Customer Service with a Smile: The Jetstar Way...

So, your baby has just died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome / SIDS while you were on a group holiday booked through Jetstar. You booked with Jetstar to maximise the benefits of cheap flights and accommodation package deals. You are looking at changing your flights in order to deal with the tragedy within the relative safety of your own home with family and friends. Unfortunately, you find out that changing your flights and leaving your holiday on the Gold Coast early is certain to be problematic. You call Jetstar to organise the changing of flight details only to be told you will have to prove that your baby is dead or you will be slugged with AUD 600 in additional fees and charges.

Jetstar demands that these fees be paid upfront before you fly. According to Jetstar, they are going to contact the family and they are to be fully reimbursed. However, that really is not the customer service point is it? Seriously, how many people do you know who are going to call an airline or front up at the ticket counter and try and claim that they need to change their flights because one of their children has died of SIDS if it did not happen? I appreciate there are people out there that might, but they are in the minority, aren't they?

Jetstar has argued along the lines of "We deeply sympathise with our passengers in such situations and seek to be as flexible and accommodating as possible." Yeah, right! It is all about the dollars and cents. There is no compassion or sympathy exhibited by Jetstar in this instance. And, the above statement might make them feel better about themselves, but it shouldn't. Neither should this justification be considered valid as representative of sympathising with passengers suffering tragedy in their families "If documentation is unable to be provided at the time, change fees and fare difference applies — however, the amount is fully reimbursed once the documentation is provided."

Jetstar really should be ashamed of themselves in regards to the way this family was treated.

I am not going to fly Jetstar on principle. My principles are that people are more important than bottom line dollars and cents. The simple reality here is that these were extraordinary circumstances and cutting this family some slack in their moment of grief was not going to send Jetstar bankrupt. If they do not care enough for the people that pay their salaries, then I do not see any reason for me to support an organisation like that.

Thus endeth today's rant and rail.

Batavia Air Secures Right to Fly to Europe...

During one of my many forays into Indonesian news and views I came across a piece that reported that Batavia Air had secured the right from the European Commission to fly to the continent. Batavia Air is by most accounts still tinkering with the financial feasibility and financial viability of flying into Europe.

The airline is focusing its attentions on Rome and Amsterdam with a stopover in Jeddah. Amsterdam seems like a logical choice considering Indonesia's long history with its former colonial master, The Netherlands. Rome, though, is an interesting choice. Jeddah is the logical stopover point as Batavia Air is already flying to Jeddah. The European destinations will join Singapore, Kuching, Guangzhou and Jeddah on the international destinations list.

The words Batavia Air caused me to reminisce of a flight I once took with Batavia Air back in 2002. Admittedly, it was a domestic flight from Jakarta (Soekarno-Hatta) to Pangkal Pinang. It is a short flight of about an hour or so. An hour is usually just enough time to get airborne, for the crew to provide some snacks and collect the rubbish, and then land. The snacks on this particular flight are something that my wife and I remember even to this day.

Normally, passengers are given a little goodies box that usually contains a couple of Indonesian cakes and a pastry, and if your lucky even a small chocolate bar. However, on this flight it was a full roll of "Marie" biscuits and a glass of water! The glass of water was a nice afterthought considering if one was considering seriously chuffing down that whole role of Marie biscuits then they would almost certainly need to chug the glass of water to wash it all down.

So, hopefully, Batavia Air provides some better quality snacks on their much longer routes.

Adam Air Flight 574 -- Air Crash Investigation

Adam Air Flight 574 was lost when it crashed into the sea of the west coast of Sulawesi on 1 January 2007. The flight had 96 passengers and 6 crew. There were no survivors. The National Geographic Channel's Air Crash Investigation program has screened a re-enactment of the fatal flight and exposed a complex set of reasons as to how this plane came to end up on the bottom of the ocean and killing 102 people.

What the investigation revealed was a culture of poor safety, poor training, and an accident that did not have to happen. Adam Air was stripped of its operations certificate and can no longer fly. However, the pain for those who lost loved ones will forever remain with them.

If you missed Air Crash Investigation the program has been broken down into six parts and uploaded to YouTube. The first part is attached here. You can navigate to each of the other parts from part 1. You can also access the videos through IndonesiaMatters.

Ryanair and Vertical Seating

Ryanair are the masters of self-promotion and generating publicity. This is irrespective of whether it is a raunchy calendar of barely clad female cabin staff or suggesting that it is time for pay-as-you-use toilets on aircraft.

So, in keeping true to form, Ryanair has indicated that it is in talks with Boeing about modifying some of its future aircraft orders to incorporate the concept of "vertical seating". To the rest of us this will become known as the standing section of the plane.

Ryanair is Europe's leading budget carrier. So, in that sense the idea makes sense. Standing room only should to all intents and purposes let them cram more people onto a plane and therefore improve profits.

The idea of vertical seating is that there will be a pole or some kind of small stool to lean against according to Stephen McNamara, Ryanair's spokesperson on this one. However, the reality is that it is likely to be more of a standing position than a sitting one.

On short haul flights, this is probably an interesting avenue to explore. Nevertheless, it would seem that the whole rationale of this idea would be that buying a standing room only ticket would have to be cheaper than a traditional seat. If it is not, then why bother to pay the same or more to stand?

I wonder what is next on the Ryanair cost-cutting agenda?

But, for now, it is "Ladies and Gentlemen, we will soon be landing at Birmingham Airport, please return to your standing positions and fasten your standing belts, thank you! And, thank you for flying with Ryanair!"

AirAsia Service

Budget Airlines should be interpreted as skimping on just about everything, including customer service. If people are offended that this post paints a negative picture then so be it, but I am unapologetic for it. It is the old marketing adage that a happy customer might tell five people of their positive experience whereas an unhappy customer will tell twenty or more.

I am unhappy with the service.

Anyone that has had any contact with AirAsia knows that it has a no cancellations / no refund policy. It is a little hard not to know this as it is a prominent feature of all their advertising materials, prominent in the fine print! What is less well known is that you can purchase comprehensive travel insurance for about IDR 78,000 that allows cancellations in certain circumstances and entitles you to a full refund on the cost of your ticket.

Now, I was not travelling AirAsia myself, my folks were. The old fella and the old lady (terms of endearment -- not offensive) decided that in the middle of their planned trip to Bali they would fly over to Jakarta to visit with their first born, his wife, and their soon to be grandchild. AirAsia was to be the provider of choice. Unfortunately, for the old lady, a trip to the doctor revealed a medical problem and an immediate operation was ordered and hence no travel for a couple of months. Bang goes the trip to Bali and to Jakarta. The old lady is on the way to a full recovery if anyone is interested.

My folks grew up without a lot, so their mindset is once you have something it is worth a little extra to protect, thus everything is insured. This includes travel insurance when booking flights.

I have spent the last few days trying to cancel the AirAsia ticket and find out what I have to do to lodge the claim and get the refund processed. AirAsia has an automated phone service that ultimately gives you the option to talk to an operator in either Indonesian or English. I had called a number of times already and chose the Indonesian language option (I am pretty good in Indonesian) and did not get what I needed in terms of information.

So, I thought bugger it I am going for the English language option this time. Funnily enough when I finally got through to a talking head the first things I heard were "Selamat Siang!", "nama saya XXXX, bisa bantu dengan apa?" which roughly translates to "Good afternoon, my name is XXXX, what can I help you with?" (Siang is a period between 10.00 and 14.00, I called at 13.30). So much for the English assistance.

What transpired was this:

Me: I want to find out whether I need to cancel a ticket or at least let you know that the passengers willnot be travelling?

AA: We have a no cancellation / no refund policy.

Me: Yeah, I know! I just want to find out if I need to let AirAsia know that the passengers booked on flight xxx will not be travelling?

AA: We have a no cancellation / no refund policy.

Me: Yeah, I think I understand that part! So, I do not need to cancel? I just leave the tickets as they are and then when the passengers don't turn up that is not going to cause any dramas, is it?

AA: I do not know.

Me: Is there someone there that does know? Can I talk to them?

AA: Silence...I will check...silence for about 5 minutes.

AA: No one knows.

Me: Oh, really? Okey dokey. My next question relates to the insurance and the refund claim can I talk to you about that?

AA: We have a no cancellation / no refund policy.

Me: Even where the passengers have an insurance policy?

AA: We do not have insurance policies!

Me: Really? What about this "go insurance" policy that has been purchased.

AA: All of our policies are issued with the provision that the terms and conditions are out our discretion and your mother's illness is not covered.

Me: Have you read the policy or the terms and conditions?

AA: No, but all policies maybe changed at our discretion and your mother's illness is not covered. Besides, we have a no cancellation / no refund policy.

As stupid as this is it highlights the limitations of teaching your service staff a script and not providing them with the tools to address enquiries outside the scope of the script or having the confidence to escalate the matter to a more senior staff manager or supervisor.

In the end and a few calls later I managed to get in touch with the insurer, AIU (under the auspices of AIG), and they were very helpful and I am now onto the filling in of forms and gathering the necessary supporting documentation to make the claim.

Moral of the story is that budget airlines = budget services or no service at all.

Merpati -- Business as Usual

It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Indonesian airline scene that Merpati (PT. Merpati Nusantara) is in trouble again. Perhaps it would be more apt to say that Merpati's troubles continue on in the business as usual manner that the airline is run. Merpati is the Indonesian word for dove.

The government has agreed to inject some IDR 350 billion into the struggling airline. However, this is going to come at some significant cost to the workforce. The government is demanding productivity and efficiency measures be put in place that are to conceivably allow the airline to turn its business fortunes around. What exactly are these productivity and efficiency measure you ask? The government requires that Merpati shed some excess feathers, in this case some 1,300 employees of its current 2,590 employees. It is worth noting that some IDR 220 billion of the bail out fund is to be directed to fulfilling the company's obligations with regard to severance pay for those employees that are to be terminated.

Some of the pilots that are to be terminated will not be lacking for new employment as it is likely some, at least, will be picked up by Garuda which is currently short of qualified pilots.

Merpati was established in 1962 as a subsidiary of Garuda and was spun off in 1997. Merpati was conceived as an airline that would serve pioneering routes. Pioneering routes are defined in Indonesian legislation as routes that serve remote areas or areas where no other form of transportation is possible. The legislation also notes that these routes are likely to be less profitable and perhaps not even profitable at all. Nevertheless, with the idea of pioneering routes at the forefront of the government's thinking the base of Merpati's operations are going to be moved from Jakarta to Makassar in Sulawesi.

Merpati currently operates 19 aircraft. It could operate more but does not have the money available to repair all of the planes it has in its current fleet.

In order to try and make this attempt a successful one there has been a new President Director appointed to oversee the expected improvements in the management of Merpati.

It will be interesting to see how many more chances the government gives Merpati to revive its fortunes before trying to sell it off to an interested investor. There is great potential for well-managed regional and budget airlines in Indonesia. The key here is "well-managed" and that has not always been a feature of the airline industry in Indonesia.