Hawaiian Misery (Broken J Seat but HA Denies it was Inoperative)
May 10, 2016, 5:11 pm
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 6
Hawaiian Misery (Broken J Seat but HA Denies it was Inoperative)
What is a passenger to do when you complain about a serious maintenance issue, and the airline "customer service" desk says it never happened. Here's my email to Hawaiian with irrelevant portions deleted:
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I decided to use Hawaiian Airlines because we've had a couple of nice experiences when we've flown to HNL and LIH for programs for schools in Honolulu and for the UH satellite campus on Kauai. The connections were reasonably convenient to Auckland, and we looked forward to some long-haul business class comfort on HAL. Out of Vancouver, Air NZ was an easier choice, with no connection at all, or American to Sydney and a connection to AKL. But, as I say, we decided on HAL....
The seat northbound -- AKL to HNL and on the same aircraft onward to SEA -- was utterly worn out and inoperative. The flight attendants helped make it more comfortable with blankets and comforters, but even so the tray table would not lie flat, and the bar at the front of the lower cushion came right through the padding and cut off my circulation because the foot rest would not function....
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Here's the reply:
"Based on the maintenance reports about your seat on the aircraft you flew, our Maintenance Department found the seat to be in proper order."
I responded:
"Your statement that Maintenance "found the seat to be operating normally" is bizarre, since the FA's on those two flights on that one aircraft all agreed that it was not. I am on the road between 100 and 150 nights a year, working with schools and associations all over the world. Every one of my trips is in revenue business class. I have 3.6 million lifetime miles on AA and OneWorld, with platinum status for life, and another million or so total on the other alliances. I know when something is broken, and I know what appropriate compensation ought to be when things go badly wrong."
End result -- for a tortuous 15 hours in revenue J: a voucher for $250.
Totally unsatisfactory. Should I escalate this, email Mark Dunkerley, the CEO, or should I just give up and say "never again on HAL"?
Thanks for any advice.
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I decided to use Hawaiian Airlines because we've had a couple of nice experiences when we've flown to HNL and LIH for programs for schools in Honolulu and for the UH satellite campus on Kauai. The connections were reasonably convenient to Auckland, and we looked forward to some long-haul business class comfort on HAL. Out of Vancouver, Air NZ was an easier choice, with no connection at all, or American to Sydney and a connection to AKL. But, as I say, we decided on HAL....
The seat northbound -- AKL to HNL and on the same aircraft onward to SEA -- was utterly worn out and inoperative. The flight attendants helped make it more comfortable with blankets and comforters, but even so the tray table would not lie flat, and the bar at the front of the lower cushion came right through the padding and cut off my circulation because the foot rest would not function....
-----
Here's the reply:
"Based on the maintenance reports about your seat on the aircraft you flew, our Maintenance Department found the seat to be in proper order."
I responded:
"Your statement that Maintenance "found the seat to be operating normally" is bizarre, since the FA's on those two flights on that one aircraft all agreed that it was not. I am on the road between 100 and 150 nights a year, working with schools and associations all over the world. Every one of my trips is in revenue business class. I have 3.6 million lifetime miles on AA and OneWorld, with platinum status for life, and another million or so total on the other alliances. I know when something is broken, and I know what appropriate compensation ought to be when things go badly wrong."
End result -- for a tortuous 15 hours in revenue J: a voucher for $250.
Totally unsatisfactory. Should I escalate this, email Mark Dunkerley, the CEO, or should I just give up and say "never again on HAL"?
Thanks for any advice.
Last edited by FlyinHawaiian; May 10, 2016 at 9:00 pm Reason: vague thread title
May 12, 2016, 10:47 am
#2
Join Date: Feb 2014
Programs: AS MVPG, HA Plat 75k, CA Phoenix Gold
Posts: 134
I second your experience with the seats on HA front cabin. (Actually, recently economy seats on the A330 long haul have started to show more serious wear and tear as well.) Compared to other airlines, the HA seats seem especially fragile. In business, footrests are almost broken, cumbersome to adjust, and, yes, the trays are sagging. Many of the seats are in that condition, hence the maintenance department may not have thought your seat problem was an outlier 
On yesterday's return segment from Seoul I was in Economy Comfort and noticed that my seatback got stuck in maximum pitch and couldn't be moved upright without the person behind applying all their strength to help me. I did not experience similar seat problems on other carrier's A330 or A340 planes. (Having flown KAL, Air China, Etihad, Lufthansa in the last 6 months). Not sure whether this is due to other carriers using higher quality seat products.
The Hawaiian Air "Consumer Affair Office" has been a place where reported issues go to die, operating like a medical insurance company claims department to keep as much money in the HA organization for as long as possible. Recently, consumer affairs started using software to sift through thousands of submitted claims and incidents. (HA recently listed a job opening where they were looking for an consumer affairs analyst that would data mine problems reported by customers in order to find "voice of the customer" patterns.) This "aggregate" approach to customer issue resolution is not quite as bad as the "denial engines" (aka. claim reviewer programs) used by the medical industry, but it probably means that each reported problem is less and less looked at individually. It is not clear to what degree the HA employees in the consumer affair office are actually investigating anything. Or, whether they are even empowered to act on individual issues. This is very different from, say, Alaska Air where several of my reported problems received an immediate, proactive personal response from a VP in charge.
I never tried the Mark Dunkerly route. Please keep us updated if you hear anything back. I did call the switchboard operator in Honolulu once after the HA reservation system started displaying zero availability for all Japan flights for several hours (even though it wasn't a holiday period or high season in Japan) and none of the regular customer service phone channels understood that there was a problem (they just kept iterating that there were no seats available as they were probaby looking at the same broken backend app data.) It took me 30 minutes to convince the unsuspecting operator that there might be a problem and she ended up "pulling an IT manager out of a meeting". To her credit, she cared. Many seats magically appeared shortly thereafter for sale.
On yesterday's return segment from Seoul I was in Economy Comfort and noticed that my seatback got stuck in maximum pitch and couldn't be moved upright without the person behind applying all their strength to help me. I did not experience similar seat problems on other carrier's A330 or A340 planes. (Having flown KAL, Air China, Etihad, Lufthansa in the last 6 months). Not sure whether this is due to other carriers using higher quality seat products.The Hawaiian Air "Consumer Affair Office" has been a place where reported issues go to die, operating like a medical insurance company claims department to keep as much money in the HA organization for as long as possible. Recently, consumer affairs started using software to sift through thousands of submitted claims and incidents. (HA recently listed a job opening where they were looking for an consumer affairs analyst that would data mine problems reported by customers in order to find "voice of the customer" patterns.) This "aggregate" approach to customer issue resolution is not quite as bad as the "denial engines" (aka. claim reviewer programs) used by the medical industry, but it probably means that each reported problem is less and less looked at individually. It is not clear to what degree the HA employees in the consumer affair office are actually investigating anything. Or, whether they are even empowered to act on individual issues. This is very different from, say, Alaska Air where several of my reported problems received an immediate, proactive personal response from a VP in charge.
I never tried the Mark Dunkerly route. Please keep us updated if you hear anything back. I did call the switchboard operator in Honolulu once after the HA reservation system started displaying zero availability for all Japan flights for several hours (even though it wasn't a holiday period or high season in Japan) and none of the regular customer service phone channels understood that there was a problem (they just kept iterating that there were no seats available as they were probaby looking at the same broken backend app data.) It took me 30 minutes to convince the unsuspecting operator that there might be a problem and she ended up "pulling an IT manager out of a meeting". To her credit, she cared. Many seats magically appeared shortly thereafter for sale.
Last edited by Alex909; May 23, 2016 at 1:44 pm
May 19, 2016, 5:42 pm
#4
Join Date: May 2014
Location: CMH, HNL
Programs: UA, HA
Posts: 583
It's funny; I get so excited about the prospect of new seats (or new anything), but seldom consciously think about the maintenance and replacement plan for said item.
And few things are more frustrating than being told your concern was ungrounded. I did notice that the strongest part of the OP's complaint was the specific details, vs the conclusion-type statements
.
And few things are more frustrating than being told your concern was ungrounded. I did notice that the strongest part of the OP's complaint was the specific details, vs the conclusion-type statements
utterly worn out and inoperative
May 21, 2016, 6:19 am
#5
Join Date: Feb 2014
Programs: AS MVPG, HA Plat 75k, CA Phoenix Gold
Posts: 134
It's funny; I get so excited about the prospect of new seats (or new anything), but seldom consciously think about the maintenance and replacement plan for said item.
And few things are more frustrating than being told your concern was ungrounded. I did notice that the strongest part of the OP's complaint was the specific details, vs the conclusion-type statements .
And few things are more frustrating than being told your concern was ungrounded. I did notice that the strongest part of the OP's complaint was the specific details, vs the conclusion-type statements .
A perfect case of shiny object syndrome!
Last edited by Alex909; May 23, 2016 at 1:16 pm