ezy's fault, I'm repeatedly at pains to say this. yet at the same time, wx is predictable. Indeed, we have pretty people inahbiting the telly & radio who make whole livings out of predicting it! So what I'm asking is what's stopping the airline being ahead of the customer?
Why is it that having been cancelled on day one, I was obliged by Ezy to get up at 4am to take a bus to GVA in order to check in at 5:30, get to the departure lounge at 6am, sit there for four hours, left to my own devices to work out that the flight wasn't actually going, then spending a further two hours reclaiming my bags before queueing for a further three hours to rebook a flight followed by a further two hours queueing for hotac, finally getting to a hotel (after another hour or two waiting in line for a taxi) around 22:30 - a lovely 18 hour day with a small child in tow before repeating the ridiculous exercise a further three times before finally giving up on the Tuesday and taking a ride to Calais in a car.
Why then, can't ezy text me to say don't bother, it's dead, we've booked you on the next one. Why is it such a leap of imagination for the ops dept to press a button on the keyboard that says these 200 aren't going, send the message, boot them onto the next one, jiggle it around, stick another ten guys in the call centre & write the day off.
Cut some slack? No, I go out of my way to solve problems for my customers, then again, if I don't my competitors will. It's a strong motivation. BTW, that video was the scene when I was there.
Four days at GVA is not wholly's Ezy's fault. I do get it. I see it's a complex enterprise between the Lord, Geneva airport & Easy jet, but acts of god aside and irrespective of the ticket price, ehich I really think is neither here nor there in the context of providing/not providing a scheduled service, the guys at easy land could do better. Maybe I'm wrong, but they're -1 customer in any event.
I used to fly gliders, hence the username. it means I retain an interest in aviation. So I understand what pilots mean when they talk about staying ahead of the aircraft - anticipating what's required of the pilot next, in order that surprises are avoided and the flight flows as one would wish.
Now, this whole thing I'm talking about at Geneva this year was not Ezy's fault, I'm repeatedly at pains to say this. yet at the same time, wx is predictable. Indeed, we have pretty people inahbiting the telly & radio who make whole livings out of predicting it! So what I'm asking is what's stopping the airline being ahead of the customer?
Why is it that having been cancelled on day one, I was obliged by Ezy to get up at 4am to take a bus to GVA in order to check in at 5:30, get to the departure lounge at 6am, sit there for four hours, left to my own devices to work out that the flight wasn't actually going, then spending a further two hours reclaiming my bags before queueing for a further three hours to rebook a flight followed by a further two hours queueing for hotac, finally getting to a hotel (after another hour or two waiting in line for a taxi) around 22:30 - a lovely 18 hour day with a small child in tow before repeating the ridiculous exercise a further three times before finally giving up on the Tuesday and taking a ride to Calais in a car.
Why then, can't ezy text me to say don't bother, it's dead, we've booked you on the next one. Why is it such a leap of imagination for the ops dept to press a button on the keyboard that says these 200 aren't going, send the message, boot them onto the next one, jiggle it around, stick another ten guys in the call centre & write the day off.
Cut some slack? No, I go out of my way to solve problems for my customers, then again, if I don't my competitors will. It's a strong motivation. BTW, that video was the scene when I was there.
Four days at GVA is not wholly's Ezy's fault. I do get it. I see it's a complex enterprise between the Lord, Geneva airport & Easy jet, but acts of god aside and irrespective of the ticket price, ehich I really think is neither here nor there in the context of providing/not providing a scheduled service, the guys at easy land could do better. Maybe I'm wrong, but they're -1 customer in any event.
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Re: Logistics Industry
I have to say from direct experience, that at a mangement level, the commitment to customer service across most of the logistics industry far exceeds that in the pax air transport world. That may be because pricing in the logistics industry makes the Loco airline world look like a breeze, and service is the only thing left to compete on. That commitment translates down the line into policies of empowerment to the ops people, backed up by specific procedures to be followed in the event of service failure (for eg, in at least one of the major UK parcels operators, if a time sensitive package is missed off a trunk from the hub, they will hire in a man with a van to take it directly to the customer, even if the revenue on the package is less than 1% of the cost of the man with the van). Suppliers have also invested massively in customer facing information systems providing real time status from any web-linked computer.
Yes the industry does lose consignments from time to time, and things do go wrong, but is insignificant compared to the incidence of lost pax bags or pax left wondering what is happening to flights with no info whatsoever.
When the chips are down, these sorts of companies will throw much more resource at sorting it out, and keeping their customers informed. I have no doubt that the ops controllers at Easy and other airlines do a tremendous job under the circumstances, but it seems that strategically, they are let down by their management's unwillingness to invest in providing even basic credible information to their customers.
I find it ironic that there is a much higher level of care and service associated with inanimate objects travelling around the country/world (usually at ridiculously low prices) vs that given for human beings.
Yes the industry does lose consignments from time to time, and things do go wrong, but is insignificant compared to the incidence of lost pax bags or pax left wondering what is happening to flights with no info whatsoever.
When the chips are down, these sorts of companies will throw much more resource at sorting it out, and keeping their customers informed. I have no doubt that the ops controllers at Easy and other airlines do a tremendous job under the circumstances, but it seems that strategically, they are let down by their management's unwillingness to invest in providing even basic credible information to their customers.
I find it ironic that there is a much higher level of care and service associated with inanimate objects travelling around the country/world (usually at ridiculously low prices) vs that given for human beings.
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All true. I find that in general, you can link the degree to which a business looks after it's customers to the level of competition in it's industry. Anyone remember how long it would take to get a phone line installed from the GPO in the seventies?
My business is cut throat, hyper competitive. My customers receive on average four or five approaches per month from other suppliers and these are just the ones I know about.
So I find this whole 'what do you expect us to do about it?' attitude from Mr. Mushroom very telling. Telling in that he can't see anything wrong in what happened to me, that I had to mill around a packed airport with a toddler for four days - you know, it's winter, it happens, tough. That I should dare to be angry and fed up with that seems anathema to the airline industry in general & AB in particular. As I said before, my one weapon is to vote with my feet, keep my money away from Ezy & that's what I've done. Right or wrong, it's my choice.
My business is cut throat, hyper competitive. My customers receive on average four or five approaches per month from other suppliers and these are just the ones I know about.
So I find this whole 'what do you expect us to do about it?' attitude from Mr. Mushroom very telling. Telling in that he can't see anything wrong in what happened to me, that I had to mill around a packed airport with a toddler for four days - you know, it's winter, it happens, tough. That I should dare to be angry and fed up with that seems anathema to the airline industry in general & AB in particular. As I said before, my one weapon is to vote with my feet, keep my money away from Ezy & that's what I've done. Right or wrong, it's my choice.
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Americans are ahead of us
I've travelled domestically in the US by air there, and they seem much better at this kind of thing.
What I've seen is there are planes that go from, say, Phoenix to Minneapolis. Essentially the plane takes the next 150 people at the gate and goes to Minn. Same with all the flights, they take the first XXX people at the gate.
Now this seemed weird to me, with allocated flights and tickets and all as I sat near the gates and kept seeing people just appearing and trying to get on the flight to Y. I mean there were staff, bumpees from earlier flights, people with real genuine tickets, businesspeople trying to get earlier flights, people rerouting from closed airports, etc etc. The gate agents handled the scrum well.
So maybe we have too complicated a system and some point OPS should just say you plane and you crew bash up and down Geneva/Gatwick twice today and lets get the system moving and we'll gradually get back to our slick optimised W operations over the next few days.
"A battle fought and won today beats the perfect battle never fought"
G
What I've seen is there are planes that go from, say, Phoenix to Minneapolis. Essentially the plane takes the next 150 people at the gate and goes to Minn. Same with all the flights, they take the first XXX people at the gate.
Now this seemed weird to me, with allocated flights and tickets and all as I sat near the gates and kept seeing people just appearing and trying to get on the flight to Y. I mean there were staff, bumpees from earlier flights, people with real genuine tickets, businesspeople trying to get earlier flights, people rerouting from closed airports, etc etc. The gate agents handled the scrum well.
So maybe we have too complicated a system and some point OPS should just say you plane and you crew bash up and down Geneva/Gatwick twice today and lets get the system moving and we'll gradually get back to our slick optimised W operations over the next few days.
"A battle fought and won today beats the perfect battle never fought"
G
Paxing All Over The World
I think that I can see the arguments put forward by AB and PP as both being valid. May I suggest that the pax shipping business is at the kind of juncture that the freight shipping biz encountered some years ago?
The pax biz has been strapped down (pun intended
) since it began and the restrictions have been removed slowly, piece-meal, inconsistently and - for the most part - unwillingly.
The attitude of the Airports, as so well set out by AB, is based on very old civil-service type thinking of 30 years ago. Whilst many have been turned into commercial organisations - the culture can be remarkable well 'built in' to the organisation.
And the SAME goes for carriers. There are good reasons that the legacy carriers are called that. For many years, I was in telecommunications and dealt with old government departments that were now commercial (in the UK and other countries around the world) Even 15 years after the change, they still behaved like govt departments and getting good customer service out of them was hard work. I think that many of the pax carriers are in that position now.
Whilst govts the world over STILL want the perceived prestige of their 'own' carrier (even if no longer state owned) then we cannot move forward. For years, they did this with the pax shipping biz but then transferred their attention to their new best love of air travel. Given the costs of running a carrier, the natural path is consolidation but no govt wants to allow their carrier to be merged with another and they mostly continue to resist this.
Without consolidation, there will be less competition. That might seem counter argument, but the economy of scale is required, I think. Slowly the govts are being forced to stop subsidies and to sell off carriers. Some have pre-emptied that by failing. More will go down the path of merge or fail and the current financial crisis should help the process along.
Carrying freight (in so far as I know) has not had all of the restrictions of health regulations and govts messing about with 'their' carrier, just so that they can go in F when on holiday.
Lastly, when a freighter is delayed, the freight does not answer back and you have a one-way inquiry from the freight's owner/consignee. With Self Loading Freight, they have a habit of asking questions and, more inconveniently, they want to be fed, watered and sleep at regular intervals. Then you get their 'owner/consignee' ringing in to find out when they will arrive as well!
So, freight and pax are similar in operation but vastly different in fact.
The pax biz has been strapped down (pun intended
) since it began and the restrictions have been removed slowly, piece-meal, inconsistently and - for the most part - unwillingly.The attitude of the Airports, as so well set out by AB, is based on very old civil-service type thinking of 30 years ago. Whilst many have been turned into commercial organisations - the culture can be remarkable well 'built in' to the organisation.
And the SAME goes for carriers. There are good reasons that the legacy carriers are called that. For many years, I was in telecommunications and dealt with old government departments that were now commercial (in the UK and other countries around the world) Even 15 years after the change, they still behaved like govt departments and getting good customer service out of them was hard work. I think that many of the pax carriers are in that position now.
Whilst govts the world over STILL want the perceived prestige of their 'own' carrier (even if no longer state owned) then we cannot move forward. For years, they did this with the pax shipping biz but then transferred their attention to their new best love of air travel. Given the costs of running a carrier, the natural path is consolidation but no govt wants to allow their carrier to be merged with another and they mostly continue to resist this.
Without consolidation, there will be less competition. That might seem counter argument, but the economy of scale is required, I think. Slowly the govts are being forced to stop subsidies and to sell off carriers. Some have pre-emptied that by failing. More will go down the path of merge or fail and the current financial crisis should help the process along.
Carrying freight (in so far as I know) has not had all of the restrictions of health regulations and govts messing about with 'their' carrier, just so that they can go in F when on holiday.
Lastly, when a freighter is delayed, the freight does not answer back and you have a one-way inquiry from the freight's owner/consignee. With Self Loading Freight, they have a habit of asking questions and, more inconveniently, they want to be fed, watered and sleep at regular intervals. Then you get their 'owner/consignee' ringing in to find out when they will arrive as well!
So, freight and pax are similar in operation but vastly different in fact.
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Miracles are achieved on a daily basis
Excellent recovery from disruption, perhaps sometimes, other times good people and training preventing disasters, but these are not miracles, just professional business operations.
This is the type of thinking that irritates people and leads others on the forum to compare parcel carriers to airlines.
As with some other posters on this thread, our business has severe competition; there are no excuses and only pain if we do not provide customer service excellence. (The product has to excellent, this goes without saying.)
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Carrying freight (in so far as I know) has not had all of the restrictions of health regulations and govts messing about with 'their' carrier, just so that they can go in F when on holiday.
The bit that has been missed in this debate and that I have slyly omitted to mention is that to a degree, we're not comparing apples with apples. A freight operator will have relationships on a personal level with it's clients, typically a couple of dozen for the average small operator, whereas an airline demonstrably can't do that. Yet I don't think it excuses failure to assist on the scale that I endured this year. I'm old fashioned like that.
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Parapunter
A significant factor, I would have imagined, is that the entry/exit barriers to the airline business are very high and this does moderate competition.
However, it still occurs and the rise of Ryanair demonstrates that.
Unfortunately, Ryanair's strategy is cost leadership and that has set a trend in a market where the pax have limited choices.
A significant factor, I would have imagined, is that the entry/exit barriers to the airline business are very high and this does moderate competition.
However, it still occurs and the rise of Ryanair demonstrates that.
Unfortunately, Ryanair's strategy is cost leadership and that has set a trend in a market where the pax have limited choices.
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J da S,
I think its more about a mindset that in Logistics the focus is on moving the consignment door to door rather than point to point. Even with small scale road-freight, there are now legally enforced barriers to entry in europe through the Operators Licensing system on capability and financial standing. However, also remember that air-freight is a major component of some logistics systems, but the ops controllers at a higher level will primarily work on how to minimise the impact on total door to door movements, rather than getting the aircraft back in the right place to stabilise the operation. If the pax side of the airline industry had this focus, things might be rather different.
I think its more about a mindset that in Logistics the focus is on moving the consignment door to door rather than point to point. Even with small scale road-freight, there are now legally enforced barriers to entry in europe through the Operators Licensing system on capability and financial standing. However, also remember that air-freight is a major component of some logistics systems, but the ops controllers at a higher level will primarily work on how to minimise the impact on total door to door movements, rather than getting the aircraft back in the right place to stabilise the operation. If the pax side of the airline industry had this focus, things might be rather different.
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Hi Pennine
I don't disagree at all with the point you make, the airlines are not great at service recovery.
For example BA (not bashing the company, but quoting a fact) cancels domestic services first when there is disruption, because the travellers have other options!
I have also been told that my European flight from Heathrow was cancelled for the same reason, to allow long haul flights to operate - well I suppose I could drive to Santander, take the ferry to the UK, but it is not quite a great solution.
And throwing airmiles at me doesn't really help, if I need to be somewhere, sometime, then I need to be there.
I don't disagree at all with the point you make, the airlines are not great at service recovery.
For example BA (not bashing the company, but quoting a fact) cancels domestic services first when there is disruption, because the travellers have other options!
I have also been told that my European flight from Heathrow was cancelled for the same reason, to allow long haul flights to operate - well I suppose I could drive to Santander, take the ferry to the UK, but it is not quite a great solution.
And throwing airmiles at me doesn't really help, if I need to be somewhere, sometime, then I need to be there.