<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR>Tiger Airways is the opposite of SIA's unmatched service excellence
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->TIGER Airways, an affiliate of Singapore Airlines, really needs to get its act together, especially in respect of its attitude and service to passengers. My recent first trip with Tiger will probably be the last.
Last Friday, my two friends and I took TR 482 to Kota Kinabalu (KK) and returned to Singapore on TR 485 on Tuesday. Both journeys could be described as unpleasant.
We enjoyed our holiday in KK, the capital of Sabah state in Malaysia, very much. The stay at the Hyatt Recency for four nights was excellent: a well-located hotel with great service. When we told the management about the noise arising from renovation works in parts of the hotel, the general manager, Mr Franz Mascarenhas, responded by providing a new room facing the sea and threw in a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon with his compliments.
During our excursions in and around KK, the Malaysians provided gracious and hospitable service, from taxi drivers to waitresses and tourist guides. To them the customer was always king, so they bent over backwards to please us. It all added up to make our first trip to the island of Borneo a truly pleasant one and a real eye opener on the attractions of this offbeat destination, the third largest island in the world.
However, the treatment from Tiger Airways left much to be desired. It left us wishing we had taken AirAsia, which has frequent connections to KK. Our earlier experience on AirAsia on a trip to Bali had been much more pleasant.
The Tiger Airways flight to KK was delayed by about an hour. While the captain apologised for the delay, there was no service recovery. We expected the air crew to at least serve water to all passengers during the flight. But that proved too much to expect.
On the return journey, things got much worse. We checked into the KK airport early, at 9pm, for the 11.05pm flight. We secured good seats but soon discovered that the flight had been delayed by an hour. While waiting in the departure area, we realised that the shops had closed for the night by�9.30pm. We had earlier surrendered our water bottles to the security staff, so we were left with nothing to eat or drink until flight departure, which was further delayed to 1am the next morning.
The chief pilot apologised for the late departure but made no mention of helping the thirsty passengers. He preferred to talk about the weather in Singapore. We had earlier asked the ground staff at the gate to provide some water to passengers on the flight, due to the delay. Nothing happened. Instead, the chief hostess frequently sipped from her own bottle of water and adjusted her hairdo.
Two aircrew pushed a trolley through the cabin but hardly anyone was approached to buy drink or food. It was so quick, we did not realise the trolley had passed through, from front to back. It did not return to the front of the plane, where the stewardesses were relaxing most of the time, behind drawn curtains.
I wrote a note to the captain, telling him of the predicament of the passengers. The chief stewardess declined to pass the note to the captain, on the grounds that he was 'busy'. Only when I insisted, did she go into the crew area, presumably to pass the note to the captain.
Again, nothing happened. No word from anyone and no service recovery. We eventually landed in Singapore at 3am, some two hours later than scheduled.
We chose Tiger Airways to KK because it is a Singapore company. It has made us realise that Tiger's approach to service is diametrically opposite to that of SIA, its ultimate parent. Perhaps it is to prove a point that you get what you pay for: poor service for low fares. Tiger is a budget airline and its fares are cheaper than those of SIA. But AirAsia and Jetstar are also budget airlines and they do not treat passengers as if they are just cheap baggage to be moved from point A to point B. My experience with them has been much better. No delays and good cabin service.
If Tiger Airways' hidden agenda is to drive customers to SIA, it will not succeed as we have several budget airlines to choose from. With budget airlines, everyone can fly now (as AirAsia proclaims) but no one needs to be on an airline (Tiger) where the service is of such a low level that even other budget airlines talk about it.
�
Mano Sabnani
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->TIGER Airways, an affiliate of Singapore Airlines, really needs to get its act together, especially in respect of its attitude and service to passengers. My recent first trip with Tiger will probably be the last.
Last Friday, my two friends and I took TR 482 to Kota Kinabalu (KK) and returned to Singapore on TR 485 on Tuesday. Both journeys could be described as unpleasant.
We enjoyed our holiday in KK, the capital of Sabah state in Malaysia, very much. The stay at the Hyatt Recency for four nights was excellent: a well-located hotel with great service. When we told the management about the noise arising from renovation works in parts of the hotel, the general manager, Mr Franz Mascarenhas, responded by providing a new room facing the sea and threw in a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon with his compliments.
During our excursions in and around KK, the Malaysians provided gracious and hospitable service, from taxi drivers to waitresses and tourist guides. To them the customer was always king, so they bent over backwards to please us. It all added up to make our first trip to the island of Borneo a truly pleasant one and a real eye opener on the attractions of this offbeat destination, the third largest island in the world.
However, the treatment from Tiger Airways left much to be desired. It left us wishing we had taken AirAsia, which has frequent connections to KK. Our earlier experience on AirAsia on a trip to Bali had been much more pleasant.
The Tiger Airways flight to KK was delayed by about an hour. While the captain apologised for the delay, there was no service recovery. We expected the air crew to at least serve water to all passengers during the flight. But that proved too much to expect.
On the return journey, things got much worse. We checked into the KK airport early, at 9pm, for the 11.05pm flight. We secured good seats but soon discovered that the flight had been delayed by an hour. While waiting in the departure area, we realised that the shops had closed for the night by�9.30pm. We had earlier surrendered our water bottles to the security staff, so we were left with nothing to eat or drink until flight departure, which was further delayed to 1am the next morning.
The chief pilot apologised for the late departure but made no mention of helping the thirsty passengers. He preferred to talk about the weather in Singapore. We had earlier asked the ground staff at the gate to provide some water to passengers on the flight, due to the delay. Nothing happened. Instead, the chief hostess frequently sipped from her own bottle of water and adjusted her hairdo.
Two aircrew pushed a trolley through the cabin but hardly anyone was approached to buy drink or food. It was so quick, we did not realise the trolley had passed through, from front to back. It did not return to the front of the plane, where the stewardesses were relaxing most of the time, behind drawn curtains.
I wrote a note to the captain, telling him of the predicament of the passengers. The chief stewardess declined to pass the note to the captain, on the grounds that he was 'busy'. Only when I insisted, did she go into the crew area, presumably to pass the note to the captain.
Again, nothing happened. No word from anyone and no service recovery. We eventually landed in Singapore at 3am, some two hours later than scheduled.
We chose Tiger Airways to KK because it is a Singapore company. It has made us realise that Tiger's approach to service is diametrically opposite to that of SIA, its ultimate parent. Perhaps it is to prove a point that you get what you pay for: poor service for low fares. Tiger is a budget airline and its fares are cheaper than those of SIA. But AirAsia and Jetstar are also budget airlines and they do not treat passengers as if they are just cheap baggage to be moved from point A to point B. My experience with them has been much better. No delays and good cabin service.
If Tiger Airways' hidden agenda is to drive customers to SIA, it will not succeed as we have several budget airlines to choose from. With budget airlines, everyone can fly now (as AirAsia proclaims) but no one needs to be on an airline (Tiger) where the service is of such a low level that even other budget airlines talk about it.
�
Mano Sabnani
