[Jan Fisher]

Sydney airport was a bit of a nightmare for the start of the school holidays with upwards of 200 domestic flights cancelled. Again.

How often do we have to face this? Once seems like bad luck, but every single school holidays is bad management.

School holidays are clearly gazetted at least a year ahead, sometimes two. If airlines can’t work out to put more staff on, or design and activate a school holiday plan, then what are they actually doing? Failing at their job, it would seem.

Apologies aren’t going to bring your overseas holiday back. Many people travelling during this period are only away for a short duration and even one or two days cut off their holiday can be devastating.

And don’t think there will be any justice for those whose holidays have been ruined. Australia has some of the weakest and most confusing consumer protection laws for travellers. In other countries, consumers are entitled to a raft of redress options including full refund, accommodation and food packages until another flight can be found, upgrades and vouchers.

Australians get harassed staff, constant delay, poor communication and a refund process designed to make people give up.

The pay scales of airline executives continue on their upward spiral and I have to wonder why. If I had done my job that badly I’d be out the door and quite rightly so. Instead, these guys will shake it off and cry into a big bag of money about any criticism.

Have you ever had a flight cancelled or delayed during the school holidays? Did you get a refund?

[gnome]

All the news report that I viewed on TV claimed the reason for the chaos was a closed runway because of high winds. If this was the case it may have been out of the control of the airlines.

[MjP]

gnome I believe there was also a shortage of air traffic controllers that impacted the cancellations. Both of these were out of the control of the airlines.

[Author]

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