Airlines must improve their shoddy service
Thousands of people have had their travel plans ruined because of Ryanair’s scandalous failure to ensure that it has enough pilots available to fly planned routes. Adding insult to injury, millions of customers were left in the dark about whether they would be able to fly, even if their flight was operating as normal, because the airline was initially unable to provide a full list of the flights affected over the next six weeks.
This has the potential to be a catastrophe for Ryanair’s brand, and its often outspoken chief executive Michael O’leary must move purposefully to clean up the mess this embarrassing mismanagement has created for passengers. He must address the industrial dispute now brewing among his staff. But most importantly, he must ensure that customers are compensated quickly and efficiently – not just for cancelled flights but also for consequential expenses, such as hotel or care hire cancellation fees. Travellers should not be left out of pocket because of his business’s failure to deliver what they paid for. Otherwise he will give every impression of having forgotten what made his airline one of the world’s most successful: a lasersighted focus on giving customers what they want.
Many are sniffy about the “no frills” business model, particularly charging passengers for services that once would have been included in the ticket price. Yet by vastly lowering the cost of travel and, in turn, forcing established airlines to up their game, the “no frills” companies have enabled unprecedented international mobility, allowing ordinary people to travel regularly and cheaply in Europe and beyond. In a triumph of free-market capitalism, anyone can now be part of the jet set. Ryanair is Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, flying 12.6 million in July alone.
But if airlines wish to continue to profit from the huge numbers of passengers now wanting to travel, they cannot take them for granted. The entire industry appears to be engaged in a race to see who can treat passengers the worst. A collapse in British Airways’ computer systems earlier this year, for example, saw travellers left sleeping on departure lounge floors or queuing for hours for information that was not forthcoming. While passengers may be willing to accept reliable but less glamorous flights if the price is right, they will not put up with a failure to provide a basic level of customer service.