Vueling

richardw

Btw Since the date of the original post, IAG now has a controlling interest in Vueling, we may see more Vueling flights with BA and IB codes.

NonGeographicalMan

richardw wrote: »

Btw Since the date of the original post, IAG now has a controlling interest in Vueling, we may see more Vueling flights with BA and IB codes.

The IAG controlling ownership has just gone through at the end of April according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vueling

On 23 April 2013, IAG acquired control of Vueling which saw the recently purchased 44.66% stake by IAG merged with Iberia's existing 45.85% stake to form a 90.51% shareholding. Vueling will remain a standalone company now within the IAG Group, its management structure will remain unchanged however Vueling's CEO Alex Cruz will now report directly to IAG CEO Willie Walsh

As Vueling already seemed to have manage to access a number of former Iberia and FlyBMI slots at Heathrow through the IAG connection one can only see this potentially increasing with the formal IAG takeover of the company. Although currently Vueling only operates flights from Spain to various overseas airports, in addition to many domestic routes, there seems to be nothing to stop it starting to operate more flights to Heathrow from its new overseas hubs outside Spain. IAG almost certainly know that BA made a huge mistake before when they sold Vueling to Easyjet and I don' think they will make that mistake again with Vueling.

However charging customers to book wheelchairs on an 0906 premium rate line is not going to be acceptable to the image of IAG and so I would expect this issue to be addressed by the company in the every near future, along with any other areas where customers are being forced to speak to the premium rate call centre instead of being able to amend their booking online as they would with Ryanair or Easyjet.

NFH

I started a thread last year about the use of premium rate numbers by airlines. I specifically cited Ryanair because it is the main culprit affecting UK residents. It is currently unclear whether or not the government plans to allow this malpractice to continue.

See Government to allow Ryanair to continue using unfair premium rate phone numbers

NonGeographicalMan

NFH wrote: »

I started a thread last year about the use of premium rate numbers by airlines. I specifically cited Ryanair because it is the main culprit affecting UK residents. It is currently unclear whether or not the government plans to allow this malpractice to continue.

See Government to allow Ryanair to continue using unfair premium rate phone numbers

But at least Ryanair only use an 0871 number that costs 10p per minute and at least the majority of interactions with Ryanair such as booking a wheelchair or changing the date of a flight can be done online.

But both Vueling and Wizzair use shockingly expensive 77.34p per minute (or £46.40 per hour compared to Ryanair's £6 per hour) contact lines and both make this the only official route for a passenger on their flights to book a wheelchair as well as seek compensation for overnight accommodation and booking flights on other airlines when they cancel their flights etc.:eek::mad:

Yet Vueling is now a wholly owned subsidiary of a UK based airline group (IAG) and is now beginning to operate significant number of flights to the UK and whilst Wizzair is a Hungarian airline it is still based within the EU and thus bound by European directives on disability discrimination and the European Convention on Human Rights. It is also already operates a large number of flights in to the UK.

These 77.34p per minute lines are particularly disgusting as I believe more than half this money ends up in the pocket of the telecoms company. They are thus also a very inefficient way to charge customers for calling a company.