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Airline with a service problem
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Quite clearly, budget carriers are obliged to limit extras if they are to offer the most favourable prices, so, to an extent, travellers get what they are prepared to pay for.
However, even bargain basement tickets should entitle those holding them to fair and reasonable treatment from airline staff and the application of rules in ways which do not defy common sense or common humanity.
It seems that Jayne Brooks, who recently travelled from London Southend to Jersey on an easyJet flight, has had ample reason to complain that she was treated neither fairly, with consideration or within the bounds of good sense. In essence, because she and her ten-year-old daughter were 15 minutes late checking in, having been delayed by bad conditions on the roads, she was compelled to abandon their luggage, which the airline staff insisted could not be dispatched by other means and would therefore be destroyed.
To add insult to injury – and to render the airline’s position even more questionable – the flight was then delayed for three hours.
Rules, as they say are rules, but in the circumstances encountered by Mrs Brooks, they should surely have been bent to meet the conditions of the case. Instead, the airline staff’s intransigence means that they have lost future custom from at least one family. Also missed were opportunities to engage in a minor but meaningful public relations exercise and to demonstrate that the airline has some basic understanding of the concept of customer care.
Next year easyJet will take over Flybe’s Jersey-Gatwick route. Many Islanders will be pleased that the carrier will offer this invaluable lifeline service. That said, against the background of Mrs Brooks’s unfortunate experience, many will be hoping that the airline’s policies will acknowledge that passengers are rather more than a mere profit centre, that they have legitimate expectations about acceptable levels of service, and that a little willingness to interpret the rule book sensitively and sensibly helps to win hearts, minds and repeat custom.
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