Today’s Jetstar story

Kay Blundell at Stuff reports:

Jetstar refused to shift a booking for the mother of shark victim Adam Strange to fly to Auckland after his death.

Jeanette Strange, of Paraparaumu, had already booked return flights from Wellington to visit her son next week.

But after police broke the news to her on Wednesday of her son’s death at Muriwai Beach, her sister rang Jetstar to transfer the booking, telling the airline about the horrific reasons for the change.

“They put me on hold for 10 minutes to talk to a supervisor, then said they were very sorry but could not transfer the booking. She would have to pay $321 for a new ticket,” sister Kay Cresswell said yesterday.

I really don’t know what is wrong with the management of Jetstar. Some of the issues with their service are hard to fix, such as the lack of backup capacity. That is a consequence of being budget. Fair enough.

But not having a system in place where someone can have delegated authority to make decisions that are no brainers will just keep on resulting in these horror stories.

She then contacted Air New Zealand, and was told there were two seats left on a flight to Auckland.

When they arrived at Wellington Airport the flight was full, but police had already notified the airline of their arrival, and it gave Mrs Strange a discounted seat.

She was escorted to the Koru lounge, given refreshments, a diabetic food package for the flight, and was escorted to the plane.

A nice contrast.