Airlines, airports can do much better for travellers

Ray Petersen  -

petersen_ray@hotmail.com -

Flying is definitely the way to travel, but the airlines, as a collective entity, at some time, need to wake up their ideas and provide an enjoyable, rather more complete, experience for the traveller.

I have had a bit of a ‘dig’ at the airlines in the past, so I’m no stranger to their discontent either, but the fact is that I love flying. I love airline food, being able to watch the latest movies, and getting from ‘A’ to ‘B’ quickly, but I think it needs to be a more pleasant experience.

For a start, as the airlines work together on pre-flight procedures, ticketing, baggage handling and the like, with the airport companies, why can they not sort out mutually agreed baggage allowances?

I’m always hesitant when it comes to packing bags as to whether it is one bag or more than one? Whether it is 20 kg, 23 kg, or 30 kg? Whether the cabin allowance is one bag only, or one and an accessory, and whether the weight is 7 kg or 12 kg?

You will say, “Read the ticket.” But it’s often not on the ticket. So the traveller has to go through the rigmarole of finding out.

Last year, I flew Muscat to Dubai with one airline and took a different carrier to Moscow. My baggage was ticketed all the way to Moscow, but because of the different airline policies, I was subject to an extra bag charge at DXB, and a penalty payment, or DXB would take one of my bags off the plane.

Last week, a different airline took us from the United Kingdom to Europe, then on to Muscat. Now, because the tickets were purchased at different times (due to uncertainties about a layover possibility), the baggage was subject to different limits, with no checked luggage on the first sector, and a 23 kg allowance on the second flight.

So, between us, as we had two full bags each, I had to purchase four luggage units at 23 kg for the first sector, and two at 23 kg for the second. Well not only was it expensive, but the costs kept rising. 25 euros, 50 euros, and, wait for it, 162 euros, and that is as an Air Miles traveller of that airline.

Another recent policy is to ask for more money from travellers to be able to sit together. Why? Surely a family, husband and wife, partners and friends should be able to be seated together without paying more. Yet, for online check-in, unless you pay, you will be offered very limited options.

Worse than all of that is the demeaning manner in which economy class passengers are treated at check-in, security, and passport control, by being forced into those interminable queues that snake backwards and forwards across the front of the service areas.

No wonder, economy is referred to as ‘cattle class.’ It is all because we have been conditioned to accept a lack of service. Such treatment, bought on by a lack of staff, is miserable and offensive.

Even, all over the world, there are always only ever half of the self-service passport barriers in use, and I see that as just another slap in the face for we hard-done-by travellers.

Yes, and I do feel picked on. As we boarded our last flight I noticed the cabin baggage locker was marked, ‘For Air Crew Only’.

So, our hand baggage was placed nowhere near us, and we were therefore forced to wait until all passengers had disembarked, before we could get our bags and leave.

But! We are flying to New Zealand this week, so no matter how, and how often, we are humiliated and battered by air travel, it’s still the quickest.