![An Aer Lingus spokeswoman said the firm had been 'in direct communication with [Lynda] prior to this media query to explain the background to the issues she encountered'. File photograph: Colin Keegan/Collins](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/5FBLZFAWKQUPNCRMZKIHFDJIWE.jpg?auth=956f428ff9d4d2ba97bc7c7345b19c59478b6871629bbcf8c3eb99ee729ea80d&smart=true&width=1024&height=631)
When a reader called Lynda set off for Newcastle airport at the end of May she had no idea her destination was calamitous customer service, but within hours things started to go wrong.
She was flying from the UK to Dublin “on an 11.30am flight and then on to the US”, she says.
“There was a long queue and we waited one hour and 20 minutes to check in while receiving no information at all,” she says, describing the customer service at her departing airport as “appalling”.
“On checking in, I noticed that my case as well as my daughter’s case had both been checked in under my daughter’s name. I queried this and was made to feel stupid when I was told it would make no difference,” she writes.
“We boarded the plane and after sitting for 30 minutes we were told that the flight was delayed due to problems with baggage. Sure enough, it was due to the error made at check-in and bag-handling staff boarded the aircraft to speak to me and my daughter, while we felt the full glare of the other passengers on the flight as it looked like it was all because of our mistake.”
Lynda and her daughter brushed off the awkwardness, “put it down to experience and looked forward to our next flight to JFK. Or so we thought”.
But the problems were only starting. When they arrived in Dublin, they remained in the in-transit area before heading towards the US pre-clearance facility where they waited to board the flight.
She says that 30 minutes before boarding “an announcement was made that our flight was cancelled. There was no further information given so we went to the gate and found that there were no staff available. There was then a tannoy message to ask us all to collect our bags and proceed to the Aer Lingus desk if we required accommodation. We duly did so, but still no other information was forthcoming other than being shouted at with ‘wait for a text or an email from the airline’.”
After standing in a long queue, Lynda and her four travelling companions were handed a card and allocated a room, evening meal and breakfast at the Radisson Blue airport hotel, along with other passengers. “We were then taken to the hotel by shuttle bus. That’s when our problems really began. The hotel refused to check us in until they had a confirmation email from Aer Lingus,” she says.
So they waited a further two hours only to be told that the “hotel was now fully booked for the evening and we would have to leave. I might add we were trying to phone Aer Lingus at this time along with all the other passengers and just being told [to] wait for an email or text”.
So, they travelled back to the airport. “As we approached the Aer Lingus information desk we were told the queue was now closed and couldn’t join it. We explained our situation and that we had waited two hours at the hotel and were told, ‘I don’t know what you want me to do about it. We have no further accommodation to offer you for the night.’”
Her group – including a 16-year-old child, were at a loss. “I couldn’t believe what we were hearing. I approached another lady and asked again what were the arrangements regarding accommodation, only to be told, ‘we can’t offer you any, are you aware it’s a bank holiday in England this weekend? Hotels were booked weeks in advance. You need to sort your own out.’”
Lynda’s daughter joined the queue for the desk and was told, “you can join the queue but you won’t be served”.
She says there was no appreciation of the fact that if they had not been sent to the hotel to queue in vain then they would have been “on time” to join the queue. “This wasn’t just incompetence, it was a wilful failure to listen to our concerns because they all wanted to go home. After a few more hours of trying we managed to book into a suite [the only available room] in a hotel in Portmarnock. It was 8pm and still no text email from Aer Lingus about onward travel,” she continues.
Not all of the problems are the fault of Aer Lingus. Sometimes when people book flights with travel agents, the travel agents have all the contact details and do not pass them on to the airline
Through a circuitous route, they found out that they had been booked on to a flight to Amsterdam the following morning and then a connection to JFK. “However, we had still not received any email or text or call from Aer Lingus,” she says.
“We arrived back at the airport the following morning with still no information from Aer Lingus and explained our travel agent’s instructions at the check-in desk. We were greeted by a wonderful girl who at least showed some compassion and confirmed that the travel agent was correct and we were booked on a flight to Amsterdam,” Lynda says.
But the travel trauma was not yet over.
“Of course, the Aer Lingus flight to Amsterdam was then delayed and we nearly missed our connecting flight to JFK, but thankfully we were flying KLM this time so they waited for us and we made the flight, however, our luggage didn’t. We spent a day less in New York than planned but managed to reorganise and try and make the most of it. However, we never heard from Aer Lingus the whole time we were away.”
They flew back from Boston with Aer Lingus on June 2nd. She says there was “no travel chaos this time, but the same poor customer service. The flight started with an announcement that some entertainment screens weren’t working (of course it was ours). As I write this we still have had no response from Aer Lingus. I appreciate this email is long, but there were so many problems and so many ways they got things wrong that as I write it I still find it hard to believe myself.”
She says that there is “clearly a problem with Aer Lingus staff at Dublin Airport for them all to think it was okay to treat customers in this way”.
It certainly does not cast the airline in a good light. We got on to the company.
First off, not all of the problems are the fault of Aer Lingus. Sometimes when people book flights with travel agents, the travel agents have all the contact details and do not pass them on to the airline as you might think they would. That means that if there is communication necessary about cancellations and delays, it can’t be sent directly to the passengers. That would appear to have happened in this case. An absence of communication was just one part of the problem. There was a whole lot more that the airline had to answer for, from mistagged bags to the absence of accommodation and misdirection to the hotel and the endless waiting as well as the less than civil service.
In a statement, a spokeswoman said that Aer Lingus had been “in direct communication with [Lynda] prior to this media query to explain the background to the issues she encountered and to explain that some were outside of our control”.
She said the “Customer Care team have been engaging with her to resolve her case and ensure she is reimbursed for all costs incurred. We are sorry to learn of her travel experience and the disruption she encountered. When bookings are made through a travel agency, Aer Lingus may not have access to the personal details of the customer and relies on the travel agency to make their direct customers aware of our communications and advise any updates and changes to their individual travel itineraries. We recognise the challenges around reaching those customers directly and are working closely with our travel partners to improve this process to the benefit of the customer, who is our priority.”
