International Airlines customer service

[midas]

 I recently contacted the customer services department of a few large international airlines regarding  a query about baggage I want to bring back with me from Europe as a business class passenger. The experience was startling in terms of revealing which airlines were the best and the worst at responding. I was then going to make my decision as to which airline I would fly with taking into account the reply to my question.

 

The old and very large legacy European airlines were absolutely the worst to deal with from the moment you even try to contact their customer services department in the first place! It’s as if they don’t want you to contact them and in one case because they kept failing to reply I resubmitted the question three times-and it still hasn’t even been answered to this day! It reminds me of the infamous line from Fawlty Towers where Basil Fawlty says “ you ponce  in here expecting to be waited on hand and foot while I’m trying to run a hotel ! “’

 

I think some of these airlines have lost the plot because I believe it’s not just about being served better food in business class or being pampered by the aircrew on board but it should also be about getting swift resolution to the passengers concerns before the actual flight.

 

For obvious reasons I won’t name the ones that I considered to be bad but I can tell you which ones I thought were outstandingly good in terms of ease of access to customer services and how quickly they dealt with my query. Emirates were excellent and extremely efficient as were Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways.