What airlines keep getting wrong: Airlines' poor communications add salt to the wound for annoyed travellers

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The airline's tagline "To fly, to serve" was wrong on both counts this weekend because its usual stellar service was inadequate when dealing with close to 75,000 stranded passengers at London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports.

How companies deal with the customer's problem is often more telling than the problem itself. And yet, the British flag-carrier fumbled this too. Communication was not clear.

The chief executive, Alex Cruz, gave his first proper interview about the IT issue a whole two days after the airline's off-site system was rocked by a power surge. Would-be passengers complained about the lack of information other than that they would not be going to Rome/New York/anywhere-but-Heathrow-Terminal-5.

When they were told something, it was what they would not be given, such as flights on a rival airline to their ticketed destination. The crises may be completely different, but the slow and unsympathetic response from the top brass at BA echoed that from their counterparts at United. Delayed and dreadful.

It was not at the level of airline crisis management failures than Malaysian Airlines reached at the height of the MH370 disaster, when distraught families felt stonewalled, while the media and other authorities were given inaccurate or non-transparent information regarding the search for the missing plane. But that's not saying much. The key to crisis management is to not make an already bad situation worse, and again another airline has failed to meet the mark.

Flyers who face travel disruption are always going to be a fickle bunch. And why not?

If you're travelling for business it can feel like your next promotion, if not your whole career can be derailed if you fail to make a client meeting because the airline decided to "accelerate synergies" by outsourcing their IT department.

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Likewise, if your about to jet off for a holiday you've been saving for all year and you're not only delayed but largely ignored then quite rightly you'll want to vent. The leisure travel sector has evolved to the point where many tourists piece together their own holidays and book 'non-refundable' components, so one grounded flight can snowball into an itinerary of cancelled, useless hotels, connections and activities. It gets messy quickly.

I have plenty of sympathy for airlines dealing with commuter chaos caused by storms and fog. Many others do too. Weather is unpredictable and safety should always be paramount. But an IT issue, a strike or reckless disregard for service standards is another story.

As customers it's right to expect transport companies to have thorough contingency plans and succinct lines of communication from the top brass down to the ticketing desk. Complex problems, bureaucracy and an unwillingness to admit fault (and therefore financial liability) should not stop airlines from getting a solution for customers. The cost of being seen to be doing nothing is massive. This IT failure will cost the airline more than £100 million ($A172 million) in compensation payouts alone.

Worse, the reputation damage comes at a time when many loyal, patriotic Brits are questioning whether BA is any different to the low-cost carriers that rival it.

The company will feel a little bruised after getting a torrent of angry customer abuse online.

"Why us? We only wanted to fly, to serve"

But the glamorous airlines can't have it both ways: the millions of eyes glued to stories about your new routes, new planes and always-hilarious-and-never-tedious safety videos are the same that will click and read aghast about your company's abusive staff, cancelled routes and rotten mid-flight meals.

And just as social media amplifies the reach of airlines' latest campaign, so too does it share their woes with a global audience. In record time and with even more shares and retweets because, well, bad news about travel tends to attract schadenfreude-loving people sat at their work cubicles.

But just as reputations can be battered from PR disasters like United's and BA's, travel companies can also impress with their abilities to deal with a customer problem.

The managers of the MGallery hotel in Lyon recently impressed me with their efficient action on a guest's lost piece of jewellery. Rather than blame the customer, or the staff or shrug their shoulders nonchalantly they launched into problem-solving mode and had a clear plan to reach a solution. The result is now a guest who instead of questioning the criminality of the cleaning staff now praises the professionalism of the front of house.

Whether dealing with travellers one-on-one or through the crowded hordes of Heathrow, travel companies would do better to focus on clear communication and proposed solutions.

Josh Martin is a London-based Kiwi journalist, who writes about travel, tourism, business, and consumer issues in between trips to places you'd rather be. Email josh.martin@fairfaxmedia.co.nz if you have a travel issue you'd like him to write about.

Stuff.co.nz

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