{"id":129,"date":"2013-09-24T09:33:33","date_gmt":"2013-09-24T09:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/?p=129"},"modified":"2021-06-08T09:33:47","modified_gmt":"2021-06-08T09:33:47","slug":"a-tale-of-two-airlines-and-a-tale-of-two-cultures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/09\/24\/a-tale-of-two-airlines-and-a-tale-of-two-cultures\/","title":{"rendered":"A tale of two airlines \u2026 and a tale of two cultures?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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One aspect of organisational culture that interests me is how two companies in what is ostensibly the same line of business have such different ways of operating. I have had a recent personal experience of this phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October 2012, my wife Peta and I were in Florida and due to fly to New York for a few days prior to returning to the UK. Hurricane Sandy had other ideas.  As you may recall, Hurricane Sandy<\/a> caused considerable devastation \u2013 particularly around New York. We had already experienced the weaker aspects of Sandy in Florida, and then received an email stating that our internal flight to from Florida to New York had been cancelled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We looked at getting to New York by train or car, or getting a flight to an airport slightly inland that wasn\u2019t closed \u2026 but at the end of the day, we had no way of knowing whether our flight out of New York would leave \u2013 it was due to leave on 31st<\/sup> and the storm was supposed to have passed by then, but we couldn\u2019t be sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our flight out of New York was with Virgin Atlantic. I decided that a trip to Orlando Airport for a chat with Virgin would be the best plan. Could they fly us out of Orlando, perhaps?  No, they couldn\u2019t \u2013 all flights were full (understandably, I suppose, as it was the UK half term holidays). In fact, all their flights on the eastern seaboard were full for the next three days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best they could offer us was a flight back from Las Vegas \u2013 which is about 3,000 miles west of Orlando. It was our best option. But as our New York flight had not yet been cancelled, and we did not yet have a way of getting to Las Vegas, should we change flights?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virgin said that they would reserve us two seats on the Las Vegas flight and also keep our seats open on the New York flight. Also, they wouldn\u2019t charge us any additional cost (even though the Las Vegas flights are considerably more expensive than the New York flights), nor would they charge us an alteration fee. They couldn\u2019t have been more helpful and it meant we had multiple options. We did eventually take the Las Vegas option having managed to source other flights to get us there. Great customer service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote a letter to Virgin expressing my genuine delight and satisfaction at the way we had been treated and the assistance we had been given.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after this, in January 2013, I booked further flights with Virgin to return to the US for later in the year \u2013 on this occasion, however, we were taking my mum for part of the holiday, and she would fly back after 10 days (she has never been to the US, and has always wanted to visit the Grand Canyon \u2013 so we thought we would make it a reality for her).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having booked those flights, I needed a flight to get my mum back from Heathrow to the north of England. I booked a flight with British Airways to Leeds-Bradford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less than 2 weeks later, BA contacted me to say that they had altered the flight time by about an hour and a half \u2013 which meant that my mum couldn\u2019t make the flight due to the reduced time connecting time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spoke with and wrote to various people at BA in an attempt to get a full refund. They refused saying that they could change the times if they wished \u2013 I retorted that they were reducing the number of flights a day to Leeds-Bradford which was more than changing times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their email communications to me included, \u201c\u2026 but I do hope your mother has a pleasant flight with us in October\u201d. That was my point, she couldn\u2019t make the flight \u2013 I wasn\u2019t being listened to!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flight cost around \u00a365. BA said that they would refund me the tax (about \u00a340) with a \u00a315 administration fee deducted. I thought it was time for some negotiation. I offered to have my mum fly into Manchester as a compromise \u2013 even though this was less convenient for her. BA said this was fine \u2013 but they would charge me a \u00a360 fee for cancelling the original flight \u2013 thus making this more expensive than accepting the refund and booking afresh!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the last straw. The ticket wasn\u2019t expensive, but companies should listen to customers and they should not ignore legitimate representations.  I asked for a full refund or I would take the matter to the Small Claims Court. No response from BA. Consequently I issued a Claim through the County Court.  BA have now sent me a complete refund. They had no grounds to support their position and were, I presume, hoping I would not challenge them on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the airline industry, there aren\u2019t too many differentiators \u2013 the costs of flying across the Atlantic are generally similar, they fly from similar airports, the seats are much the same (in the respective cabins), so one of the few remaining differentiators is customer service \u2013 so doesn\u2019t that make it even more important?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or is it more serious than that? It is now 20 years since BA apologised \u201cunreservedly\u201d at the High Court for their infamous \u201cDirty Tricks\u201d <\/a>campaign against Virgin, and now they have again been financially penalised again for their practices. Whilst there is a considerable difference between the two penalties, the issues are potentially similar \u2013 a big company thinking it can do what it wants.  Is BA adopting a Covert Dishonourable Culture Strategy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do I mean by a \u2018Covert Dishonourable Culture Strategy\u2019? This is where an organisation, usually a large one, knows that it has a particular culture or aspect to its culture, which it believes gives it a business advantage and which it would not be comfortable to make overt, but does little or nothing to address it so that it remains in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s end on a positive though \u2013 exceptional customer service from Virgin, hence why we are flying with them again. We are rewarding outstanding performance and service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One aspect of organisational culture that interests me is how two companies in what is ostensibly the same line of business have such different ways of operating. I have had a recent personal experience of this phenomenon. In October 2012, my wife Peta and I were in Florida and due to fly to New York […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[145,144,146],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breathe-pod.org.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}