To BWEE or not to BWEE, that is the question

THE EDITOR: You may publish this letter written to the Manager, Corporate Relations, BWIA. It has been said that both nuclear and extended families have their fair share of neuroses. The kleptomaniac aunt, the philandering uncle, the sibling who drinks just a little too much for comfort. That’s life, and families stick together and, for the most part, try to support each other.

I thought that each time I travelled my national airline, I was supporting a financially dysfunctional member of the national family and — silly me — I expected some sort of support in return. Support in the form of letting the leader of my group of 15 people who were representing Trinidad and Tobago in five cities in the United Kingdom in a three week cultural tour, that the BWIA flight which was already delayed by seven hours had been further delayed by four; support in the form of having the guts to be present at the check-in counter to explain to 15 very weary people — notwithstanding other passengers whom they had somehow apparently failed to contact at all (some of whom had come to check in at 7 am — many hours earlier) the reason for the delay; support in the form of offering, at the very least, a friendly understanding ear for those of us who were waiting in the airport for at least six hours.

A good stale joke would have gone a long way. And yes, I know customer service isn’t easy; yes, there are irate passengers; yes, a customer service representative risks verbal and other abuse, but might I suggest that sometimes these incidents might decrease if a customer service representative stepped in to deal with a situation earlier rather than when customer anger reaches the point of no return? I suppose that we should be thankful that a feeble announcement was made on the airport PA system to tell BWIA passengers that they could get ?7.50 towards a meal — one supposes that this was to make up for the failure of BWIA representatives to make themselves known to the travellers. Sometimes the family dysfunction gets a reprieve. Enter what appears to be the benign outside woman — World Airways.

It appears the airplane was leased, and lo and behold, the majority of the crew (mostly foreign) that eventually got us to Barbados was called on to exercise every ounce of professionalism since somewhere over the Atlantic, one of the passengers experienced a medical emergency serious enough to cause the plane to divert to Gander, Newfoundland in Canada, in search of immediate medical attention. The captain and crew were cool, collected civil and, above all, communicative at all times — a testimony to their professionalism, which is indeed to be commended. So in Barbados, when there was a problem of a hydraulic nature with the aircraft, and we the passengers had to remain on board an unavoidably hot plane for what seemed like an eternity, but what was just perhaps about an hour, the wait was more tolerable knowing that the crew were cool, pleasant and reliable. Is someone getting the customer service picture yet?

But the family dysfunction apparently extends to neighbouring territories as we were to find out as soon as we disembarked. No sooner had we stepped out of the plane and on to the steps when a rather gruff young man grudgingly gave us in-transit cards and, when we were finally seated in the ‘in transit’ area, gave us information which conflicted with the World Airways information.We had less of a problem with the conflicting information than we had with his reaction when our group leader asked to see someone from BWIA in order to get some clarification.

His reaction was simply: “What for?” After 11 hours of unexplained delays, five hours of additional travel for a medical emergency and one hour of a hot aircraft with a hydraulic problem, the average passenger is not in the mood for cheeky arrogance from some reticent employee of the airport or the airline. I loathe the “foreign is better” mentality that our Caribbean people tend to tenaciously uphold, but in this case, I’m afraid that not one, but two sovereign states of the Caribbean region let us down and the extra-regional outside woman appeared to save the day. Problems will occur; delays will happen.

I am, in fact, eternally grateful for delays when they mean that the airline is engaged in making travel safer for all, but all I ask is that some more consideration be meted out to the family of travellers. There might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for the anguish that occurred, and I would like to continue to support my airline and my region with pride, but such inconsiderate behaviour may cause me to step into virgin territory, if you get my drift.

SONJA DUMAS
Port-of-Spain