Contacting Emirates About The Crew?
 

I recently flew on an Emirates flight where the plane had pre flight issues and the pilot was extremely polite, professional and helpful in keeping up all updated in the cabin. Plus the cabin crew (particularly the ones serving my area) were very accommodating in what felt like an eternity on the tarmac.

I was thinking of contacting Emirates and asking them for the names of the crew which did such a great job. I did catch some on-board but the problem is when your on a flight and groggy your memory is not great and you forget so I don't know who to praise and get it passed on internally.

What I wanted to know is if Emirates would give you the name of the pilot and or economy cabin crew on that flight or would they not reply to you at all / give a generic 'thank you for the feedback' response? What's the policy on this?

Thanks,

Hi there and welcome to FT.

Good that you had such a positive experience with Emirates, despite the delay.

Whilst I fully understand your wish to make your views known to the airline, I am not sure why you would want to know the actual names of the Captain + crew members involved.

In reality, there is no point looking for an alternative to the standard approach in such scenarios : an email (there is a template within the official website, including a drop-down menu with topic categories, one of which is I think labelled praise/compliments or similar...) or - if you prefer - an old-fashioned letter.

State your flight number/route/date and of course your name, and your comments will (hopefully!) be passed on to the relevant team manager.

You WILL receive a reply and yes, it will be pretty generic I have to say (such is life ...!) - although - depending on who actually sends it to you - it might be a little personalised.

No names would be given to you by EK at this stage anyway.

Thanks for the welcome and reply,

So I can highlight those who I had individual dealings with so they get acknowledged. The pilot they will know anyway.

I just didn't want to give a generic general feedback which gets a generic response. I get the whole 'we are a team thing' but it's nice to not be seen as a cog in a machine if you understand what I mean.

EK are not going to give you the name of individuals working for them on a flight, both from a confidentiality and a security perspective - for all they know you could be a crazy person trying to stalk a crew member (it does happen), and for them, only one instance would not be worth it for their staff retention - crew are a gossipy lot. Imagine if word got around that someone in customer affairs gave the name of a crew member to someone who wrote in and just asked for it and that crew member is now suddenly being harassed via Facebook or what have you. Not good at all for the company. You may argue that they already display their names (and full names for senior staff) on their badges already - but this would only be another potential headache.

However, if you send in the details of your flight (booking reference/ticket number) and where you were sitting, that will be enough for EK to find out who exactly was serving that cabin at the time and the purser in charge/line manager of the crew in question will (sometimes) get comments forwarded on to them.

Yeah I did kind of wonder if names are readily available (as with many industries with name badges) and even announced on the actual flight including the pilots what's the big secret? but I do see why there might be issues as you stated.

It's a shame you can't individually reward service with individual praise. Many companies now go for this faceless 'we work as a team and get praise as a team' mentality which is not fair on those who do more yet get lumped in with others who may not do as much. Much like what has happened with tips in the restaurant industry.

Hopefully Emirates will be able to guess the crew members serving the area from the seat number. It's is a shame that airlines don't take a more personal approach to feedback, it's mostly all-encompassing feedback.

You can praise an individual if you remember who it is :D

Perhaps if you can remember ethnicity that can narrow down the crew in your cabin by a process of elimination? If it was the SFS/Purser they would have both their first name and surname on their badge, and there would only be 3/4 per plane so that would be pretty easy. Otherwise you're only looking at 7-8 per cabin in J/Y anyway.

Which crew serves which seat number is worked out/assigned by the purser beforehand and not laid out officially/reported back (unless there is a complaint raised - and they get passed down the line much quicker than compliments!) so you may be out of luck because I think it is extremely unlikely that a purser/SFS would remember who was doing what, unless you made a strong impression on the crew.

Unfortunately I don't remember them entirely hence the thread :D, the names on the Emirates badges are so small in thin font! especially as they also have the Arabic above plus it was dark! I heard they all have business cards, is this true?

I don't know the in's and out's of crew deployment on-board but I think it's hard to pin them to a specific area as they move around where needed, yes you will see predominately the same 2-3 people in a section but I saw many crew pass through the area. I not sure how the purser would be able to tell who I'm referring to!