I have recently returned from my trip to Belgrade with Wizz
Air. The outbound flight was was over an hour late. It was one of those
surprise delays that you learn about only when you reach the airport and the
delay starts getting longer as you get stuck in an overcrowded departure lounge and then standing squeezed in even more crowded boarding gate. Nobody
explained the reason for the delay, nor how long we were expected to wait, which resulted in some passengers becoming agitated, children becoming restless and those less
able to stand becoming very uncomfortable.
The return flight to Luton went smoothly and arrived
on-time.
Three days later I received the following email:
Understanding the uselessness of these types of surveys, I treat them as
commercial spam. No exemption this time apart from a twist: sharing my feedback
was only possible for the return (on time) flight with no space to comment on
my overall travel experience, including the unpleasant delay of the outbound
flight. It is obvious that this kind of feedback will never tell the
system managers what they need to know, especially when things get much worse (as they often do).
While this sort of tricks can benefit marketing companies which
conduct the surveys, ignorance about passenger experience during their critical
travel segments only encourages operational dysfunction and comes costly for
airlines.
