“Death and taxes”, the old saying goes, are the only things that are absolutely certain in life. Well, I’d like to suggest that living in the 21st century, there are one or two things that could be added to that list. Its just a matter of time for most people – and the more active you are, the more the odds stack against you.
In an unprecedented move, the members of a labour union representing the ground and cabin crew of South African Airways (SAA) downed tools and went on strike at 4am on Friday. This caused chaos with South Africa’s national airline, bringing their schedule to a grinding halt and leaving thousands of commuters stranded.
In a democracy, I defend the right of anyone to strike (only emergency and essential services are not allowed to). And I understand that SAA management were particularly inept at managing the negotiations up to the point of breakdown and the declaration of a dispute – at this time, its unclear of the exact timetable of the strike. I also understand that the workers may have exhausted every other possible line they had to get management to listen.
BUT…
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Well, avid blog-reader, you may remember some time ago (4 June to be exact), that I blogged my dismay at the airline which didn’t know anything about geography or the finer aspects of British constitutional history, to whit: I queued up at the “All UK flights” section to check in for my flight to Northern Ireland, only to be told that Northern Ireland is not part of the UK “for the purposes of our company, sir”. I won’t bore you with the finer details of that experience. Check the archives if you have forgotten or not read it in the first place…
…Well, the sequel to my story is this…
Yesterday morning, at 0600, I arrived bleary-eyed at the same airport for a day-trip to Holland on business.
Holland.
Not England. Not Scotland. Not Wales. Not even Northern Ireland.
Holland.
(Are you with me so far, avid blog-reader?)
My favourite campaign on the planet belongs ot SAA. It’s a little green and blue slip of paper that you can pick up when checking in for a flight. On the one side they warn you that theft happpens within the airport while loading your baggage, and so you should remove any valuables, as they are not responsable for any loss. (and why should they be?)
Then on the flip side of the paper is another warning, letting you know that you are under no circumstance allowed hand luggage over a certain size and weight.
Don’t you love it? Remove all your valuables from the baggage you might have normally checked in, and carry it with you. But don’t forget we limit the amount you can take on the plane.
Loverleee
Nuf Sed
On Saturday afternoon I dropped Mike & Graeme at the airport in Durban and went to meet friends for coffee because I still had several hours before my 6pm fight to Cape Town. At 4:30pm I returned to the airport to catch my flight hoping to beat the rugby hordes for a decent seat. I handed in the car and reported to the airline counter to check in. The friendly ground crew looked at me quizzically when I gave my flight time and informed me that I couldn’t be flying to Cape Town because the last flight had already left. I was sure they were wrong and fortunately I had the confirmation email on my cellphone. I called up the email and proudly showed them that I did indeed have a 6pm flight booked for the 18th. The stewardess took no pleasure in informing me that the flight I had booked was for 18 July 2005 and not 18 June 2005 – I am sure that I did see a little smile at my expense.
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I recently had the misfortune of flying from NZ to the UK. I say misfortune only because it’s something like a 30 hour trip – in Economy class. (enough said)
Sadly things went progressively down hill when Air Malaysia annouced (2 hours past the specified boarding time, and well after everyone had checked in and cleared customs) that a part was missing and therefore the aircraft would not be flying. And no – they didn’t know when the new part would be arriving exactly. (Why they hadn’t spotted that a part was missing earlier is anyones guess.)
As you can imagine – chaos ensued as 300 odd people, all flying via KL with onward connecting flights, approached the customer services desk in some kind of mass stampede. And at this point I must admit I had an enormous amount of sympathy for those poor soles having to bear the brunt of customer outrage!
The thing is – we ALL have some horrible airline story to tell. So this is nothing new. And that’s exactly the point! Why are the airlines not learning these lessons? You would think that by now there would be a well formulated and slick plan that they would naturally fall back on in events like this? But no .. it was just all chaos and confusion.
And the thing that made it worse is that I had to phone them to find out what had happened with my connecting flight. It was as if they didn’t care at all. I wonder if this is how they treat all their customers – or just those in economy class?
It’s not the delays that really bothered me in the end … but how they treated me.
So there I was, two days ago, at the airport standing in a queue waiting to check in for a flight to go to my house in Northern Ireland. And what a queue it was! This particular airline had about 15 check-in desks – flights to European and UK destinations – the length of the Concourse. But it was ‘rush hour’ and there was no way to work a way through the crowds.
I queued for 30 minutes at the check-in desk marked ‘All UK Flights’.
Eventually I got to the front. Here is the conversation that ensued.
“Good morning, sir�
“Good morning�
“Where are you flying to today, sir?�
“Belfast�
“Ah, you are in the wrong queue. This queue is for UK flights only.�
“Er…Belfast is in the UK. It’s in Northern Ireland�
“Yes, sir, I know�
“So, this is the queue for ‘All UK Flights’. Belfast is in the UK.�
“Well, it’s not in the UK for the purposes of our company, sir.�
“Pardon?�
“Belfast is not in the UK as far as we are concerned, sir�
“What?�
“That’s right, sir. You will need to join the queue at Check-in Desk 44�
“OK, let me get this straight. Your company has chosen to re-write the political and geographic map of the United Kingdom so that it can get its queue system sorted?�
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s the rules.�
I won’t bore you with the rest of the conversation. Needless to say, I was pretty confident of my stance, since I had done my PhD in 17th-century British history; I searched my memory but was fairly sure that, at no time in British history, was a clause drawn up stating that businesses could unilaterally decide to ignore one nation state for administrative tidiness and staffing situations. The UK is the UK. I stood my ground and, somewhat forcefully, made my point with the weight of history behind me.
Recognising that the CEO would probably have to call a national Referendum to re-inforce his position (and no one in Europe wants to follow that course of action right now!), the airline capitulated and I was allowed to check-in at that desk.
But I thought it was an interesting stance to take. A company feels that, quite literally, the world should change its way of being to accommodate its business practices. Most companies, in the 21st-century are waking up to the fact that it is they, not the rest of the world, who need to be flexible to survive.
I hope that this particular airline learns this before July. Why? Because I will be there, in the ‘All UK Flights’ queue once more – but this time to make a political point, standing in solidarity with my Northern Irish comrades! I’ll let you know how I get on…
I am sitting in the lounge at Port Elizabeth airport, waiting for the 17h50 flight to Johannesburg. It is an SAA flight. I arrived at the lounge at 14h15, and was informed that because I had bought an X class ticket, they could not move me to an earlier flight, and that I would have to go on the flight on which I was booked.
Some context:
It is now just after 16h00, and I am watching an SAA flight to Joburg take off. There are some empty seats on that flight, but here I sit in the lounge waiting for the 17h50 because no-one at SAA in this whole entire airport has the authority to override the system and get me home earlier. You can imagine how much I am loving this!!! You can imagine how my love for this airline, its company, and its employees is just growing with each passing minute!!!
Why the hell is there no-one here who can make a customer happy? Why is the best I can get sympathetic smiles from the SAA counter staff as they say, “we know, its a stupid rule!” Followed by a shrug of the shoulders and “there’s nothing we can do”. Does SAA prefer to employ automatons? Does it require its staff to have frontal lobotomies to work here? Why would any sane person choose to stick it out in such a stupid company?
This is no way to attract and retain Bright Young Things as either customers or staff.
There is probably a very good reason for not allowing the cheapest economy class tickets to be transferred. I am guessing it goes like this: If you buy an off peak ticket (say, for example, the last flight out at night) and get a really, really good price. You know that you’ll be leaving earlier during a peak time, but you buy the later, cheaper ticket and just arrive at the airport and ask them to put you on an earlier flight. So, you beat the system… OK, nice scenario. But I bought a ticket on the peak time flight, and wanted to move to an earlier one that was before the peak. I also have clearly not abused the system (if they cared to look, they have the records of the last 100 flights I have made with them – in the past year!!! – and they can check my ‘abuse rating’ – can’t they? Can they remember me). I also clearly wasn’t messing around – I was FOUR HOURS early!!!!!
But, no. Because they don’t trust their front line staff to think or use intitiative, they seriously upset a valuable and loyal customer. They get me home late to my family and my girls. I am NOT HAPPY!
Let me stop now before all the swear words I am thinking spill out onto the page. SAA, SORT YOURSELVES OUT!!! Join the real world of the connection economy, and start treating your customers like they’re valuable (in fact, do your best to amaze us), and give your staff the freedom to help you do this.
It’s funny how something that goes wrong, actually gives a company an opportunity to score massive brownie points – depending on how they handle it. I had such an experience with Kulula and afterwards went to their website and posted a comment. This is my comment to them and their subsequent response can be found here (word document).
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The Monday 9 May 11:20 flight from CT to JHB couldn’t take off because of engine problems. I was in a terrible hurry as I had to do a critical presenation in Pretoria at 15:00. Firstly I want to commend the frankness with which the captain explained the situation to the already-seated passengers. Your values: “safety first” and “honesty” were certainly visible. Secondly, to the Kulula ground crew on CT International a warm thanks with your assistance and help to get me on a one-time flight. I was there with my wife and baby and they made it real easy. To err is normal, but the way in which you handle the subsequent crisis is what distinguishes one.
Go Kulula, go!
The Airports Company of South Africa is really working hard to upgrade facilities to make SA’s airports worldclass. On the whole, they’re doing a great job. OK, so the lifts in the Joburg domestic terminal are tragic, but that’s a small gripe in such a great facility. They could definitely improve air traffic control, and make sure that we don’t have to spend an extra half hour circling over Heidelberg every evening we’re trying to get home to our families.
But check this out: voice activated, live flight information. For anyone wanting to check the status of a flight at any airport in SA, just phone: 086 72 77 888. Fully automated but using voice prompts. Not too exciting for Americans – they’ve had it for a while – but quite impressive that I think ACSA are the first SA company to use the technology.
Me: “Hi, this is Jean Cooper speaking. I just want to point out a small administrative error: I hired a car from you at R88 per day, but you charged me R235 a day.”
Car rental company: “No, sir, it is not an admin error. You were supposed to hire the car for 6 days, but you brought it back on the 5th day.”
Me: “My flight schedule changed. Yes, I brought it back earlier but how can that constitute a 294% price increase? What harm did I cause you by bringing the car back earlier? In fact, by having the car back a day earlier you could rent it out again one day earlier…”
Car rental company: “I’m sorry sir, the contract was for 6 days, not for 5.”
Me: “Yes, but can you understand my point? I will pay for the full 6 days – you can even leave the car in your carpark for today, if you want to. I benefited you by bringing the car back early. How can you penalize me for that?”
Car rental company:“Sorry sir, our system works that way.”
Me: “Why?”
Car rental company:“Because the contract was for 6 days, not for 5.”
Me: “I know about the contract, I’m asking for some reason. Can’t you change the system?”
Car rental company:”Sir, our system works this way. We had a contract….”
Round and round we went. Their system vs. my unique situation. And it’s true – we had a contract for their 6-day winter special which I violated by bringing the car back EARLY. But I’ll never use them again. Nor will my entire family. Nor will my network.
(I’m not putting their name here as I don’t want to use the power of this blogger for my personal fights)
Yesterday I flew down to Cape Town. I fly on a variety of airlines. It depends on time and price. These are my variables and I do all my own bookings online.
The delight about yesterday’s trip was the attitude and friendly manner of the team. We are all tired of the same sick jokes on some airlines and would rather they kept quiet or found some new lines.!!
The first thing that happened was the captain mentioned that the crew had heard about a birthday of one of the passengers and wished this person by name from us all.
The little girl sitting next to me was delighted and clapped. I noticed that all the children were given a great bag of goodies as they walked on board.
About 90 minues into the flight the captain asked us to guess the combined age of the crew and the winner would sit in the cockpit for the landing.
This was all great relationship building. We were also asked to fill in a survey to improve our future trips with this airline.
Well Done to the BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS on this crew. Combined age of all 6 members …. 155 .. average……25.83
Well done to 1 Time. Even though we left Johannesburg late you made up for it by building great relationships.
An Outsider’s Analysis of SAA and the Airline Industry
On a recent flight on South African Airways (SAA), I browsed through their in flight magazine (Feb 2005). The new CEO, Khaya Ngqula, wrote a short one page article on the launch of a new internal initiative to bring SAA back to profitability after years of loss making, including the past 2 years in which it has posted R15 billion losses. (Those losses are paid for by the South African tax payer, since SAA is a state-owned asset).
The article starts off with following analysis: “The airline industry is facing a period of deep uncertainty and risk, with increased fuel and production prices, uncertain medium-term economics in the key US and China markets, low barriers to entry and the emergence of new Low Cost Carriers, and unstable currency markets.â€?
Contrary to most airline announcements, it is not unsafe to use a mobile phone on an aeroplane. On most flights, a few cellphones are left on by mistake, and the avionics systems on modern aircraft are hardened against radio interference anywhere. The real reason that mobile phones a band is because they disrupt the networks on the ground — imagine a few hundred cellphone users flying at great speed across the city and needing to be transferred en mass every few seconds from one base station to another. The networks just couldn’t keep up. But it’s just a case of technology. What will be happening in the next few years is mobile base stations installed in aeroplanes with the hulls of the aeroplane shielded to stop the phones connecting to ground base stations. This is currently being tested by WirelessCabin. Its about time!
Excuse me while I scream. Every now and again, I just need to rant. Today, two of them converge: Vodacom (cell phone provider) and Voyager (South African Airways Frequent Flier programme).
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