Budget Airlines
Last month it was the summer break at school and I went on holiday to Scotland and Ireland, but spent a lot of time at home too. On my travels I noticed a distinct difference between the budget airlines we travelled on - Ryanair and bmibaby. In fact, on a measure of customer service, I’d put them at opposite ends of the scale.
Quite frankly Ryanair were rude and quite poor in terms of quality; the queues very long, and they’d call you for flights stupidly too early. Another factor was the manner in which they spoke, treating paying consumers as if they were doing something bad “You must turn off your phones.” for example.
bmibaby on the other hand were very polite, and queues were virtually non-existent. While they did have similar policies to Ryanair they would be conveyed in a non-condescending way.
Overall I am still quite disappointed with airlines right now, after all we’re in the 21st century - it shouldn’t be necessary for all electronic equipment to be turned off on take off and landing, the ride shouldn’t be bumpy, there shouldn’t need to be queues. It’s probably going to be this way for a while, but we are overdue a change in the way air travel works.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Theory in the telecoms industry goes that the reason phones are not allowed on flights is not that they interfere with on-board equipment, but that they have the potential to overload local mast on landing (as a whole plane load of phones connects to network simultaneously) and that this is a great excuse to prohibit the sheer annoyance of people chatting on phones in a crowded, public space.
September 19th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Cheap air travel as we have grown up with is unlikely to be something we die with. The problems our generation will face with both fuel supply and pollution will bring it to an end. It’s simply not sustainable. In my view it should be cracked down on now with tax to ensure we have fuel available for when it is really needed eg emergency food aid.