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The Independent
20 hours ago
- The Independent
Wizz to Palma? Could be slow
Palma de Mallorca is 29C and sunny. I know this because the departure screen above gate 34 at Warsaw airport (18C, cloudy) has been saying as much for the past hour. For an hour before that, the departure screen above gate 36 delivered the same meteorological message. At around the time the plane was due to leave, though, a rumour took hold that the original gate was now history. Instead, we would venture into the bowels of the Polish capital's airport and the unloved gate 34, to await a bus transfer to the aircraft – wherever it might be. Usually I enjoy taking 'domestic' flights within the EU and wider Schengen area. British passengers are spoilt. Inflight announcements are made in everyone's second language, English, and this is also the mode for conversations between different nationalities. On arrival there is need to go through passport control, eliminating possibly an hour's wait. And you are generally flying somewhere appealing. Passenger behaviour on intra-European flights is also fascinating: not just the preponderance of passengers who stand up and start sorting out their bags as soon as the wheels touch the runway, but the selfie tendency. Many continental travellers like to document every step of the journey, fixing their hair as the breeze blows across the apron before snapping a selfie at the foot of the aircraft stairs, blissfully ignorant of the admonitions of the hi-viz wearing ground crew. And then there's the applause on arrival, which I reckon loosely correlates with a nation's inclination for religious observance. Back to that Mallorcan weather forecast. The Tuesday afternoon flight from Warsaw has an appealing schedule. It is due to arrive in Palma at 6.45pm, with a fair bit of sunshine left in the day to greet the arrivals from Poland. The 230-plus passengers anticipated drinks and tapas accompanied by the sun melting into the Mediterranean. But the way the afternoon unfolded meant even the ample evening opening hours of Spanish restaurants may have been exhausted by the time some passengers reached their resorts. 'We're sorry, your flight has been delayed,' announced the email from Wizz Air. Flight 1327 would now depart 35 minutes late. 'We know how valuable your time is and we are doing our best to avoid further delay.' Sometimes an airline's best just isn't good enough. That 35-minute window was just closing when another apologetic email arrived – saying the flight was now 65 minutes behind schedule. It appeared that the original plane rostered to operate the flight had been dispatched to Katowice in southern Poland, while a replacement had been found. Unfortunately, it was in another country: Lithuania. While Wizz Air sorted its fleet out, the numerous families with fractious toddlers were not having the best of days. Aviation is fearsomely complex. It is a miracle that millions of us can fly safely and affordably around Europe each day. Since the dawn of commercial flying, planes have been delayed for a host of reasons. But this seems to be a simple case of poor expectation management. Apologising for being a mere 35 minutes behind schedule is commendable – except when the next 'sorry' message almost doubles the delay, and the actual departure turns out to be three times as long: 105 minutes. After the plane switch, catering the new aircraft took time. With the flight well adrift of its schedule, extra delay was added waiting for an air-traffic control slot. None of this is a surprise. Under two hours sliced from the start of a fortnight's holiday in Mallorca is neither here nor there. Everyone on the flight was calm and polite (yes, even including me). People clapped – and stood up – when the plane landed. The sun was setting over the control tower when we were allowed off. I bade farewell to the kind couple who had insisted that I deserved a selfie (with the male partner) to prove I had indeed boarded the plane at Warsaw airport. The flight was safe; cheap (£50 for a three-hour, 1,200-mile journey); and effective in delivering me to Spain's most popular island. Yet passengers want to believe that their airline knows what it is doing, and that it really does 'know how valuable your time is'. Creeping delays like last night's give the impression of not caring too much. Compare the belated apology from the Wizz Air captain with the immediate response of US carrier Frontier Airlines when a flight from Buffalo to Orlando arrived 45 minutes behind schedule: a $50 voucher emailed to every passenger within minutes of touchdown. That is tangible respect for lost time. I like flying on Wizz Air. It has excellent crew and aircraft, at least as good as its bigger rivals, easyJet and Ryanair. But in future when that delay email arrives, I will take the number of minutes the airline first thought of, and treble it.
Daily Mail
20-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Qantas lashed for 'hollow' apology after almost 2,000 workers were axed from the airline in biggest case of illegal sacking in Australia's history
An apology by Qantas for sacking 1,820 ground crew rings 'wholly hollow' and it has failed to make changes that ensure such actions never happen again, a judge has been told. In the Federal Court in Sydney on Tuesday, Justice Michael Lee continued hearing submissions on the penalty to be imposed on Qantas for the biggest case of illegal sackings in Australian history. Last October, Justice Lee ordered Qantas to pay $120million to the ground staff as compensation for their economic loss, pain and suffering since their jobs were outsourced during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Transport Workers Union is seeking that he impose the maximum penalty of $121million and order that the money be paid to the union. Noel Hutley SC, for the union, told Justice Lee that he should reject Qantas' submission that after four-and-a-half years of litigation, it was now contrite. 'Your Honour will not brush aside, as Qantas urges in its submissions, its vehement and regular denials of wrongdoing (and) its rejection of Your Honour's findings, which persisted all the way to the High Court,' he said. 'These reveal an attitude of adamantine self-righteousness.' Since the High Court ruled against Qantas' appeal no senior executive of the airline had publicly accepted it broke the law or Justice Lee's conclusions until Monday, Mr Hutley said. 'The contrition rings wholly hollow.' There had been 'a profound failure' within Qantas 'to come to terms with what needs to occur to avoid these things happening again', he said. The court should order that the penalty be paid to the TWU, which had taken on enormous risks and burdens to fight the sackings, Mr Hutley said. 'If the penalty is paid to my client, my client is an organisation charged with advancing the interests of its members... and the money would be applied to the proper purposes of the organisation.' On Monday, Qantas chief people officer Catherine Walsh told Justice Lee that 'hopefully you'll see from the size of the compensation payment that, in fact, we are very sorry'. 'We do wish for the workforce that was impacted to be properly remediated and the compensation that has been agreed could go some way to deal with that,' she said. Outside court, former Qantas worker Damien Pollard said union members were looking forward to the conclusion of the case 'to allow us to get on with our lives'. 'It's been a long fight, it's been very stressful for a lot of employees, so we are looking forward to the end,' he said.
