…but Ryanair praised
“The latest Annual Report of the Air Transport Users Council (AUC), published today, shows that the complaints to the Council about flight cancellations are up by a third from last year and more than double the number two years ago. In the year to the end of March 2004, the Council handled 740 complaints about cancelled flights compared to 558 in 2002/3 and 354 in 2001/2. A closer look behind these statistics shows that no-frills airlines are accounting for an increasing proportion of these complaints.
AUC chairman Tina Tietjen, commenting on the release of her first annual report as Chairman, said:
“The increase in complaints about cancellations is becoming a cause for concern. It appears likely that the rise in no-frills traffic is fuelling the surge in these complaints. So whilst we commend the success of no-frills carriers in bringing fares down and hugely expanding the range of destinations on offer, we call on them to convince us that the inconvenience and financial costs suffered by passengers when flights are cancelled are not the flip side to the benefits these airlines bring to air passengers”.
The Council, however, welcomes the 23% drop in the complaints about mishandled baggage, though it does still remain the number one source of complaints to the AUC. It also praises Air France and Ryanair, against whom the Council received significantly fewer complaints in 2003/4 compared to 2002/3. The number of complaints against Air France fell from 139 to 41 and against Ryanair, from 201 to 161.
Notes to editors
1. Numbers of complaints against airlines are not weighted in any way. The most appropriate weighting would be against UK departing passengers (because the AUC is a UK organisation). There are no published sources for these figures.
2. The Air Transport Users Council (AUC) is consumer watchdog for the aviation industry. It was set up, and is funded, by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to help protect the interests of air travellers.”
“Britain’s air transport consumers’ watchdog will raise the alarm today about unrealistic timetables operated by low-cost airlines, which it blames for a surge in complaints about cancellations from disgruntled passengers.
A report from the Air Transport Users’ Council will reveal that the number of gripes about cancelled flights soared by 32% to 740 in the year to March.
EasyJet, FlyBe and BmiBaby were to blame for the bulk of the increase following rapid growth in their fleets and schedules. The council said the inconvenience and financial cost of cancellations appeared to be the “flip side” of their lower fares.
However, Europe’s biggest low-cost airline, Ryanair, won praise for bucking the trend. Complaints about the Irish carrier dropped by a fifth to 160 after it reformed its customer services operation to treat unhappy passengers more seriously.
James Fremantle, the AUC’s industry affairs adviser, said: “The no-frills airlines do appear to be cancelling more flights. EasyJet, in particular, has struggled to keep enough aircraft available for all its routes.
“Our feeling is that when complaints arise, the no-frills airlines are not dealing with them as well as they might.”
The AUC deals with passengers who have failed to make headway in complaints to individual airlines. The total number of cases handled by the council rose from 1,675 to 1,750.
Lost baggage remained the most common cause of complaint, although its share of cases dropped from 23% of the total to just 16%. The proportion of complaints about delays remained unchanged at 13%, but that for cancellations jumped from 10% to 13%.
British Airways, which carries more passengers than any other airline, remained top of the complaints league. But EasyJet leapfrogged Ryanair and KLM to take second place. EasyJet said the council’s remarks were “unfortunate,” pointing out it cancelled only 5.75 flights per thousand last year – fewer than BA, which cancelled 14.8 per thousand, partly due to a wildcat strike last summer which hit hundreds of services.
EasyJet’s chief executive, Ray Webster, said: “We take the issue of cancelling flights exceptionally seriously and it is only ever done as an absolute last resort.”
BmiBaby said it had increased in size by more than 50% over the last year. A spokesman said the AUC had only received one complaint for every 50,000 of its passengers.
The unexpected success story of the year was Ryanair, which was the subject of only 160 complaints, compared to last year’s 201.
The Irish airline’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, has made little secret of his impatience with unhappy passengers. He remarked in one interview this month: “Are we going to apologise when something goes wrong? No, we’re not. It does not matter how many times you write to us complaining that we wouldn’t put you up in a hotel because there was fog in Stansted. You didn’t pay us for it!”
The AUC said that despite Mr O’Leary’s attitude, constructive work had been underway behind the scenes to improve Ryanair’s customer relations.
Mr Fremantle said: “Michael O’Leary likes the image of an abrasive chief executive. But if you speak to people further down Ryanair, they realise they had a problem with their image and needed to improve it.””
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August 19, 2004 at 10:58 am