Fed up travellers are all keen on airport KPI move

PETALING JAYA: Air travellers hope the Airports Quality of Service framework to be put in place next year will cut down on waiting and queueing times, and help avoid missed flights.

Teacher Joanna Tan (not her real name), 54, and her family were supposed to catch a flight to Krabi from Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2) recently.

However, she claimed, poor customer service and long queues caused them to miss the flight.

“Everything was going fine until we reached the check-in counter. The line wasn’t long but the pace it was moving at was slow,” she said.

Tan thought nothing of it at first because she had time to spare. But to her dismay, the security check took a long time as well.

“By the time we finished checking in and queueing up for the security check, we were notified that the gate for our flight had closed.”

According to Tan, she reached the gate only about five minutes late.

“No matter how much I pleaded, they refused to let me in and said there was nothing they could do.”

Tan also added that she did not get any compensation and had to pay a penalty of RM200 per person to reschedule her flight.

“I strongly support the frame- work proposed by Mavcom (the Malaysian Aviation Commission), especially its new regulation about queueing times.

“I’ve seen far too many cases where airlines could have opened more counters to reduce the waiting time,” she said.

A student, who wanted to be known only as Daisy, said she had an unpleasant experience at the Kota Kinabalu International Airport when her flight to Kuala Lumpur was suddenly cancelled.

“There were about 100 people waiting in line and we were forced to wait for two more hours before the staff did anything,” she said, adding that her flight was rescheduled to 6am the following day.

“They did set us up, but at a dingy hotel for the night to make up for the delay,” she added.

Another traveller, Chee, 47, said she spent 90 minutes looking for her bags at the baggage claim at KLIA2 after returning from a holiday in Indonesia.

“I waited for a really long time. When I approached the airline staff at the baggage carousel, they were really rude,” she said.

Fortunately, a senior representative of the airline approached her just as she was about to give up hope, and told her that her bags had been sent to the wrong airport.

To her surprise, her luggage was delivered the next day.

“I was relieved as all my trekking gear was in my luggage,” she said, adding that the representative also apologised profusely for the airline’s carelessness.

On the implementation of the framework, she said good customer service and efficient baggage handling were important key performance indicators for airport operators.

“It’s about time something is done because airports are the first place tourists step into when visiting a country,” she said.