Paraglider's weekend break in Dubai was shortened for him by FlyDubai on Friday. Turning up in good time on Friday morning, he found the 08:55 flight to Dubai was cancelled. The earlier 08:20 flight was still open but was flagged as 'delayed'. 08:55 passengers were first herded to a transfer desk then shooed back to the gate, where each was issued a new boarding pass, merging their flight with the delayed 08:20. We were ushered through to the gate where nothing happened for half an hour or so. Then came an unbelievable story about runway maintenance and a new departure time of 11:30. We were then ordered back out of the gate as no flight was imminent. Odd that runway maintenance should only delay FlyDubai's flights while Qatar Air and Emirates were landing and taking off like there was no tomorrow. Odder still that the story was changed at around 10:15 to an even less likely tale of fog in Dubai. Paraglider was, of course too charitable to entertain the notion that FlyDubai didn't want to fly three half empty planes, preferring to merge three flights into one full one. Because that would imply a calculated disregard for customer service and a disproportionate focus on the bottom line. They might at least have offered us lunch, or even a biscuit.
There was fog on Friday, around 8am, well in my neck of the woods, Rashidiya/Mirdiff, but as you guessed planes were still operational!
ReplyDeleteWhat I really dislike is the way these airlines sacrifice their own staff. The managers who take these decisions are invisible but they leave a junior operative to deliver the bad tidings and face the angry crowd, with no authority to help them in any way. Not nice.
ReplyDeleteI can see the commercial rationale underlying a decision to operate one full flight instead of three empty ones. What is inexcusable is the outright lying to those very people who are the airline's sole means of generating income.
ReplyDeleteA meal and an apology might have been nice, and I trust you weren't heading to Dubai to meet a V.V.V.I.P. to secure a multi-billion dollar contract.
Commercial and ecological arguments are equally strong (though I'm sure the ecological one wasn't even considered!) But yes, the treatment of customers and their own disempowered staff was grim.
ReplyDelete(And no, not such an important meeting that it couldn't wait an hour or two :)