Shame on you Saudia Airlines!

I saw this article on Arabnews yesterday. I can’t even begin to imagine what these people were thinking about when they claimed this. Saudi Arabian Airlines is blaming it’s passengers for a SR 1.8 billion loss in 2008. Saudi Arabian Airlines claims that passengers do not change their bookings when their flight plans change and that’s the cause of this loss.

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of Saudia. In fact, if it were up to me, I would have the entire top level management fired on the spot. Then I would fire the fools of a PR department for even thinking that this is something that should be allowed to go to press.

This claim is complete BS!! Passengers actually “pay” to ride the planes. Hence having bookings means revenue. Having a steady revenue stream means good business. Unless I’m mistaken since the last time I flew on this carrier, when a person doesn’t show up for a confirmed seat then one of two things should occur. One, the passenger has already issued a boarding pass, hence the seat is “PAID”, so no problem here. Two, the waiting list passengers get a chance at that seat, and hence the seat is again “PAID”. Either way, it’s a no loss for Saudia Airlines.

Ok fine, let’s assume for the sake of the argument that the main problem is passengers not changing their bookings. This argument still doesn’t hold water for me:

1. Assuming that passengers don’t change their flight plans, waiting list passengers should cover that gap.
2. Assuming waiting list passengers don’t cover the gap, then those few seats shouldn’t cause such a severe loss.
3. Assuming that the number of passengers is so low that it does cause a loss this big, then the problem isn’t passengers not changing flight plans, the problem is then that passengers are not flying on the airline.

Now this is a problem that’s fixable and one that should be quite obvious to the airline.

1. Better customer service. There is no excuse to treat people like animals. You as the airline are the “Service Provider”, we as passengers are the “Customers”. Case closed !!
2. Better reliability on flight schedules. Planes should not leave 6 hours late!! Ever!!
3. Stop giving out free flights for VIP’s. We all know it’s still happening.
4. Better Customer Service. (Mentioned twice because they just suck that badly)

We could learn a lot from the American Car manufacturers fiasco of last year. Step 1, bring in the CEO and top management of Saudia and give them a stern talking to. Step 2, no salaries for each of them until they start doing their jobs and fix this horrid mess.

There ‘ya go Saudia Airlines. I fixed your problems for you, and I’m not charging you a penny. All I want in return is for you to start becoming the national carrier you should be. You carry my countries name, now treat it with the respect it deserves!! Shame on you Saudia, just shame on you.