Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Volcanic Ash

Living up to their Promises

Anyone who has flown over the past few years will no doubt have suffered some amount of disruption and delay in the flight plans and under EU law the airlines are supposed to look after their customers by providing food and shelter if needs be, I must admit that I for one have never been treated to such attention from ANY airline that I have travelled with.  We learn today that many of the airlines have now decided to abandon their passengers abroad and expect the Government to step in and fill their obligations.  I would expect to see more than a few court cases over expenses incurred and not covered by the airlines.

Pasenger Safety has to come first

I agree that passenger safety has to come first but someone should probably explain that to East Coast Rail who continued to sell tickets on the 2pm service from Lonon's Kings Cross to Aberdeen service on Friday.  Despite their being NO seats available the train company continued to sell tickets for the train and we had each carriage with passengers and their luggage littering the aisle's.  One member of staff was overheard saying that they were concerned about safety and asking why the company continued to sell tickets.  Add to this the lack of air conditioning and you have an unhealthy situation where the temperatures were soaring to almost 38 degress celcius at times - and before anyone asks I have an application on my phone that is a thermometer-.  Keeping your customers safe should apply to all methods of transport.  And to those airlines who are saying that it was safe to fly yet the airports stayed closed I would respond that the safety of passengers should always come first it only takes one plane to go down and the Government has ben neglegent in it's duty to protect the public.  Mr Walsh of BA would be best minded to remind himself of the BA near tragedy in 1982 due to the same issue and then answer why if it is so safe to fly has his airline not completely restored their services?

Who Should Pay?

This seems to be the big debate at the present time and to be honest my answer would be the airlines and the insurance companies that is why we pay for insurance and if the airlines do not have a contigency fund to cover such eventualities then they should really be looking at their business practises.  I would also go as far to suggest that the airports should be partially refunding the Taxi's some of the liscense fee that they pay in order to provide a service to the airports as they were also out of pocket at no fault of their own and many of these people are self employed and cannot afford the luxury of a contingency big enough to cover this.  

Who should not pay is the Government and by proxy the tax payer, why should we be paying to bail out a industry that bleeds its customers dry every chance it gets, example airlines like Ryanair who have now decided that they are considering bringing in charges for the airplane toilets!  They charge for using a card online and if you call the price is dearer so you pay that way anyway, they charge for baggage and weigh your hand luggage now as well to try and get more money out the unsuspecting tourist and refuse to provide onward transport if their plane breaks down leaving you out of pocket. 

Don't get me wrong Ryan Air are by no means the only airline who bleed their customers but they are one of the main perpetrators and should be paying to provide their customers the proper cover under EU legislation even if they are a low cost airline (which is a complete falicy in itself we flew to Venice cheaper on BA than on Ryanair and it was much more comfortable).

Anyway what do you think, who should pay?

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