Until fairly recently, I have been a fan of budget airlines, if only because they have enabled my family and friends to whizz around the skies of Europe seeing interesting places and keeping in touch with loved ones. (Until I make my millions and can afford a Learjet, this will probably not change). I prefer Easyjet to Ryanair in this – by a whisker – because the commutes from the airports that airline uses to wherever I want to go tend to be so long as to undermine some of the cost savings of using the airline. This is a marginal difference between the two airlines and other passengers might take a different view. So Easyjet gets the nod. But until now.
Yesterday, on a fairly routine flight out of Europe, I spotted something that made my jaw drop – although that may be my naivete here. A young, short woman – less than 5ft tall – was struggling to push her hand luggage item into the locker above her seat. The bag was not all that big or heavy. But the flight attendant, a 30-something young guy with a rather annoying tendency to giggle at the passangers and staff constantly, refused point blank to help her move the item. I think the line went something like this: “It is not my job to move your stuff. If you cannot move it, then it is too big for you and it goes into the hold.”
Eventually I helped the lady put the bag, which was fairly light, into the locker. Now I have checked the regulations on the Easyjet website and I cannot see where it is stated that flight attendants are not supposed to help short people push their bags into a locker. In other words, a woman was refused help because she was short, as far as I can tell. My wife speculated that Easyjet staff do not get medical insurance as part of their pay package, so they have refused to do anything – such as lift bags – that might lead to a problem. That may be the reason.
I hate the whole litigation culture so I would not advise the person in question to have a go at Easyjet. And it is a hassle to spend more money to fly with an airline where the staff do not come close to treating their paying customers with an attitude hovering between fake bonhomie and outright contempt. And in these straightened times, we’ll probably do the British thing, bear up and put up with it. But all the same, I was not impressed by the orange airline, and will be avoiding it in future if at all possible. In fact, when I head for France next month, I’m taking the ferry across the English Channel and then duelling it out wiith the motorists of the Fifth Republic.
Update: another big and fatal air crash. There seem to have been rather a lot of them lately.
The general catch all excuse for the low-frills airlines is the you must be capable of handling all your carry on baggage yourself; that’s how they manage with three cabin crew and a twenty five minute turn around. From their point of view, it’s the passenger’s fault for not knowing her own limits, and thereby slowing up the whole process.
Obviously, they’re not going to stop people at the gate and check their ability to move about, so it’s up to the other passengers to help out, just in the name of getting things done.
Easyjet normally wins out over Ryanair because, as you say, at least they normally make some effort to mask the open contempt they have for their customers. Also, they generally act more like a ‘real’ airline than cattle transporters, although they have been taking the piss with the extra charges and the myriad of different ‘classes’ in boarding priority of late.
These days I generally take the hit and book with BA, who have been very competitive recently. Just don’t take any hold baggage; unless you really need your underwear to take a tour of the Caucuses whilst you’re in the Algarve.
That was good of you to help her Jonathan – I hope you told the staffer exactly what you thought of him (I would have – and I wouldn’t have been polite about it either).
About a year ago, a former Japanese customer of mine told me of how, on disembarking in Taipei, the China airlines staff allowed a woman with a small child in a push-cart to alight from the aircraft first. What happened next was that the rest of the passengers alighted, took the shuttle bus to the terminal and then rushed past her toward the gate doors so that she was left standing unable to get through the doors (manual) because of the rush of people. My Japanese chap sees this, is outraged, gets to the door and shouts at everyone to stop so that he can hold the door open for the woman to get through. He told me that he later saw many of the passengers who had rushed past the woman idling away in the arrivals coffee shop on their mobiles.
What a bunch of rotten bananas.
The slightly sarcastic youngish male English Easyjet cabin attendant is something of a cliche, I fear. I have encountered a few like that. I think I actually find the (usually eastern European) staff on Ryanair more pleasant, as long as you understand that the “treat the customers like cattle” policy comes from the airline’s policies and not the staff themselves.
My feelings on Ryanair’s choice of airports are actually more positive than negative. Yes, they do have a tendency to advertise airports as serving cities that they are not always close to (and one should always make sure you know exactly where you are flying to before paying a fare), but the flipside of this is that there are now extensive air services throughout Europe to all kinds obscure places that lacked them before. If it is possible to make money flying between a particular pair of airports, Ryanair will fly it, and won’t charge the passengers much.
One of the more pernicious arguments traditionally advanced by often state owned “national carriers” is that they should be protected from competition on profitable routes in order that they can use the profits to subsidise routes to minor destinations, and that if they faced proper competition they would be unable to afford to do so. (BA has often been particularly bad in this regard). The fact that the discount airlines – particularly Ryanair – are able to fly to far more obscure places then the legacy carriers ever have, and that they can offer people who live in them far more choice of direct destinations, is a fine argument against protectionism and political management of airlines.
While not quite, perhaps, in the price class of Ryanair or Easyjet, the US carrier SouthWest has shown that budget pricing and superior customer service can co-exist very nicely indeed.
SW is a byword in the US airline industry for both its cut-throat business approach and its generally-amazing customer service. And they make money, too.
Interestingly-enough, SW is also well-known for not taking a lot of nonsense from its customers. If a customer who bought a $29 round-trip from Phoenix to Portland starts acting the prima-donna and demanding that the airline cater to their every wish and whim, they’re likely to get a polite but final refund. The philosphy at SW seems to be staff first, then customers, then shareholders.
I wonder whether the poor experiences with UK budget carriers reflect the generally-poor approach to customer service in Europe, where many consider serving others well to be distasteful & beneath their dignity.
llater,
llamas
I hate the whole lot of them with a vengeance.
I gave up on Ryanair when they started extorting £6 per person per flight leg for the use of a debit card. Book a two-leg return flight for two people and that’s £36 they want for a single transaction that costs them pennies or maybe actually nothing. No, they are taking the pi** and not from me, thank you.
My most recent trip abroad was on KLM and apart from a slightly tense short turnaround at Schipol it could not have been more pleasant. Top marks, guys.
If I can’t go by train, then I will book early and go on a proper airline; once you factor everything in, the budget ones are not cheaper, they are just nastier.
They can shove it, frankly.
Oops. £48. Mental arithmetic at lunchtime is clearly not my forte.
Agree with you that there seem to have been quite a few air crashes lately. Not, however, I think, on the sort of short-haul flights that Ryanair, Easyjet, etc do.
Also concur with your concern about Easyjet’s customer service, as you report it.
Both these points may be good, but I suggest that, for the avoidance of doubt, it’s worth clarifying that they are unconnected.
The discount airline business learned its lesson after the Valujet crash in Florida in 1996. Both Easyjet and Ryanair have high standards with respect to maintenance and safety. One way they do this is by simply having extremely new fleets of aircraft. Buying huge numbers of aircraft from Boeing (Ryanair) or Airbus (Easyjet) at a bulk discount, flying them for three or four years, and then selling them on to in smaller lot sizes to smaller airlines who cannot negotiate the same discounts from Boeing or Airbus is a big part of the modern discount airline business model. It also allows them to fly aircraft that are quieter, less polluting, and have better fuel consumption than average.
I like Southwest too. Frontier is about the same, although they’re a little spendier and a little upscale from SW.
United deserved to go out of business. They did not deserve to come back.
(BTW, every FFDO participant I’ve ever met was with Frontier. I like a pilot who will put that much effort into my safety.)
“153 passengers along with 16 crew were on the plane that crashed,” ISNA said
Now there’s the airline you want! 1 crew member for every 10 passengers — talk about personal service. Of course, there may be more to the story than we have been told. It’s Iran, after all.
Back to the original post. I for one am tired of people who clutter up planes and slow down boarding & deplaning by bringing on excessive carry-on baggage. I have no sympathy for the lady in question.
Of course, her disresepect for her fellow passengers in bringing on a bag she could not handle does not excuse the rudeness of the flight attendant. But he was English. Maybe in his culture his behavior was not considered rude.
Alice, sorry, but that was a daft comment. The bag she was carrying was pretty small and quite light. There is no rule set by Easyjet that says “short folk should take another airline or the train or ask another passenger for help”. Maybe they should. The consumer reaction would be most interesting to watch.
Even as a fellow passenger, if the day ever comes that I’m too lazy or uncaring to help some short woman put a reasonably sized bag in an overhead bin, it will be time to cash in my chips. That flight attendant was an ass and deserves to be given his walking papers.
You have to wonder what the airlines are thinking. Most people already loathe flying just due to the damned security issues. Now the staff consider themselves entitled to be bloody-minded as well?
Right. To be honest, as one of those people who has to fly enough to get to be an “Elite” passenger, the fact there are air rage incidents doesn’t surprise me at all. What I find surprising is that there aren’t considerably more of them!
Sidebar – my co-worker who’s an officer in the National Guard tells me that SouthWest is extremely military-positive, and that when he travels he always takes his military ID with him. Upgrades and favours all the time.
SouthWest is also known (apparently) to be very gay-friendly.
llater,
llamas
What a relief.
After reading the first couple of lines I assumed that the attendant would tell the passenger that he couldn’t lift the bag into the overhead locker due to Health & Safety regulations.
“Alice, sorry, but that was a daft comment. The bag she was carrying was pretty small and quite light.”
OK, Jonathan. You are certainly entitled to your opinion. Now look at this through libertarian eyes.
One way of encapsulating the libertarian viewpoint is — Don’t be a burden to other people.
A lady I know, rather short, spent an inordinate amount of time finding the right carry-on bag. She selected a bag which is small & light and which fits under the seat in front of her. She does not have to hold up other people when boarding, or need to rely on the kindness of strangers. That’s libertarian.
So we understand each other, it is great when strangers are kind — a real affirmation of all of us sharing the planet together. But it is not libertarian to choose by one’s own behavior to make oneself dependent on that kindness, and to become a nuisance to others (like the guys still standing in a cold European jetway) when that kindness is not immediately forthcoming.
A flight attendant who giggles at people and doesn’t help a woman is acting gay, even if he isn’t. I only know one young man who could be considered a giggler, and he is not gay and he would be happy to be gallant.
The woman in question should complain to the company, especially if she just had a normal sized carry-on.
And Alice, I appreciate what you are saying. I really detest people who carry on huge cases, too. Why should the airline make ME stow my small carry-on in front of me, where my feet should be, and these jerks get to take up ALL the space overheard and get their foot space, too? That torques me a lot, but not enough to let my books out of my sight just to make a point. 🙂
Alice, I still think your argument is off-base because it is not up to a customer to “not be a burden” to flight attendants: The woman was a customer and unless an airline like Easyjet makes it clear that short folk can expect no help with a bag, either small or large, then it seems to be out of order for such an airline employee to behave in the way he did.
If Easyjet had, in its terms and conditions, a line saying that “short people cannot expect help from staff in lifting bags to the overhead locker”, then of course the woman would have no grounds for complaint. But they do not say that. I have checked and there is no such message.
As an ardent free marketeer, I would hope that competition spurs improvements in client service. The idea that “we should not be a burden” to airline staff when we have paid to use a service is more akin to the mindset of a socialist, not free market, business world.