Are you sick of rude incompetent companies? I am.

My lady was flying into the Gold Coast, 80Km from my home, from Sydney tonight after a school reunion weekend.

Does anyone know why is it that girls schools have so many of these things?

It was a bit of a rough night there tonight as I drove over. A lot of rain, low cloud, & some fog led to aircraft in holding patterns, waiting for it to clear, a bit, before they landed.

After 3 coffees, & 2 hours, a group of a couple of a couple of dozen, all waiting for passengers had become bosom buddies. Still this large low cost [in fact cheep may be a better description] airline had given us no idea what was happening.

The board advised that a couple of flights of another airline had diverted to Brisbane, but nothing for us

Then I saw her. You know the type, wearing an airline uniform, which looks as if moulded on her tall beautiful figure, beautifully made up, & presented, promenading on incredibly high heals. Every large airport has a few.

She looked just a little put out when she found me blocking her path, but quickly realised I was not going to take no for an answer. She contacted someone on the little radio she wore on her belt, but was having trouble finding out where my passenger may be.

Luckily, now, 2 & 3/4 hours after it's promised arrival, my phone rang. It was my lady, fresh off her plane, back in Sydney. It had been diverted back to Sydney an hour & 15 minutes earlier. Somehow it had never occurred to this airline to advise those waiting for passengers of this fact.

Perhaps a few less fassion plates, & a few more plump & happy help staff would be a good idea.

One can forgive this airline its recent booking system crash, but lack of effort to help customers is unforgivable. We will not be back, & I will not waste time again, picking up, anyone silly enough to fly with them.

LOl fantastic catch ups with chin wags Hasbeen; faces sore by the end of the night with a few more laughing lines in place [Reunions]!

Wheinging on this site about private matters, what sort of an opinion is that. Cheapest is not always the best, try Qantas.

Sorry to hear about your frustrations. Airline can be quite frustrating at time, and joy at other times.
If you want to blame the company, blame them because they have to hire hot looking girls(which sometimes aren't very smart, as they think all they need in order to be a success is their looks, thanks to all the media advertising). The ground staff, if she was competent enough, should have contacted flight operations, who would have been able to get in touch with the captain on the flight through flight controls. Who, would have been able to inform officers in flight operations who would have been able to inform the hot looking girl, who would have been able to make an announcement to all the impatient greeters at the airport.

So who should you blame? The hot girl or the low-cost company that you have chosen to fly on and still expect(which we should), the best service. I don't see that as a reason to stop using their services. It doesn't happen regularly, otherwise they would have gone bankrupt by now. Sorry you were the unlucky few that had to go through that unpleasant experience.

There is a great book by Laura Penny 'Your Call Is Important to Us - the Truth About Bullsh**' which sums up the demise of service in our modern rationalist economy.

We get the illusion of service and the illusion of more for your money when what we really get is a larger chocolates with a hollow centre and no substance. :)

Two problems: first, through outsourcing no-one on the ground (better make that in customer service), knows what has gone wrong and even the person you are talking with may not be an airline employee despite the uniform; secondly, you struck someone who couldn't give a damn despite being paid to care, which made you feel worse.

Fair enough to get frustrated with systems that can go horribly wrong and when they do, only someone in senior management knows who (possibly) is responsible and what (perhaps) can be done. The airlines like other businesses will argue it is a risk to be run for cheaper prices (and for profit).

What I am saying is that if you want the right target, he or she is up there being paid millions a year and such a person is unlikely to ever admit any fault and will rely on advertising spin to 'fix' this problem. Suck it up as they say, because the opposition is managed the same, but a glitch hasn't happened in its bookings program yet (cross fingers).