BR strong customer service during SEA snowstorms

[TypicalAnonym]

I was on the BR flight from SEA on 12/22. That was the weekend when all hell broke loose in SEA, with snowstorms, ice, the airport running out of deicing fluid, airlines canceling whole days' worth of flights, people stranded at and sleeping in the airport, etc.

BR put in a strong showing in terms of customer service. Their entire ground staff or at least a very healthy percentage of them (gate agents etc) stayed up all night, at their posts, until we got off 14 hours late at 3PM on 12/22. They were highly visible throughout and smooth under fire. They put out fruit, sandwiches, hot tea and other refreshments for (all classes of) their pax.

Compare this with BA, which also had a flight delayed similarly, who had around 1 customer service person to help, and who made herself scarce pretty quickly. BA put out bottles of water and announced how generous they were being in providing refreshments. I saw one occasion of envious BA pax offering compliments to the BR staff on what a wonderful job they were doing!

And compare this with the US carriers, who simply announced over the PA "all flights for the remainder of today are canceled, you are on your own!" (almost in exactly those words, too).

When I got to Taipei 14 hours late they had already put me on one of the Europe-bound flights that leaves ~14 hours later than BR211 that I was originally scheduled for. So during SEA's storm of the century I arrived in BKK only 14 hours late, to start a 2.5 week vacation. Not bad, considering.

Nice job, EVA.

[jasperjugan]

that is indeed a good service!

[coolfish1103]

Very glad you were assisted well.

It might be a disaster for EVA ground staff in Seattle to deal if the Taiwanese passengers go complain in Taipei (even if it's weather related). It can get nasty.

[crunchie]

Glad to see you were taken care of. I have had similar great experiences with BR and SQ under similar circumstances (hurricane delays in asia).

Sad to say, my experience with my own home carriers NW and US are exactly as you described and I'm only referring to international flights. In all of their gateways that I've been stuck at for extended periods for whatever reason (weather, mechanical, crew, ATC,flat tire, etc...) the updates don't come every 15minutes as promised and it is a rare day indeed if you get staff taking care of customers beyond answering questions from behind the counter. In fact, on several occassions the staff make the announcement then disappear as quickly as they can (even as passenger head to the counter) then reappear every 20-30 minutes to repeat the same announcement.

Usually a good idea to fly one of the major Asian carriers for TPAC routes; tough for TATL though (if you're US based).

[exwannabe]

I have had 2 travel disruptions with Eva, and both times they came through fine.

In one case I missed a connection in TPE because my incomming flight was diverted to Japan due to a medical emergency. They put us up at a 4 star hotel, and handled all the details as I would hope. (OK, I suspect the hotel was owned by the conglermate and mostly empty because it just opened. But nice anyway)

On the other, I had a flight departing BKK when the airport was closed for 2 weeks in Nov/Dec'08. They moved the flight to an airport a few hours away and ran a very efficient checkin counter from a couple folding tables with notebooks on top. The line actually went faster than in most "real" airports.