Sunday, February 19, 2006
The truth about Emirates
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Krishnamurthy Suresh <ksiyer50@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 19, 2006 7:19 AM
Subject: The truth about Emirates
To: jawad@alumni.washington.edu
Cc: fahad.osman@dnata.com
Hi Jawad,
While trying to find out ways and means of getting my view across to
the Executive Vice President of Emirates, I happens to see your blog
and more particularly what Fahad of dnata and that of one Australian
who is perhaps not an employee of Emirates group.
In the last 6 months, I have flown Emirates 18 sectors and around
50,000 miles and I understand that I rank among the most extensive
travellers on Emirates.
Fahad Osman given, though unknowingly, the explanation and the true
reason why travellers holding a confirmed booking find that even
though they hold a confirmed ticket, are told by the boarding counter
staff that they don't have a reservation.
IN fact there are two things that are very striking about Fahad's
posting. The first one is of course the true reason for the missing
bookings of travellers with confirmed booking. The fact is, Emirates,
like all IATA carriers, gives TG-100 and many other versions like
TG-90 to TG 33 to their employees as a part of their employment
compensation.( A TG 100 is a fully free ticket and TG 90 is 90% off
etc.). The condition attached to these free or discounted tickets is
that, seats should be available on the preferred day and the
employees are generally put on standby.
The real life situation is that the reservation staff and the check-in
counter staff knowingly look for weak persons whom they can BS around
and get away it, to accommodate their own co-workers. Now this is
really a situation where personnel Department's efforts to promote
inter-personnel relationship has proved to be counter productive.
Airlines that promotes inter-personal relationship actually have more
dissatisfied clients than those where the counter staff are not too
keen on accommodating their co-workers going on leave. Consider the
real situation when Emirates fly South Asian sectors ( i.e Pakistan,
India, Bangladesh ) In these sectors the employees will never get to
use their free tickets unless the counter staff manages to rig the
reservations chart. So next time when you fly Emirates ( or for that
matter any other carrier to its most favoured sectors) and find that
your reservation is missing, ask the reservation guys who are the
employees taking that flight and talk to the station chief.
The second point about Fahad's posting is rather specific to Emirate
Airlines. This is about the kind of attitude that they have. When he
says,
"As an employee of the Emirates group, I normally have to endure
schedule disruptions caused by the fact that my booking may be
cancelled or that I may be asked to take a later flight to accommodate
other passengers who arrive at the last minute or have requested to be
boarded on a full flight due to humanitarian reasons. "
he is talking non-sense and he knows it. He travels on a free ticket
and the condition attached to it is that any paid traveller get
priority over him.
This leads to the other aspect whether the counter staff are at fault?
I fully agree that the counter staff cannot be held responsible for
all or even many of the short comings, as essentially it boils down to
the fact that the airline's training division has been ineffective
and it has failed to train their staff properly. The point is the
counter staff are persons of limited capabilities and that is why they
are where they are. If they had better abilities they must be in some
industry other than hospitality and in any case, even if they choose
to be in this industry, they must be holding posts high above the
counter staff, to be visible to travelers.
But what is unpardonable about these counter staff or the flight crew
is that they often time try to protect their co-workers by bluffing
the traveller holding a confirmed reservation and their wholly
incorrect attitude. For instance, on an eight hours whole nigh flight
from Accra to Dubai, on the 14th Feb., the aircraft did not have
adequate number of blankets ( even the 3 hours flight to South Asian
countries have one blanket on each seat but the black continent is
discriminated against).
Considering how well Alex seem to have been treated, I am increasingly
getting a feeling that Emirates Airlines is following a policy of
racial discrimination against South Asian and the blacks.
Can any one help me get the e-mail ID and fax number of Executive Vice
Chairman, Emirates Airline & group?
