Background
Our customer was verbally abused by the airport staff after questioning a different procedure they were asked to follow during security checks. Following this confrontation, the customer responded by shouting back, which led the airport staff to ban them from boarding their scheduled flight. As a result, the customer was forced to wait 10 hours before being allowed to board an alternative flight.
We engaged with both the airline and airport management and determined that the airport staff had no authority to impose the ban. Such action should have been taken by the airline. Furthermore, we discovered that the airline capitalized on the situation by charging the customer the full price for the later flight, rather than simply applying a re-booking fee.
Outcome
As a result of our intervention, the airport and airline agreed to offer a combined goodwill gesture of €1,800 to the customer and refunded the full cost of the additional ticket. Under our commercial model (20% of the total value), if this had been your case, you would have received €1,440, with our fee being €360. The issue was successfully resolved in under two months.
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