Yes, you knew it was coming... It's your turn.
- Your cabin staff are not a lot better. Adequate at best, largely absentee, increasing less pleasant if they have to do anything outside required duties. Most of the time just not paying attention. Hosties who offer half the passengers water then run out and forget come back and give water to the rest of the aisle... Hosties, for that matter, who mostly hide in the galley and gossip with the curtains shut. Loudly. Constantly. While passengers are trying to sleep.- Your saving grace is the A380 which makes even rubbish flights less painful, but then again half the rest of your fleet probably shouldn't even be in the air. Oh look, how quirky, ashtrays in the armrests... 'Antique' is not a term you want to hear used when people are getting on a plane and looking around. And then people can't open the toilet door because the words are worn off it...
Now I don't claim to know a lot about much, but I do know something about quite a bit. And while I am no fatcat bigwig First Class dweller, and nor do I always ride in Business Class, my boarding pass does have 'Frequent Flyer' printed below my name, and therefore, unlike the fickle folk up the front or upstairs, who can most likely afford to fly whatever airline they feel like with no particular allegiance, I am the sort of passenger that your average airline really needs to attract, and retain. I mean that is the entire reasoning behind airpoints and frequent flyer programs to begin with... Incentives to be loyal. Return customers. Offering something to the people who will keep coming back and spending money, which keeps your airline flying. So you would THINK a company like, say, Malaysia Airlines might be taking an interest in that sort of thing about now. You would think. But, to date, the sum total of my 'incentives to come back' has been one nice ground crew lady giving me an exit row seat so I could actually sit without ridiculous discomfort for some of my twelve hours in the air (and, I will add, she was not Malaysian, nor was it in Malaysia). In fact having now taken a few flights, especially post-disasters, I have established Malaysia Air really apparently could not care less about the 'frequent flying' customer. Which is why it is also interesting sometimes to go places and use services without telling people that you also write for travel magazines in your spare time.
On that note, Malaysia Airlines, some bullet points to consider looking at -
- Your ground staff are generally surly, disinterested, borderline rude and largely unpleasant to deal with.
- On that note, I shouldn't have to revert to my aging smartphone for a better viewing experience than my entertainment screen. In this day and age it should not look like a Sega Mega Drive. Or even worse, a tiny, decrepit CRT television with bad reception.
- STILL on that note... Your in flight entertainment selection is appalling. Listing the same movies under 'Comedy' and 'Drama' does not instantly double your movie selection... And last I checked, Disney cartoons did NOT qualify for 'Comedy', 'Drama' AND 'Family' categories. Nor is Finding Nemo a drama. Or Toy Story. They found Nemo. It ended up ok. I forget what happened in Toy Story but pretty sure most of them lived. And get some movies that were released less than four years ago.
- Your music selection is worse. I like a wide variety of music, and I found only about half a dozen albums out of over 200 that I either hadn't heard or could stand to listen to. One of those was a 25 year old REM album for goodness sake.
- On the Frequent Flyer topic... Upgrade some passengers for crying out loud. It costs you next to nothing. Even just to use up the spare seats, you don't have to feed them the good stuff You already make a fortune out of the people who pay for First and Business. When people get upgraded they come back. Guarantee it. At the very least tell your flipping check in staff to try not to not to sneer at customers when they ask if there is something as basic as an exit row available... Or, failing that, an aisle seat... when they have actually gone to the trouble of checking in early but your staff just can't be bothered to try to do it for them. Repeatedly jam me in the middle of three or five seat blocks when I specifically request not to be, and I will tell you where to stick your airline.
- Try to find some food that does not make gas station cuisine look appetising. I don't care where in the world you are, if you are paying good money for food it should be something you WANT to eat, not something you just HAVE to eat. I know I can get an awesome meal off a street vendor's cart in Kuala Lumpur for pocket change, yet I give you £1300 and you, with all your squillion dollar jet airplanes, give me food that makes me want to chew on my seatbelt instead. Other airlines can manage. The food I have eaten on Malaysia Air recently is of such a standard that if you bought it at a supermarket from the frozen meal section for $5 and took it home and microwaved it, not only would you feel ripped off, you would also throw it away rather than eat it.
- And get some wine that costs more than three ringit a bottle. And tell the staff to pour a decent sized drink from your miserly spirits selection once in a while. Some people like a drink or two on a flight, an egg cup is not going to do it. Nor is it going to put people off drinking. It is going to put people off your airline. Passengers change carriers for that sort of thing.
- How about not putting connecting flight departures on your OWN AIRLINE so shortly after the previous arrival that the only way people can make the connection is for dozens of passengers to rush madly across the terminal to get to the next flight, which has to depart late anyway because the bags take so long to transfer over?? Telling people who have just sat through a decidedly avergage 14 hour flight that they now have 20 minutes to find their way all the way across the terminal and through security again before the gates close on their next 12 hour flight is not a way to endear them to you.
I won't go on, although I could. You only have to get two or three of a whole list of things right to be a passable airline these days. Getting pretty much everything wrong is not going to help. Especially not when you are fighting for your existence. Maybe the staff have just given up, who knows. Government control looms, maybe there is just no call to maintain standards. Having the cheapest fares is a big selling point, but you have to look at who you are attracting and how sustainable it will actually be in the long run. And what reputation you want. I have not been on many major international flights on an aircraft only one third full... Not a good sign folks.
Cutting costs is well and good but if you are driving away customers then you are on a fast track to nowhere. When I am reaching into my own wallet to pay for flights I often like to keep it cheap and cheerful. I maintain the money is better spent when you get there than on the journey. And hey, flying lower priced carriers keeps me in touch with 'the people'... So when I will actually consider paying a reasonable amount more to avoid flying with an airline, then you have a problem. That puts you right up there with Royal Brunei and Chinese domestic carriers... And seeing how well Malaysia's competition are doing on similar routes, I think a lot of other people are thinking the same way.
It has been said that in order to survive, Malaysian Airlines will have to cut back on full sized airline services and start competing as a budget Asian carrier. From what I have seen recently I think they are already operating as a budget carrier, they are just trying to charge as much as a real airline.
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