stuck in zante - eu regulation 261/2004 - how does this work?

elliebellie

In the company I work for they are very keen on understanding the lessons learned (posh words for c**k-ups, if you ask me) of any new project etc and I have a few lessons and some advice I would like to pass onto both Olympic, Skywings and any other travel operating people:

· DO NOT treat your customers as idiots, if you know a plane hasn’t left the country of origin when we get to check-in, knowing full well in order for us to leave on time it had to have been in the air for at least an hour and half – TELL US!
· If you say you will give an update at 10:00 and don’t have any new information, don’t try and avoid us, just TELL US. Even if it means saying “no news at the moment, we’ll try and update you further in half hour or an hour”, just TELL US!
· When the departure board is showing 18:00 departure which by all the laws of time and physics cannot be right, change it and/or TELL US!
· TALK TO US, one of the most frustrating things was the communication or lack of clear and accurate communication. We don’t want an overly optimistic estimate, we want a realistic estimate, even though it might make us unhappy at the time, better that than getting very giddy and then being very disappointed when something doesn’t happen.
Telling us what you think we want to hear, rather than the reality, makes believing anything you say very difficult.

And probably the most important thing to do is APOLOGISE!!!!!!!! It might not seem like an important thing and I know it’s not great when things go wrong, but believe me when I say it’s a very powerful thing to do and can make a bad situation much better.
The only time I saw or heard an apology was on the rather sad little letter received at the boarding gate.

I would like to say thank you to the other people on the flight, everyone was incredibly tired and frustrated and I didn’t see anyone really lose their temper with the staff either in the airport, on the return flight or at Birmingham.
There may have been some “discussions”, but given the level of frustration and the apparently never ending delay, I thought everyone behaved really well.

Please don’t in anyway think I was expecting to be put up in some luxury hotel for the afternoon all paid for by the airline, I absolutely accept that the Duty of Care regarding meals and drinks was met, and in some ways probably exceeded expectations (I refer here only to the restaurant and not the baguette!).
It just saddens me that even now airlines and travel operators believe they can keep providing this level of service and people will just put up with it.

I really do apologise for length of this posting, but it has actually been rather cathartic.

So there we go, all done……………hang on, I didn’t even mention the state of the plane, maybe next time J

richardw

Did you fly home with the same flight number as the original inbound flight number?

elliebellie

flew out on GSW 7013
back on GSW 7014