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Lufthansa makes dedicated staff look bad: The eTN Hero is Patricia Dzai of Swissport Johannesburg

April 24, 2019 by Forimmediaterelease

Lufthansa

“My personal hero today is Ms. Patricia Dzai. Patricia works for Swissport in Johannesburg, South Africa,” said eTN Publisher Juergen Steinmetz. Swissport is one of the largest aviation ground-handling agencies operating in countries around the world.

Major airlines hire Swissport to manage customer relations and logistics when it comes to baggage handling, including lost or misplaced items.

Lufthansa German Airlines’ ground handler in Johannesburg is Swissport. I recently traveled from Nice to Cape Town via Frankfurt and Johannesburg on Lufthansa German Airlines. I am a United Airlines Star Alliance Gold member and traveled on Lufthansa in Business class. Lufthansa is a member of Star Alliance.

When I arrived in Johannesburg, I heard my name called by Lufthansa’s lost baggage office handled by Swissport.

I was told my tube was still in Frankfurt, and they would put it on the next flight to Johannesburg. I explained it was of utmost importance to have the tube for an important trade show event, the World Travel Market in Cape Town, in the morning.

Patricia Dzai, the Swissport agent in Johannesburg, wanted to make sure this would be possible and sent an urgent message to Lufthansa in Frankfurt. The message said:

 

 

 

 

 

I was pleased to know my tube would go on LH 576 directly to Cape Town almost in time for the start of World Travel Market.

I went on to fly to Cape Town and received a text message in the evening saying my tube would be on the Lufthansa flight to Johannesburg, which was different from what Patricia had requested. Since it was late and the Swissport office in Johannesburg was closed, I was able to find a non-published phone number for Lufthansa baggage service in Frankfurt. Lufthansa, like most airlines, is hiding phone numbers to encourage passengers to communicate only by email.

I was told by Lufthansa Baggage Service in Frankfurt no such message to forward my tube to Cape Town was ever received by Swissport Johannesburg. The agent went on to say that passengers are often not told the truth by Swissport agents.

The Lufthansa agent in Frankfurt explained that his job was not to help me, since this was only handled in Johannesburg. I argued my tube is in Frankfurt and not Johannesburg, and the handling agent for Swissport in Johannesburg was closed.

The agent then said he was now doing a one-time exception for me and would reroute my tube on LH576 directly to Cape Town. He said there were 5 hours to get this done, still plenty of time according to him.

The next day I received another message telling me again the tube was on its way to Johannesburg instead of Cape Town.

I called Swissport in Johannesburg, and the news not could have been worse. They told me, apologizing, that my tube was still in Frankfurt for a second day, and they did not know why.

I again called the baggage-handling office in Frankfurt and was again told it’s all Swissport’s mistake for not telling them where to send it.

This time I was angry and called Swissport Johannesburg again. I asked Patricia why she was lying about this. I told her she never sent this request to Frankfurt, according to Lufthansa.

Ten minutes later, I received an email with a time-stamped screenshot from Patricia Dzai showing me exactly what was requested by her in the first place.

Patricia actually had gone out of her way originally to make sure I would be united with my tube on time and in Cape Town. I felt bad thinking she didn’t care and didn’t do anything, when in fact she did.

It shows that big companies like Lufthansa have a serious customer service issue. They hide behind a huge system and are trained to say it’s not their job and simply blame others for company shortcomings.

There was no way I could talk to anyone at Lufthansa about this, and my urgent email to them on the day I was trying to get the tube re-routed was just responded to 2 weeks after I was already back home in Hawaii. Lufthansa offered a 200 euro compensation.

No explanation was given and no apology for accusing Patricia Dzai and Swissport for not doing their job.

I finally received my tube on the last day after the trade show and took it back to the US unopened. When I changed planes in Frankfurt, I asked the agent working in the Senator Lounge to speak to a supervisor in baggage handling about this case and compensation. She told me I have to send an email, which I had already done days ago.

She gave me some chocolate and said they get customers’ complaints all the time and do their best to help and respond, but the back-up system by the airline is not there.

It’s all about a giant non-caring anonymous machine.

I extend my apologies to Patricia Dzai from Swissport, as I now understand she was also a victim of shortcomings created by Lufthansa German Airlines.

Patricia Dzai is the eTN Hero for today.

Travel News | eTurboNews

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India’s Jet Airways halts all international and domestic operations

April 17, 2019 by Forimmediaterelease

One of India’s major airlines, Jet Airways, has announced it is temporarily halting flight operations on Wednesday after the carrier failed to secure the “critical interim funding” necessary for the company to remain afloat.

Jet Airways will operate the last flight on Wednesday as it cancels all its international and domestic flights, the airline said in a statement. It explained that it cannot afford to pay for fuel or other critical services to keep the operations going, as all its months-long attempts to seek both interim and long-term funding were in vain.

“Unfortunately, despite its very best efforts, the airline has been left with no other choice today but to go ahead with a temporary suspension of flight operations,” the statement reads.

Earlier this month, the airline’s fleet was significantly reduced to just five aircraft and it was forced to suspend international operations. On Wednesday, the Jet Airways website listed only 37 domestic flights and had an additional nine-page list of canceled flights, saying that the schedule was impacted by “operational reasons.”

The troubled company failed to receive a stop-gap loan of about $217 million from its lenders as part of a rescue deal agreed in late March, Reuters earlier reported.

“Bankers did not want to go for a piecemeal approach which would keep the carrier flying for a few days and then again risk having Jet come back for more interim funding,” an unnamed bank source in the negotiations on the debt resolution process told the agency.

The uncertainty over the crucial funding crashed Jet Airways stock on Tuesday, with shares plunging around 20 percent.

Employees have been hit hardest by the crisis in the company and have reportedly not been paid in months. The pilots even called on the State Bank of India (SBI) to release the necessary funds and appealed to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to save 20,000 jobs which may be lost in the shutdown.

Travel News | eTurboNews

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The Travel & Adventure Show San Francisco, USA

April 9, 2019 by Forimmediaterelease

The Seychelles Islands marked its presence through its marketing body Seychelles Tourism Board (STB), as it exhibited at the Travel & Adventure Show 2019 edition.

The event took place in the city of San Francisco, in Northern California, on March 21-22, 2019.

The STB team was represented by the Regional Director for Africa & the Americas, David Germain, was present at the Show on the organisation’s behalf to showcase Seychelles as an extraordinary holiday destination to the 9,500 consumers, travel trade and Media who visited the exhibition at the Santa Clara Conference Center.

Mr. Germain mentions STB’s participation to the event is in line with its marketing efforts in the USA for increased arrivals from North America in 2019.

“Destination awareness and visibility is central to all we endeavor to do as Seychelles Tourism to grow our country’s market share in North America, and on the entire continent,” said Mr. Germain.

The annual participation by the STB at the Travel and Adventure shows in different cities of the United States each year, allow the STB to showcase Seychelles to a wide audience of consumers in the United States, creating awareness of the destination.

Viewed as one of North Americas largest consumer show for tourism and leisure, it is the place for holidaymakers to find information and offers about the latest travel trends, new destinations, among others.

In the prospect of raising the destination’s profile, the STB continues to increase its marketing efforts in North America during 2019, with marketing activities in different major cities in the United States during the year.

Mr. Germain further mentioned that as part of the marketing activities planned for the market for the year, media trips and agent’s familiarization visits to Seychelles would take place during the year, in collaboration with airline partners.

Mr. Germain explained that through the current available flight connectivity between North America and most major airlines, the destination has become even more accessible with easy connections to the archipelago via either Africa, Europe or the Middle East.

“Through our constant presence on the United States Market, Seychelles is today more known to the affluent North American travellers than in the last decade and the current visitor arrival figures from the Americas to the archipelago confirm that the North American market is one with great potential” said David Germain.

For the past 15 years, the Travel & Adventure Show has conducted more than 80 events in the major cities of the United States of America, connecting over 1.5 million travel enthusiasts, with over 3,700 unique travel professionals, facilitating face-to-face dialogue, which has resulted in more than 2.1 billion dollars in travel bookings worldwide.

Travel News | eTurboNews

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New Ethiopian crash report: What happened in the final moments?

April 3, 2019 by Forimmediaterelease

The newest report that broke overnight about the Ethiopian airline crash states that the pilots initially followed Boeing’s emergency procedure before the fatal crash.

The report suggests that the pilots did turn off the automatic pilot system when the aircraft first took a nose dive, but then for some reason, they turned it back on. The fatal crash followed.

The procedure is for the pilots to turn off 2 switches which turns off the electricity to the auto pilot system. They then have to manually level out the aircraft using a wheel in the cockpit controls.

It is not known why they decided to turn the auto pilot system back on.

Boeing has a software fix they were expecting to file this past Friday, but this has now been delayed for possibly 4 weeks or even longer.

This means that American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, the two major airlines that fly the 737 Max planes, will continue to have to cancel flights.

Travel News | eTurboNews

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WOW Air shut down: Thousands stranded

March 28, 2019 by Forimmediaterelease

This is the email WOW Air passengers received after the airline shut down and flights were canceled: Dear WOW air guest, thank you for contacting us. We regret to announce that WOW air has ceased operation, and all flights have been cancelled. Further information can be found at WOW Air.

Following the news that WOW Air has ceased operations after failed negotiations to save it, leaving thousands of passengers stranded, Ralph Hollister, Associate Travel & Tourism Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“The closures of smaller sized airlines such as WOW Air come as little surprise. Even major airlines such as Ryanair with significantly higher profit margins are suffering with the issues at the root of these closures – high fuel prices and overcapacity.

“With finances having already been in decline for a number of months, WOW had to reduce its fleet from 24 to 11, along with reducing the number of destinations available to customers.

“Overcapacity is a factor which can be managed unlike fuel costs, but timeliness is critical and WOW acted too late.

“Smaller airlines need to be more sensitive to changes in the market. Being one step ahead in terms of potential future decreases in demand for specific routes will enable airlines to decrease flight frequency proactively.

“This will decrease the amount of empty seats and most importantly, keep them afloat in a highly competitive industry.” 

 

Travel News | eTurboNews

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