Aer Lingus forced into U-Turn
Aer Lingus has been forced into an embarrassing climbdown and is to offer economy class seats to all the customers who booked €5 business class flights to the US “in error”. “Following a full investigation of the booking error undertaken yesterday evening by the company, it appears that some customers may have genuinely believed that they were making a booking in economy class,” the company said . It said it was going to contact affected passengers so they could rebook their travel arrangements and described the error as “regrettable”.
And that’s putting it mildly. Within hours of the sorry tale hitting the headlines at home, news organisations in Sydney, London and New York and dozens of other places in between had picked up the story. Not only that but Aer Lingus also had to endure a lecture in good customer service from Ryanair, of all companies.
All in all not a good day then.
I don’t understand this - most folk who booked knew that the fare was an error.
I’m saddened that Aer Lingus felt the need to bow to public pressure. We can be damn sure that Ryanair wouldn’t have - they’ve consistently refused to pay back taxes and charges on un-travelled flights.
It seems that because Aer Lingus still has state involvement it is beholden to public pressure to “do the right thing” even when its at a considerable cost.
Does everyone forget that Aer Lingus gives wheelchairs for free but Ryanair asks everyone to pay towards them ?
Is the entire media in such a thrall to Ryanair that it has to repeat all of its utterances with nary a contradictory word ?
Comment by Des | April 19, 2008 at 11:49 pmWHO knows in this day and age of cynical marketing IF the AerLingus ‘fare’ was real or not ?We’ve ALL missed ’special offers’ at some time or another because we thought they were too good to be true ?
The bottom line is that AL had 22,000 UNSOLD seats last summer on the T/A routes, so why not get €5 instead of €0 for these seats ?
Some people are impressed by the idea of travelling in Business class, so let them realise their dream, even if AL B/C wouldn’t be even up to Aeroflot’s Business class !!!!
AND, the cabin crew REGULARILY ‘upgrade’ their friends to business class once the doors are shut before take-off !!!
The National Consumer Agency didn’t do us any favours either when they recommended accepting an inferior offer from AL - WHAT did AL offer the NCA people to get them to issue such consumer-unfriendly advice ????
Comment by Bren L | April 21, 2008 at 6:59 amThe legal issues are not as clear cut as either side on this debate would like to believe. As I discuss on my blog, there are, in fact, at least four sets of legal questions here: (i) is there a contract between each of the customers and Aer Lingus; (ii) if so, is it affected by the mistake; (iii) if not, is there a provision in the terms and conditions on which Aer Lingus can rely; and (iv) if not, what remedies are likely to be available to the customers against Aer Lingus? And the answers to these four questions are not entirely straightforward, and the PR solution of offering standard tickets has probably averted several difficult lawsuits.
Comment by Eoin O'Dell | April 21, 2008 at 2:24 pmAnd their latest stunt. Upping the checked in baggage prices to a minimum of €12 - and their hand luggage limit is still only 6 kg. Most other airlines I’ve flown allow at least 8, or up to 10. Yet another reason I am reluctant to fly aer lingus.
Comment by Niamh | May 6, 2008 at 8:42 pm