Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Why friends don't let frieds fly Blue1

I'm in Finland, but just had a very Kingfishery (an Indian airline teetering on the brink of bankcruptcy) no-fly experience with a local airline, Blue1. I arrived to the airport early, e-checked myself in, went through the security check and camped beside the gate 14A to fly to Oulu. The scheduled boarding time came and went, but I was much more alarmed when suddenly the gate label was changed from Oulu to Brussels.

I went to have a look at the departures board and saw that my flight was cancelled. Sure the weather was not perfect, but mine was the only red blinking island in a vast sea of green.

There are other airlines flying to Oulu every morning and my cancelled flight was the first one to go, so I went to the transfer desk to get a seat on either of those. Not much luck there, as you can see.

I went to ask the SAS/Blue1 lounge if there was anyone who could help me and they kindly told me I need to exit the airport area and go back to the Blue1 ticket office only to find that I was hardly the only person with the same problem.

The flights I could've taken took off well before the queue even inched forward for the first time. Blue1 took great care to make sure every person on their cancelled flight missed every one of those - of course this way they save money as their worst case scenario turns into a re-schedule to a later flight of theirs or full refund - a ticket on any of those competitor flights is undoubtedly the dearest option. They'll refund the flight tickets, but the lost time, groupwork and 90€ of cab money are mine and my employer's losses. I'm not holding my breath to hear back from them, but I've posted a link to this post to their feedback form in case they'd like to comment or compensate.

Companies nowadays try very hard to define an identity. Here's an excerpt of Blue1's lofty corporate goals, which financial realities seem to have thrown out the window:

Blue1's more than 400 employees are actively and daily involved in thousands of passengers’ everyday life. With Blue1 a new era of air travel is created of the courage and passion to our own work and importance in our customer-focused perspective.

I must say I'm pretty pissed off about the airline now - it's one thing to cancel a flight and at least make an effort to take of the affected passengers and another to cancel a flight and make absolutely sure no customer gets any help to keep their commitments.

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