Complaint Letter

Ray Webster

CEO, Easyjet

easyJet Airline Company Limited

easyLand

London Luton Airport

Bedfordshire

LU2 9LS

5 February 2003

Dear Mr Webster,

I was a passenger on one of the flights from Stansted cancelled last Thursday due to the bad weather. Forgive me writing directly to you, but I feel you personally need to know exactly how badly your customers were treated by your front-line staff so you can take appropriate remedial action.

Our plane, flight 315 to Munich, was loaded and awaiting takeoff when the runway was closed. These things happen, I do not complain about the weather, nor about the flight cancellation – some things are beyond anyone’s control.

At around 8pm the flight staff told us we would have to de-plane, and that a representative would be waiting for us in the terminal building to inform us how to reclaim our baggage and book onto later flights. So far so good. This is what happened next:

·         There was no representative to meet us as we came off the flight. There was no blackboard telling us what to do next, or where to go for information;

·         I made my way back to Check-In desk 41 to find out what to do. Your clerk told me she was responsible only for check-in (since all flights had been cancelled, no passengers were checking in by then). I asked again, politely, where I should go for information. She said it was not her problem, she only handles check-in. I explained, politely, that as the first Easyjet person we had seen since coming off the plane, it would be helpful if she could point us in the right direction. I was told to shut up;

·         At this point a man approached Check-In 41 to enquire where he could get hold of a wheelchair for a member of his party. He too was told to shut up;

·         I asked the check-in clerk’s name. She refused to give it, covering up her badge with her hand, and claiming that she was under no obligation to give her name. A few minutes later she shut the desk and disappeared;

·         The one member of your staff who was prepared to answer questions, a man with a yellow fluorescent bib and a radio, answered every question by telling passengers to go on the Internet for a refund.

·         Meanwhile there was a huge queue at your ticket desk as people desperately tried to make new travel plans. Within an hour, however, the desk shut and your staff disappeared despite the long queue. It is unlikely they left the airport, as all road and rail connections were closed, so I assume they all went off to a cosy staff room.

·         By 10 pm we had worked out where luggage was reappearing from cancelled flights. But there was no sign of bags from our flight, no information on when they might appear or why they were delayed. You will no doubt blame your ground contractors for this, but at no point over the next 5 hours did anyone from Easyjet appear to make the slightest effort to find out what was happening and inform us.

·         Our bags were eventually returned at 3.45 am. No explanation was given about the reasons for the delay, other than “the weather”. By this time it was a fine night, with stars. It had taken nearly eight hours to get our bags off the plane. None of the Easyjet staff, who presumably were still in the building, were visible.

·         At no point during the evening or night was information on the local transport system, on how to retrieve our bags or on how we might make travel plans posted on a blackboard or broadcast over the tannoy system;

·         At 4am I used the one working internet terminal in the building to book a mid-day Friday flight out of Heathrow with Lufthansa. Needless to say there were no available Easyjet flights for the next 24 or more hours by then.

·         Finally, I must point out that staff at Ponti’s restaurant and other retailers in the terminal responded magnificently – working with great cheer long into the night beyond when they would normally have been in bed. The contrast with your staff could simply not have been greater had we been starring in a John Cleese management training video.

This leaves me with three questions:

·         Does Easyjet have any protocol in place for staff to follow in the event of one or more weather-related flight cancellations?

·         If you do have a protocol, does the response I describe above fit with it? In particular are your staff allowed to shut desks and direct passengers to make new bookings on the Internet rather than help them face-to-face?

·         Do you condone staff rudeness to passengers, and are they ever allowed to refuse a polite request to identify themselves?

I want answers to these questions because I travel frequently, and I organise frequent trips for groups of friends. In March I am flying to Zurich with a group of 50, nearly half of whom have booked with Easyjet. I would like to know if in addition to being a low-cost airline, Easyjet is a low-service airline and a low-courtesy airline. If it is, I will make my future travel choices accordingly, and ensure that my friends, family and group members do likewise.

I await your response.

Yours faithfully

Michael Liebreich