Lobengula

Is HIDDY's wife on the forum

redsox?

sunrisegirl

Don't know about his wife, but his gorgeous dog Cuqui was a member for one brief post before being suspended

Jagboi

On every Air Canada flight I've been on the boarding calls are in the following order:
1. Those with infants and small children/ eldery/ disabled/ those who need extra time to board the aircraft.
2. Business class and those who are Super Elite/ Elite/ and *A gold and silver can board at their leisure (but called first)
3. Boarding Y class by row number starting at the back of the plane.

The gate agents are generally good about enforcing the rules, I've see people turned away and told that they are not boarding that row yet and to wait until the row they are in is called.

I've never had a problem with overhead bin space this way, and people seem to respect the Y/J division.

Genius1

PUCCI ^

HIDDY

arcticfox was referring to my earlier post where I explained that she takes no prisoners when boarding at the gate.....no matter how shiny your card is.

Indeed...that was a injustice.

She sends you her love......she's sitting next to me at the moment.

Oi.......watch it.

bealine

Damn! Those rumours about middle-age spread are getting around!


.........about the fact I am a "he" or about the middle-aged spread?

As we have Number One Son and Darling Daughter, (currently working for the summer helping passengers in Terminal 4), one of us is a "he" and one of us is a "she" - I guess!

bealine

Aw, shucks! I'm not really nuthin' special! Thanks for the kind thought though, I am pretty flattered!

Besides, I like our Director of Customer "Experience" - Silla Maizey. Her heart's in the right place, just there's a lot of pressure on her and the team to deliver huge cost-savings!

If Bealine had her job, he would probably be having to make the same unsavoury decisions as Silla!

As for the curious way I had passports back, it's all down to the way I was first trained when I entered the business! Calling customers by name is something I only tend to do where I know the particular national culture likes it - Americans, Africans, Japanese, Chinese seem to like being addressed by name, us British are a reserved lot who would rather pass by anonymously don't you think?

If you teach a child to always pass a knife or a pair of scissors by holding the blade and offering the recipient the handle, they will continue to do so throughout life. If you teach a child to always look behind them when going through a doorway, and hold the door if someone is following, they will do this in adulthood. Teach someone, as a child, to treat people the way they like to be treated themselves, you have someone who naturally gives customer service! Simples!

Because I come from a farming background which supplied Waitrose years ago, I am rather well known in a John Lewis branch or two and it makes me cringe when the staff keep calling me Mr XXX, although I can never fault their standards of customer service!



So, I may have a customer service idea or two for Silla, but I'd rather be her right-hand man than to threaten her job!

PUCCI GALORE

NOT IF HE WAS THE LAST MAN ON THE PLANET!

You do value your life - and No I was not his bltch ejected after one posting either.

Do Skylady and the other fine flying folk on Flyertalk have to tolerate such insults to their taste and intelligence?

However we learn that Bealine is a man of the soil and that Bealine-ette and Bealine Heir Apparent are now very grown up. God, must make him feel 100 some days! xxxxx

arcticfox

I too share some sympathy for your Director - it must be an outrageously difficult job in times such as these, and I doubt it is one I'd want at the moment. It must be difficult having to take cost-cutting decisions which you know will erode the overall service offering, and yet I cannot help thinking that adopting a sort of "one cost cutting measure to be balanced by 3 cost-less minor improvements (such as the queuing system)" would help offset the necessary pain in some areas. And to train everyone to hand back the passports the way you do (again virtually cost free), for all it is a tiny detail, would make a HUGE statement about the way BA views its customers. Such things have a habit of rubbing off on the way people serve customers in other ways, not to mention the fact that it has other benefits. To be know as "the company which hands your passport back with respect" might seem in some ways a bit contrived, but it is all these little details which help to build and sustain a reputions such as "the world's favourite airline". I seem to recall a few years back an advertising campaign which included a story about one CC (I think it could have been Air Canada, but could be wrong) when asked if they had hot chocolate available went to her own personal stash (the airline didn't normally offer it) and made a hot chocolate for the passenger. Who knows if this was true or just some marketing tale. Yet urban legends like this are what "set the tone" for everyone in a company and what help build a brand.

I still annually go back to the same small hotel that my parents used to take me to. To be honest, the facilites are basic, the rooms a little dated and the food, while tasty and wholesome, certainly isn't the finest I've ever eaten. Yet from as early as I can remember as a child, whenever I (as a kid) and my sister went to the hotel, sitting on the bed would be a soft-toy for each of us with a label round its neck with our name on it which we then had custody of while we were there. Now that I am older, the same thing is done for the "arctic cubs" (as I am sure is the case for all small visitors). The look of hapiness on the kids faces when they run into the room to see what teddy is waiting for them this time with THEIR name on is worth far more to me than any amount of Priority Points, and it would not surprise me if my kids (if they in turn have kids) will continue to go there too.

I accept your point about being called by name - some people find it a bit more cringeworthy than others, though I often feel that this rather depends on how it is done. When done (NOT overdone!) politely and discretely, I still thing it leaves a positive impression and helps reinforce a feeling of "personal" service which can really make a company stand out from the masses.

And yes, you are so right about training and learning good habits which will last a lifetime. I have never had any concerns about the quality of training of BA staff when it comes to the most important aspects of flight safety and basic process. But I long for the day when the training extends to the finer details of "passport passing". If BA wants become "The airline of a thousand little touches", I for one will keep coming back.

bealine

It probably was true.

A very, very nice In-Flight Service Manager for Continental Airline did just that for Darling Daughter one night coming back from Houston. After dinner had been served and the crew were offering "tea or coffee?", Darling Daughter (6 years old at the time) lisped, in her sweetie-pie way, "Is there any Hot Chocolate please?"

"Sorry, Honey, there isn't!" he replied, and carried on serving the rest of the cabin.

When he finished, we heard a lot of rustling from the front of the cabin, and the sound of a trolley bag being unzipped. The ISM suddenly appeared in front of Darling Daughter with a steaming mug of chocolate and said to her "I like a hot chocolate before I turn in at my hotel, so I usually carry some! You enjoy it!"

Some people will go the extra mile with no thought of their own reward - and before anyone cottons-on, he didn't do it because we were on staff tickets, he is just a genuine, nice Texan! (because I still see him at Heathrow occasionally)

.........and, not to be outdone, we do have some people like that in British Airways too! Our BA News (replaced now with the on-line version "Up!") could probably fill Encycopaedia Britannica with the bouquets we have received over the years for individuals who have put themselves out!

nth_utsera_sth_utsera

Maybe not for much longer:

AA to launch priority boarding service
Business Traveller

The quote which sums it up for me:

BingBongBoy

I do the same with herbal and fruit tea. I do not drink them myself, but take a selection from hotels I stay in and if someone asks for one on a flight, I tell them we do not have them onboard, but that I have a few in my bag. Bring them some hot water and a selection of teas after the service... Seems to bring a little bit extra to things...

ajax

I must say, that is an excellent touch, and one which has clearly paid its dividends manifold. ^

I agree. Unfortunately many airlines do the converse and end up scaring customers away. I firmly believe it is far easier to get money when it's given willingly than when it's given begrudgingly.

Teefaf

On the subject of 'details do matter', on a recent lh QF flight the CC were handing out table cloths ahead of the dinner service. I was working on my laptop and not quite ready to receive it yet, so the FA offered to hand it to me for me to lay out myself. By this time I'd cleared space, and when she saw me checking which side was 'up', she remarked that she was genuinely impressed I'd checked.

I wasn't sure whether to be embarrassed at my analness (at 26 I really shouldn't care about things like this, should I?!), or pleased to have developed a level of 'refinement'!

But the point is important - being given a coaster upside down (or occasionally not at all), or the menu, or your passport... it all detracts from what still should be a special experience.

So to all those BA staff that strive to uphold attention to detail, I thank you.

bealine

The gentleman who trained me, an ex-British Caledonian steward, remarked that "You wouldn't stick a stamp on an envelope upside down, in case someone thought you unpatriotic, so why should you hand a passport back upside down, or sideways? You should treat someone's passport with the respect it deserves and offer it back with the emblem uppermost and the right way round to the passenger's view!"

Do you know, the process is so automatic, I hardly realise I am doing it?

......and that is my point. If you train someone the way you want them to do a job properly from the start, they will always do it.