easyJet, Ryanair, Monarch - shame on you!

[757operator]

The Spanish controllers were back at work this evening and immediately the likes of Thomson, Thomas Cook and Jet2 were airborne with grateful passengers.

Easyjet, Ryanair, Monarch? - oh no, just cancel everything until tomorrow. Much easier - and a cynic might suggest that it will save a bit of money through consolidation. Unacceptable.

[Mr @ Spotty M]

You can not compare the likes of TOM or TCX, as the flights they operate are charter flights, unlike Jet2 which the majority at this time of year are scheduled.
Now as for Monarch, you are incorrect in your statement because they were airborne as soon as they could after the strike ended, admittedly only inbound to the UK.
So if you are going to throw stones word your post correctly.

[TSR2]

Now as for Monarch, you are incorrect in your statement

757 Operator is quite correct, ZB and EZY cancelled EVERY flight yesterday to Spanish destinations from Manchester.

[Hartington]

You're both right - I think.

Spotty said ZB operated flights from Spain, TSR2 said ZB cancelled flights to Spain.

[candoo]

Well read it how you like:

Booked to fly EZY to Dortmund at 7:00 a.m. last Thursday, no plane, delayed and finally departed at about 13:00 great start to the day.

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.

Back through security after some heated discussion, flight had not departed.

As above left at about 13:00

Return from DTM Friday scheduled at 20:45

It did not happen, the last few days are a bit of a blur but can recount the following (and do appreciate that this is not all Easy fault)

At check-in for return flight was advised that no plane available and we would be coached to Cologne for a 22:00 departure to LTN had to go through security to get on the coach. Arrived Cologne about 22:00 and checked in, through security again sent to gate.

A deafinging silence followed for a few hours with various rumours flying around - oh what to do? I decided to stick with it despite other passengers going back and forth through passport control.

Eventually the poor handling agent had to announce there would be no flight that night and we would be put up in an hotel for a departure the following day at 13:40 back to LTN.

Reluctantly agreed to this as because of the Spanish action all other options were becoming limited. Now we were in trouble, I had checked my bag in and wanted it back - not so easy at midnight in Cologne. Anyways got bag and followed the herd to get hotel information, now about 1:00 a.m.

I opted to go to the local Holiday Inn at this point as was local, got there about 2:00 a.m. and now had some new friends, we emptied the beer vending machine by 4:00 a.m!

Although I paid for the hotel myself a few fellow Easy passengers were freebied it at about 3:30 a.m.

Saw great news yesterday morning that our flight was displayed as leaving at 13:40 as promised - no our Spanish friends decided to keep the plane in Barcelona.

Paid a couple of hundred Euros to fly back with Lufthansa to Heathrow complete with free beer and sandwich and never happier to touch down in Blighty.

I am not a good writer and am sure my experience was Easier (sic) than many others. I felt particularly sorry for those who did not have company backing in order to get home. The last I heard yesterday was that passengers were being bussed back to DTM for today's flight back, I hope it happened.

What I would criticise Easy for is the complete lack of information and support. We were left high and dry without any food, water or clue for many hours.

Oh and also BA were profiteering - I was quoted £800 for a single from DUS to LHR yesterday afternoon.

[Parapunter]

I was delayed for four days wth ezy in Geneva last time we had snow. I understand it's not easy's fault if the airport can't operate, but similar to above, we were left in a departure lounge for four hours with no announcements whatsoever, then had to make our way back through arrivals to collect our bags. It was such pandemonium that I considered leqving without my snowboard since it took two hours to be brought through, then to cap it all, GVA put three people on the desk to rebook flights & dish out Hotac for several hundred people. I lost faith to such a degree that in the end, I cadged a lift all the way back to England.

On my own, I would have just found bar & stayed there until it was all over. but I was travelling with my three year old daughter
so the experience was so distressing that this year, I've opted to go by train. Turns out that on my route it will actually be quicker once you factor in driving to & from the airport, parking, check in, the ridiculous security, flying & the same rigmarole at the other end.

Air travel is such an unedifying experience nowadys, that even when it works, I won't use it if I don't have to. I doubt the airlines are actively trying to drive away cusrtomers, but the slightest disruption certainly gives rise to the impression. Sorry Ezy, never again with you - once bitten...

[Rusland 17]

Originally Posted by Parapunter

The experience was so distressing that this year, I've opted to go by train. Turns out that on my route it will actually be quicker once you factor in driving to & from the airport, parking, check in, the ridiculous security, flying & the same rigmarole at the other end.

I recently chose to travel from London to Geneva by train rather than fly, and it was a delight. Eurostar to Paris, then TGV to Geneva, and just under 7 hours end to end. At about £145 return it was a little more expensive than flying, but worth every penny.

[Agaricus bisporus]

Sorry Ezy, never again with you - once bitten...

Cut off your own nose to spite your face then, why don't you?
You'll find the grass the same shade of green elsewhere.

Do people really believe that airlines do this fo fun or deliberately to annoy, or to "make profit" er - how????

PP, if GENEVA only put 3 people on to serve several hundred does it not seem likely that is all they had available? Or do you suppose the rest were having a nice game of cards in the backroom? Tell us, please, where do you magic armies up from when you need them now? And what has Easyjet to do with this? As you said it was Geneva airport, not Easy.

Just cut them a little slack, can you? The Ops deps is only human, and there isn't an extra army of traiined people to be magiced up at an hours notice to help when it all goes wrong. They have 200 aircraft scattered who knows where, some useable, others not, some with crews (liase with Crewing to find out) some without. Replacement crews may be positioning or stuck elsewhere (check with someone else), the bloody spanish have thrown a strike. It would take a hundred experts 48hrs to sort that mess out, and you fondly imagine the 15 or 20 (who knows, I'm guessing, but it isn't scores) have got the time to tell every single airport details of progress of every single flight (when they don't even know it themselves) and then check to make sure the Servisair Geneva have passed it on? And do that ahead of sorting the problems out first?

What colour is the sky on your planet?

Few airlines have yet found a way to get handling agents downroute to pass delay messages on reliably even when all is going well, let alone with a continent in complete meltdown (or perhaps frozen seizure)

You're being uttery unrealistic, my friend.

[Parapunter]

Do i come across as unreasonable? I didn't thnk so. The sky is blue in my world.

PP, if GENEVA only put 3 people on to serve several hundred does it not seem likely that is all they had available? Or do you suppose the rest were having a nice game of cards in the backroom? Tell us, please, where do you magic armies up from when you need them now? And what has Easyjet to do with this? As you said it was Geneva airport, not Easy.

It's a good question isn't it? The fact is they didn't have enough & I had to queue for over three hours on three occasions with a three year old child. Still, I like the way you ask me what Easyjet has to do with it, only to agree that I wasn't complaning about them in the first place!

It's not my job to understand the processes involved in running the operations side of an airline. My job is to pay for it & in return, use the service. Throughout this website, an attitude prevails that the paying customer is an inconvenience that gets in the way of whizzing round the skies & your comments absolutely capture that state of mind perfectly.

Easy failed miserably on that occasion from operations to customer care to refunding me. How I loved watching Swiss, BA, Iberia & others depart on the third day while easy couldn't say when they would be able to supply an aircraft. Ultimately, I have the choice and as with any product or service, if it lets you down badly, you may be minded to avoid it in future. That is for me to assess & assess it I have.

[Capetonian]

Oh and also BA were profiteering - I was quoted £800 for a single from DUS to LHR yesterday afternoon

It's not profiteering, it's simply the way yield management systems work, to maximise revenue on each seat. As supply goes down, price goes up.

[757operator]

Spotty, I can only report what I saw on Manchester Airport website at around 3pm. Every Monarch flight to a Spanish destination had been cancelled. Meanwhile Thomas Cook and Jet2 each had a couple of departures.

I take your point that charter carriers are different, in that they tend to stick with it because they have to move their passengers in the end. But there's nothing to stop a scheduled operator doing the same, as Jet2 demonstrated.

[Nicholas49]

Agaricus Bisporus - you make good points. Of course the Operations department cannot be expected to work miracles and inform everyone about everything all the time.

And yet and yet. Having had a look at the Gatwick departures / arrivals board online, almost every single easyJet flight today has a delay, some up to 2 or 3 hours.

Yes there has been snow and yes there has been a strike in Spain. And yes delays are most certainly not all the airline's fault. But easyJet does seem to struggle to run its schedule as efficiently as other carriers. After all, your director of operations was fired and this very matter got Stelios rather hot under the collar. Let's hope Carolyn is on the case.

For the record, I'm not anti-easyJet. I like the airline. And despite a six-hour delay last year on the same route, I am happy to, and have booked easy flights to/from Geneva in January. Bottle half full.

[Mr @ Spotty M]

757operator, Yes but you did not say that in your first post.
Monarch were flying grateful passengers, not out of MAN but out of Spanish airports, some of which were into MAN.
Did you also make sure that these flights did eventually operate, as l understand Spanish airspace was not going to open until at least 1800 Hrs.
Airport departure screens are not always 100% accurate, the same going for arrival screens also.

[757operator]

Spotty, of course Monarch started to fly back as soon as the airspace opened, they are hardly likely to leave crew sitting around abroad!

[Agaricus bisporus]

Nicholas, I expect Easy's problems are largely because thay are an order of magnitute bigger than most other carriers and operate a vastly more complex route structure at a much higher intensity with much tighter margins on available resources. This keeps the cost down but also makes for vulnerability when things do not run smoothly. Its true there have been meltdowns in the Operations system and I doubt very much that they've been completely resolved, but the Gordian knot that occurs when 200 aircraft and their crews are scattered to the four winds by a week's worth of multiple airport closures and a big strike simply takes a long time to untie. Simple routes like BA, Monarch, AF etc which just work in-out-in-out are hugely easier to reinstate than Easy's complex dependant route structure. That too is no doubt partly to blame.

PP, sadly some people will never listen to reason nor accept that they can't have something simply because it is not there. Much of the negative press airlines get on these occasions is because of unreasoning and frankly infantile attitudes of the I want! I want! I want! Me! Me! Me! generation. Your extraordinary statement that the passenger is felt to be a nuisance is purely in your imagination, its rather sad that people can't see the vast amounts of hard work, pride and dedication that goes into runing airlines and, in my experience, is even more so in lo-cos. Of course things can be improved but if you choose to buy a budget ticket please don't wail that there aren't hordes of staff there to wet-nurse you when you think you're being ignored. Suggest you look at the Geneva thread nearby this one and read the comments of the customer who's ticked off at national carriers and says "Easyjet next time". You too are making general macro-accusations from very specific and particular personal micro-events, and that's not logical, rational or accurate.

I have no idea what business you run, but I doubt you'd justify employing four times the number of staff required simply to cope with customer inconvenience on the three or four days per year when they are all needed. Heck, maybe you would...but imagine your prices? Just how, exactly, do you expect a budget airline not to be constrained by that same economic law?
Oh. It's just occurred to me! Do you work in the Government or Civil Service?

Sadly I don't think we'll ever convince some people that the impossible cannot be achieved right now on demand.

[Capetonian]

Having experienced disruption last week, I take my hat off to both EZY and BA for handling it all as well as they did, although I have a minor criticism of EZY's ethics on this - later.

I had an EZY flight booked out of LGW on Wednesday night. Within 5 minutes of the announcement that the airport was closed, I had a text advising of the cancelled flight. I was eventually able to rebook for a flight on Thursday night and that too was, in due course, cancelled. Oddly enough I got no text for that but did get the relevant email.

Having played around with all sorts of other options to get to my destination, including Eurostar + rail, I booked BA - despite having boycotted them in the past for various reasons - with a flight out of LHR T5 on Saturday afternoon. It was delayed 2.5 hours and there was no apology or announcement until we boarded, which I thought was pretty bad but the indicator boards were continually updated.

My comment about EZY is this. As my flight was disrupted I was able to log in and click on a link and rebook free of charge. They showed nothing available until Sunday. When I logged out and cleared cookies, they were suddenly showing availability for earlier dates on the route I wanted, but only at fares considerably higher than I'd paid, so they were offering a lesser value rebooking option to existing passengers. Whilst this doesn't come close to the frankly scandalous policies of an infamous Irish LCC, it's a little sharp.

[Parapunter]

As a matter of fact AB, I do run a business & the one I run is a logistics outfit. We send freight to the four corners of the kingdom on unnegotiable ultra tight deadlines on an industrial scale, so I would be less than delighted to take lectures on running routes & networks over long distances, I've been doing it for thirty years & I know for a cast iron fact that if I posessed Ezy's punctuation record, I wouldn't be keeping my customer's for very long.

The principle holds though, irrespective of whether you believe me to be infantile, irrational or in receipt of wet nursing - you take the customer away & show me what you have left of a business - do you think airlines are immune? Don't ask me to quote from hundreds of examples of failed companies that lost sight of their customers. And let's have it right, the original complaint was not about a lack of aircraft, it was about a failure to manage a crisis. There is a difference.

So, boiling down the rest of your missive to it's bare bones, you appear to be suggesting it was all my fault for not buying a more expensive ticket? hardly a ringing endorsement of Ezy is it??!! especially when you consider the cost was indivisible between BA & Ezy.

I'm sure you're someone very important and to be respected, but I have to be honest, if you worked in my organisation, you would be kept well away from paying customers!

[candoo]

At the end of the day

We were left, abandoned, no water, no food, no information, I felt really sorry for the peeps without Company credit cards but when you is tired and emotional a ticket home by whatever means is best.

I would add that I met many great people that I would not have otherwise, there is something about Brits in the face of adversity.

[Evanelpus]

We were left, abandoned, no water, no food, no information, I felt really sorry for the peeps without Company credit cards but when you is tired and emotional a ticket home by whatever means is best.

Company credit cards and Easyjet in the same sentence. Poor show if you ask me, BA all the way with my CCC.

[757operator]

Could someone at EZY please explain why they felt it necessary to cancel everything that day, while other scheduled airlines such as Jet2 and BA got airborne from UK asap when the strike was over?

It seems that EZY were either incapable or unwilling, which was it?