You're still a Guest at 35,000 feet.... or are you ?

Airlines call you passengers, we like to call them Guests.

When it comes to air travel there are very few airlines that treat passengers as a Guest, however at GUESTX we view an overnight long haul flight in Business class as being no different to a stay in a hotel. You check in, your seat area is your room / bed, you eat dinner, sleep, eat breakfast and then check out. With this in mind why are 95% of airlines so poor at delivering an experience ? Case in hand flight from Heathrow to Singapore:

You know whether a flight is going to be good or bad before you even get on the plane.

Walking down the air bridge to board, two cabin crew on the right were busy chatting and seemed to be annoyed at being interrupted as passengers boarded, the conversation…

Crew 1: "oh, I didn’t get much sleep last night…."

Crew 2: "Oh I know babe, me neither, was too hot…. Boarding Pass, turn right….. the bus was hot getting in…."

Crew 1: "Boarding Pass, turn left…"

and so it went on. On the left side was what looked like the CSD with her iPad stabbing the screen and muttering under her breath.

We turned left to our seat and settled in. Drinks took 11 minutes to arrive, by a crew member who was shaking so much he almost spilt the tray of drinks on me. The CSD by this point had finished on her iPad and came over to apologise for the poor drinks service as it was only the crew members second flight in business.

Dinner choices were taken but as the crew in our cabin seemed to have all but disappeared and we were the last row to have an order take taken (row 5 - first row of business) our first choice was not available. We hadn’t even taken off but all the stars were aligning for a bad flight.

After take off, two hours passed trying to get the onboard power and wifi to work. The cabin crew kept telling us it was working, it wasn’t. We showed them the socket that had no green light in the middle or blue light around the USB and they still insisted it was working even going as far as saying the sockets didn’t have lights on (they must have missed that part of the training course). They went off huffing and puffing, coming back to say they had reset the system and it was working…. No it wasn’t. This went on until dinner was served and still no power. The wifi also wouldn’t connect to the payment server and kept ‘whirly wheeling’… this was also reset multiple times with no change. Crew simply advised, ‘take a screen shot and contact Customer Relations’.

No hot or cold towels at any point during the flight.

Dinner was served with a starter of beef and coucous salad. In reality it was a spoonful of coucous on a bed of mayonnaise. The virtually raw beef was swimming in water and also served on a bed of mayonnaise.

Only one drink was offered with the meal and no tea or coffee or liquors. The crew obviously under rate the food as when asking about desert we were told….

‘chocolate pudding is sickly, supposed to be hot but never is, fruit salad is very small and the apple crumble is cold and not as you know it’. 

With embarrassment they brought all three and they were spot on with very comment they made. No cheese course was offered.

With wifi and power still not working, it was time to ‘try’ to sleep, but the suite doors hadn’t been unlocked. When requesting they unlock it became apparent they had forgotten. As a pilot myself, and as any pilot will tell you, aircraft are run using checklists in the flight deck as well as the cabin. It was apparent the cabin crew once again hadn’t  followed any sort of checklist or process.

With dinner over and the crew quite happily chatting away in the galley, not to be seen, but definitely heard for the next 8 hours, lights were dimmed. During the night no crew were seen passing through the cabin so it was for passengers to fend for themselves and retrieve a drink, not as easy as one thinks.

On entering the galley, I received the usual dagger look of ‘why are you disturbing us’ and asked for a coke and some chocolate as none had been placed in the Club Kitchen. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Have you got any chocolate?

Crew: No

Me: Strange, as Lindt balls are normally loaded

Crew​​​​​​​: We don’t have any

Me:​​​​​​​ OK, but I said that’s strange

Crew​​​​​​​: Wait, I’ll look

Huffing and puffing followed as the crew member opened and slammed doors until magically behind door number three the Lindt chocolate was found. I am sure the crew wouldn’t dream of keeping the Lindt for themselves but from past experience they always seem to have chocolate when the Club Kitchen has none.

A coke was brought to my seat, served with no ice or lemon and at room temperature.

Breakfast was served, with the menu offering pastries and bakery items. No such luck, the tray came with one small croissant. I asked what pastries were available and advised:

Crew: ‘none have been loaded’.

No orange juice was offered with breakfast and only one hot drink offered.

On passing through the galley I noticed a plastic wrapped foil tray of cinnamon swirls. A crew member was clutching the tray and said to another crew

Crew: ‘these are all mine, no one is having these babies’.

Quite evidently she meant it as no pastries were to be seen in the cabin, obviously because the crew were ‘reserving’ them for their own consumption.

Prior to landing a crew member from First Class asked how we enjoyed the flight, listing the catalogue of issues, he simply said each issue was was fundamental, and changed the subject looking out the window to talk about cloud formations. He advised he would feedback and log but generally just didn’t seem to care either.

When speaking to the crew member (who was originally banging the iPad) regarding poor service and food, she told us she had two years left before retiring and couldn’t wait to leave as the ‘young ones’ didn’t want to work, which we evidenced as they spent all their time chatting and drinking instead of serving passengers. 

We didn’t meet one crew member who offered anything like the level of service that the airline advertises or promises and the crew, prima facie, use the flight as an inconvenience on their way to a city break in Singapore, do the least amount of work possible, deprive passengers of food items for their own enjoyment and when they are given feedback, change the subject or blame the ‘young ones’.

This level of service wouldn't be tolerated from a branded hotel chain, so why do airlines think it is acceptable to treat Guests passengers so badly?