“There was no food voucher, no accommodation, no transport. Nothing.”
Ms Slater said many passengers took the news in their stride, but for others the cancellation coupled with a lack of airline support was problematic.
“There were people with little children who were in dire straits and clearly didn’t have the money to lob the whole family into a hotel. It was terrible,” she said.
“I saw one woman with five small kids crying.”
Unlike in Europe, passengers in Australia don’t have any legal rights when domestic flights are delayed or cancelled. Australian airlines do not have to guarantee their timetable, their agreement with customers is simply that they will get them from A to B. The timing is at the discretion of the airline.
“If guests are delayed for more than three hours, we do offer food vouchers,” said a spokesperson for from Virgin. “However on that particular flight we weren’t able to get to everyone. If they would like to discuss further, they are very welcome to complete our customer feedback form and we will get back to them as soon as possible.”
Virgin only offers hotel accommodation to interstate and overseas passengers when Virgin is at fault in causing a delay.
Edith and Michael Riley, from outside Perth, were meant to fly in to Sydney on Friday but had their Virgin flight repeatedly pushed back until they were finally able to fly on Sunday.
Mrs Riley said it took up to 90 minutes to get through to the number Virgin had given them to organise another flight.
“They accommodated us well enough with a hotel and breakfast, but the lack of communication was a nightmare,” Mrs Riley said.
While Ms Slater and the Rileys have now made it to their intended destinations, for others, the travel woes continue.
Laura Vardy, a childcare centre manager based in Brisbane, remains in Melbourne after Tigerair texted her to say that her scheduled 7.10pm flight on Sunday was cancelled due to “operational issues”.
Ms Vardy was repeatedly offered a refund by customer support, which she found strange given her priority was to get home for Christmas, not be stuck in Melbourne. Ms Vardy instead insisted on being put on the next available flight, which is scheduled for 7am on Christmas Day – more than 36 hours later.
Former Qantas chief economist and chief executive of Airline Intelligence and Research Dr Tony Webber says problems like weather events, pilot shortages, mechanical failures, or IT issues can all cause flight delays, but the issue of better airline communication with passengers about any changes to their schedule is twofold.
First, the staff responsible for updating customers don’t know what’s going on until information is passed down the chain of command.
Second, Dr Webber said sometimes staff withhold information from customers because they fear that “letting people know pisses them off more”.
“If they find out that the aircraft is going to be delayed by six hours and they tell passengers, there might be a riot in the terminal.”
However, Dr Webber says that transparency with customers is the best approach.
“They should try and do exactly what a captain does on a flight, which is just to be really truthful with the passengers waiting at the airport for their flight,” he said.
from Viral up Blog http://bit.ly/2Rjwzvm
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