Friday, 20 April 2012
It's not my concern, but!
It must be me, as I often Faced trouble with airlines, either seat problems, tv problem, food problem, the socks of my neighbour traveller is a problem, but having customer disservice is something no airline should have no matter what. Today, I witnessed first hand why Saudi airline is not a first class airline, nor did I ever see any news about it winning any award. The problem is not the aircraft, it's not the very polite air hostesses nor is it the captain! It's the ground staff, especially the supervisors. The ground check in staff are always the face of the airline, if they are nice and smiley, then you will want to see them again, so you travel on the same airline, otherwise you would want to get the hell of their face and try to hypnotise yourself so you erase their memory from your brain, else it will haunt you forever.
What happened to me today reminded me of my Haj trip, and how we stayed in Jeddah airport for 28 hours, sitting on the floor with no food, drink or even chairs, we didn't know if we were going to travel or not, and my sick dad (rip) was so edgy and wanted to leave ASAP, but of course we were not able to, then, suddenly at 6 am the next day we were lined-up to take our ride in that precious airplane. I must have tried to erase this memory as I was so upset about the lack of organisation, and apparently they were people who stayed for days without a ride (I am calling it a ride because having confirmed tickets didn't matter).
Also what happened to me this morning reminded me of the hong kong incident that also kept us waiting for two days in the airport during the storm that they had; there was food at the airport in the beginning, but towards the end of our second day everything that resembles food had vanished from all the restaurants and the little children were crying as they had no milk to drink as well as having rash due to shortage in nappies. We all smelled like old yogurt!!! But of course we couldn't help it. And the reason is the lack of organisation by the ground staff.
Today the same happened. The check in staff must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed, and it took him half an hour of staring on the screen in front of him, then he told me that my name is not there? Of course before that he said that I should have a printout of my ticket? Which I never print since the past few years, I don't want to go to hell because I killed trees!! So I confirmed that I don't have a printout, he argued that he will not find me on the list. And he didn't, so amidst the screams of other passengers I said what is next? He said to go to the supervisor; I obeyed as by now I only have 35 minutes to take off. So I went to the supervisor who had an army in front of him wanting to know what is happening to their seats? I became the brigadier and went next to him as he was not looking at us, I was curious to see what he was upto of course, I saw that he was not even looking at names or anything, so I asked what I should do? He sent me to the customer service desk? Oh Suger! I dashed and behind me came the troops, went inside that tiny room, and the guy sent us back to the supervisor, I can see one of the passengers crying her guts out, but the customer service person had blindness and deafness as he didn't even bother about her tears. We went to the supervisor (this trip takes at least three minutes so we are basically losing time), who shouted again at us that we should return to the CSS, well I think they had a plan that they want us to do our daily exercise by running between check-in desk to the CSS office.
At the end I shouted that if they don't give me my seat I will sue them and they have to put me on the next flight for free (my ticket was one of those supersavers that cannot be refunded in case the flight was not taken). So he looked at me and started to type my name (remember, the other guy looked for half an hour and couldn't find it huh) and voila there comes my name, he printed my two boarding passes and off I dashed to the plane. Not sure what happened to my troops and to the crying woman. I hope they managed.
Well as I said earlier it is not my concern, but if I was Saudi Arabian airlines I would kick everybody out and bring lovely looking females who are instructed to smile and get on with their work without having me turn into a brigadier nor having a crying woman or a young man dashing as he was told falsely he is on standby?
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