Company replies to criticism

IT was nearly 2am on September 19. Virgin Australia flight VA123 arrived at Dunedin Airport and unloaded all passengers more than two hours ago.

Normally the terminal would now be in darkness. However, 13 passengers from our flight were stranded at the terminal and my wife and I were two of them.

We never sighted the two Kiwi Shuttles drivers. One reached the airport and decided that transporting the VA123 crew to town should be his priority. He told the driver from rival firm Super Shuttle that he would return for the passengers. This never happened.

His workmate in the second shuttle never arrived. We heard later that he had not reported for work that Tuesday. The Kiwi Shuttles management had about 15 hours to find a replacement.

The SS driver kindly arranged for a colleague to come and collect us, but this, understandably, took more than an hour.

Our sincere thanks to the Super Shuttle driver and fellow passengers, who contrived to have us dropped off first, instead of last. I enjoyed a few hours’ sound sleep and made my 10.30am surgical appointment on time. John Kerr

Dalmore [Abridged] [Kiwi Shuttles director Antonio W. Seiuli replies:

‘‘This was an unfortunate incident and I apologise to the passengers affected by it.

I had two drivers rostered on to service the VA123 flight from Brisbane. One to take booked customers, the other to look after the crew from the flight. I found out first thing on September 19 one of the drivers failed to show up for work.

This is the first time it has happened to us in the threeplus years since these late flights started. It has usually been Kiwi Shuttles doing the support backup but not this time, and we are sorry for letting people down. It has been our practice to work with Super Shuttle, helping each other out servicing these late flights.

My staff who took the crew to town assumed the other driver was running late and asked Super Shuttle staff to collect Kiwi Shuttles bookings. Unfortunately this was not the case.

The other driver fell asleep and woke up around 1.30am.’’]