An open letter to BMI Baby

The following was sent (written in green ink) to BMI on the skiers behalf by the lovely Christine:-

Nigel Turner
Chief Executive Officer
BMI
Donington Hall
Castle Donington
Derby
DE74 2SB



8 January 2008


Dear Mr Turner

I am writing to you directly to alert you to the alarming disarray that your bmibaby operation demonstrated over the Christmas/New Year break (details enclosed).

I’ve been flying a couple of times a week for the best part of 15 years and am very aware that flights frequently experience delays and, as often as not, one molehill of a problem can morph into mountain of misfortune.

So it’s entirely conceivable that a flight may face:

a) Technical problems
b) A change of aircraft
c) A delay of three or more hours
d) A melt down of the pre-paid seating plan
e) A lack of sandwiches (attributed to ‘earlier popularity’)
f) A dearth of information among passengers and staff

It is also possible that an individual member of your team, the airport staff or your passengers may be less than wholeheartedly enthusiastic about your operation.

What is inconceivable is that the in- and out-bound flights on the same trip would face ALL of these problems. As would, one assumes, the flights before and after.

All this was combined with the lowest possible regard for your airline by every stakeholder we encountered. The head of check-in at Geneva airport begged us to write to you in the desperate hope that it would stop the scrapping of pre-booked seating arrangements (separating entire families) and thus spare her and her team from weekly torrents of passenger fury. One of your flight crew rolled their eyes in resignation when one of your planes was changed for ‘technical reasons’ that could be easily and quickly fixed. I wish I could have recorded and shared with you the comments of the passengers discussing previous experiences with bmibaby.

I do not write to ask you for anything. But to urge you, for the sake of the future of your airline, its employees, customers and shareholders, to focus the attention of your best managers on quickly addressing the staggeringly consistent incompetence (or perhaps carelessness) that is currently evident.

Although if you’d be so gracious to refund the cost of our futile attempt to book seats that would save me the bother of writing to your complaints department as well.

Good luck with it.



Christine H


Cc: complaints