The customer is not always right
Anjela Sharma is a Nelsonbased lawyer and, according to her court filings, travels regularly for work and training as well as pleasure, including visiting some of her six children in Dunedin and Invercargill. That is, until Air NZ banned her from its flights in July last year.
Sharma petitioned the High Court to direct the airline to immediately remove the 12-month ban. Last week, the court refused her request.
According to the airline, the kind of behaviour that precipitated Sharma’s ban is on the rise (its court filings described her as ‘‘intimidating, threatening and abusive’’). For the past year, the national carrier reported a rise in such bans of 60 per cent over 2018. The prohibitions run from one year to five years; Air NZ won’t release the actual number of cases.
In some regions, the national flag carrier and its domestic subsidiary are the only game in town.
In Sharma’s home of Nelson, the competition is limited: Origin Air and Sounds Air. Neither fly direct or even with connecting flights to Auckland. So it is crucial Air NZ uses bans sparingly and only after delivering fair warning. In the Sharma case, that looks to be exactly what happened.
Judge Paul Davison’s judgment lingers on the chain of events that precipitated the prohibition.
On December 1, 2018, Sharma and her family used the Koru lounge in Nelson and later the Koru lounge in Wellington, although, as a group, their tickets did not entitle them to.
Sharma and her husband were Koru Club members, while their children were not.
The judgment quotes Air NZ’s subsequent warning letter to Sharma: ‘‘[in Nelson] lounge staff advised that you and your family did not meet the lounge terms and conditions of entry. However, you and your family subsequently entered the lounge without permission. Upon entry, you and your family displayed loud and aggressive behaviour, which was unacceptable, inappropriate and upsetting for our Air NZ staff and other passengers.’’
Staff at the Wellington Koru lounge cite similar behaviour.
Air NZ reports note Sharma and members of her family were ‘‘very loud, disruptive, and intimidating during their dealings with the lounge hostess and over their entitlement to use the lounge’’.
Members of the family, a report says, called the lounge hostess stupid and racist, and mocked and loudly mimicked her voice.
Those were not the first incidents that caused the airline to write up difficult interactions with Sharma but they triggered a letter from the airline that warned Sharma of consequences that, if she did not change her behaviour, could result in an outright ban.
A series of subsequent dealings with the carrier, cited in the judgment, including reducing an Air NZ staff member to tears and then accusing her of faking them, ultimately led to the ban.
To be clear, the court ruling and lengthy judgment does not resolve ‘‘disputed factual issues’’ in the case.
But it does highlight that Air NZ’s contract with customers allows it to decline service for a wide range of reasons, including conduct.
And it does ‘‘give weight to factual matters where there is no dispute or where evidence is obviously cogent and reliable’’. It quotes at length from the airline’s internal employee reports of incidents.
What emerges is a picture of a corporation that took front-line staff reports and weighed them against Sharma’s correspondence at a removed and senior level.
It is also clear Air NZ staff are not the only ones who have been intimidated by Sharma.
Stoke Veterinary Hospital near Nelson, where Sharma was a customer, also banned her over events in late 2017.
Two schools in the Nelson region also reported difficult dealings.
Contacted for comment, Sharma asked to speak off the record. Stuff declined.
The one thing she did confirm is that she is still considering all her legal options.