[Swissdiver]

Read elsewhere yesterday (reliable source)

I’m one of 170 passengers who originally scheduled to have left Paris last night with aer Lingus on the 22:00 flight.
Continual delays until eventually at 2:30 we were put into a hotel.
Complete lack of communication from the ground handling staff who have no contact with Aer Lingus other than by phoning up headquarters back in Dublin and have no power to make decisions.

Back on the buses this morning for what was supposed to be in early morning flight then delay delay delay. no info.

Aer Lingus had brought in a engineer to service the plane because there was a problem with the landing gear… eventually we took off but as we were taxiing down the runway the pilot slammed on the brakes or the landing gear locked.
Another long wait to get slowly back to the the terminal and then a long wait to get buses. Terminal 2e has very limited food facilities, we got no food last night because everything is closed after 9.

We were told we would be then on a flight leaving at 19:10 hours but at 19:10 hours we were told the flight from Dublin hadn’t actually left we’re now told it will be 21:00 before we leave here at the earliest

There’s old people, kids, disabled people there’s people with celiac who can’t eat any of the limited food in the airport and absolutely no communications from aer Lingus to a large number of the passengers. Unless you booked via their app you’re not receiving text and email updates. last night we were asked to write down their names phone numbers and emails on a scrap of paper which one of the gate agents took….

Ground handling staff unable to give us any information about when or what is going on because they aren’t receiving it from aer Lingus in Dublin.

The flight which we were put on today which slammed on the brakes was the original plane which had been repaired but had not been serviced or cleaned so there was very limited food on it when we were sitting on the tarmac for a couple of hours or even water.

Aer Lingus would not rebook people on codeshare flights such as via London or Zurich or whatever, nor would they release baggage in order for people to make independent arrangements all through today.

The issues themselves have been extremely annoying but the lack of communication and the evident lack of any care whatsoever from aerlingus is infuriating.

I don’t know about you. But I’d have gone mad!

[Tom Otley]

Yes, it is rather ominous for the summer (The Times of London headline this morning)

Summer travel chaos warning for passengersMinisters blamed over slow security checks as short-staffed airlines struggle with Covid

Bloomberg…

Airports Clogged With Queues as Travel Rebound Strains Resources

[Harbord1]

Back in the good old days there would have been a station manager/supervisor and ground staff employed by Aer Lingus who would have taken responsibility for the communications and arrangements to put in place in such circumstances. The airline also would have probably had its own engineers on the ground to resolve the tech issues more quickly.

Sadly all of this has been ‘outsourced’ and this woeful tail is the result. Complete lack of care. Inexcusable not to have clear and confident communication – which costs nothing.

[SimonS1]

Sounds like the usual IAG incompetence has infected the airline and Aer Lingus is becoming a basket case like BA.

Cue the usual denials of EC261 compensation, maybe it was windy in West Indies or storms in Sierra Leone.

1 user thanked author for this post.

sparkyflier

[PatJordan]

You have hit the nail on the head, Harbord1.

The constant drive to outsource services results in staff on low wages, little motivation and no empowerment to make decisions when things go wrong bodes ill for customer service.

Yes, there is no doubt that for an airline to re-instate their own staff at airports would incur additional costs which no doubt would be borne by the customer. Personally I would be happy to pay a little extra to ensure better service: what do others think?

Safe travels everyone !

2 users thanked author for this post.

MarkCymru, sparkyflier

[CathayLoyalist2]

As the saying goes ” you gets what you pays for”

[cwoodward]

It is very often a nightmare for a small/mid size airline if an aircraft ‘goes technical’ away from home base particularly (as in this case) where they have no in-house technical support to hand. It is also almost always unacceptably costly for the airline to send another aircraft and crew (the original crew will almost certainly be out of hours) particularly when the problem initially seems ‘fixable’ and the expected delay only a couple of hours.

Normally it is only the larger airlines keep in-house full technical teams at out-port and only then if they have a high frequency of flights thus most rely on contracted technical support and in my experience this has for the past 50 years or so been the case – nothing much new in this.

I am not suggesting that Aer Lingus did an adequate job here only that these situations are very difficult problems for operators to deal with and that sometimes absorbing the ‘bad press’ is the best option from the airline managements point of view.

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Bullfrog, PatJordan

[Swissdiver]

cwoodward, the main problems here are twofolds: communication and alternatives. Obviously, the communication was awfully bad in this case. And the company did not assess properly the alternatives (sending another aircraft (Paris is one hour or so from the Dublin base so it seems to be acceptable to avoid a 24 hours delay) or allowing passengers to travel with other companies).

3 users thanked author for this post.

Polly, Bullfrog, PatJordan

[cwoodward]

I don’t disagree Swissdiver
However communications in these situations are almost always poor as the airline often has only one or two directly employed staff in the country (who my not be at the airport initially) and must rely on the contractor and local technical staff with whom the communication is less than is optimal. Also often the source and extent of the technical problem is not clear cut and ever evolving and so by the time it may have been the best option to send another aircraft it is faster to make other arrangements – hotels etc. When an aircraft becomes technical at an out-port it is, as I mentioned up thread often a ‘no-win situation for all concerned. Agreed some airlines manage these situation better than others – many years ago I in a similar situation with a broken aircraft was left stranded by Turkish for 54 hours and no hotel with no assistance and almost no communication

2 users thanked author for this post.

Swissdiver, PatJordan

[DerekVH]

A great deal of my job involves emergency planning (not in the airline sector) – I have a simple solution for situations like this. The airline has a database of all passengers on the affected flight and should have all their contact details. All that was needed for someone in flight operations to activate an SMS message to all passengers to advise what the problem is and what is being done to resolve it and to keep them updated – this is not rocket science and these are not expensive solutions. I don’t blame EI – all airlines are the same!

5 users thanked author for this post.

Polly, MarkCymru, Bullfrog, PatJordan, cwoodward

[ASK1945]

[quote quote=1209524]I don’t blame EI – all airlines are the same![/quote]

Derek – not necessarily so. I have been “stranded” twice in small airports in the last four years, through events out of the control of BA (extreme weather conditions in both cases) and the way I was treated by BA was impeccable. Frequent text updates and very adequate hotel arrangements.

In my view there was absolutely no excuse for the appalling lack of communication and the absence of adequate emergency planning here. For heavens sake, the problem was in Paris, an hour or so from Dublin, not some out of the way small airport.

6 users thanked author for this post.

Swissdiver, Polly, SimonS1, Bullfrog, PatJordan, DerekVH

[Author]

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