Monday, October 17, 2005

Avoid this brand


sas plane at o'hare
Originally uploaded by jamessmke.
I am pissed, hungry and I sense a headache approaching. I am stuck at Kastrup airport when I should be in Berlin. This is all due to a company called Scandinavian Airlines (lack of link to the site intended).

During the last 1,5 years I have experienced cancellation of connecting flights with this company four times. I fly a lot but this is still a high number. Now my connecting flight to Berlin was cancelled.

The economic problems of SAS have been reported often. I can now understand why they have problems:
1. Their planes do not fly.
2. Their service sucks.

Today no one apologised for the cancellation. They gave no compensation for the time wasted. I miss an important meeting in Berlin because of them. I got no food coupons and no access to the lounge to work. They told me that they do not have to compensate a thing because the delay is less than four hours. I cannot believe that they can afford this with this competition between airlines.

From now on, I will avoid them as much as possible. I encourage others to do this as well. The people at the counter here were rude. I sent a furious email to them and I will publish the possible response in this blog.

I had SAS until now on my Happy Consumer list. This and the fact that even a glass of water on their flights costs something makes me reconsider heavily before flying with them again.

4 comments:

TyskJohan said...

I agree that when SAS suck, they suck a lot. It's really one of the most incosisten brands I know when it comes to customer service... as opposed to their logo-and-so policy which is consistent to the point of boring.
Yesterday I flew with them from Brussels to Stockholm. I had a ticket for 19.25 but was at the airport something like 6 hours before, so I was keen to change to the earlier flight. No can do-"but we can sell you a new ticket". Doh.
But then again, it's the only airline that's ever upgraded me. And one of those time was on a transatlatic flight.
And living in Oslo you choices are limited anyhow.

Anonymous said...

I have mostly pleasant experiences with SAS, actually. And the latest issue of Scanorama has a gay porn star on the cover and you have to give point for that. :)

J-Ko

Tommi Laitio said...

Nice to see that this caused reactions. Actually it took me over four hours to get out of Copenhagen because the flight I was supposed to take after the cancelled one was delayed by an hour. The amazing this was that no one apologised before the captain when we finally got to the plane (they had taken all the passengers already once to the plane just to find out that they are not able to depart). And the captain apologised for the delay caused by hitting a bird when landing, not for anything else.

The thing that disturbs me when SAS is concerned is exactly the thing that has been mentioned here: cool brand, beautiful layout on all material and then a crappy website and poor service.

And the fact that they nowadays have this Economy Flex-Economy division which I cannot stand.

ice breaker said...

it seems you are all a bit spoiled, try al-italia every once in a while and you lear to appriciate even the sometimes unfriendly service of sas!