Tuesday, January 29, 2013

I prefer Austrian Airlines - yet Lufthansa get my business




The last 8 months I have travelled for work at least every second week – in my eyes that it quite a lot. I travel between two sites (Brussels and Krakow) and there is no direct flight. I can choose to go via 4 different airports. To get over to Krakow the earliest in the morning and back the latest – thus optimizing my days there I usual go via Vienna.
I love Austrian Airlines, they give excellent service. If we are a bit delayed usually the captain will say “We have checked your connecting flights, and you should be able to make them”  - I think 85 % of us coming from Krakow on the late flight have a connecting flight and we all want to get home.
But Austrian codeshare with Polish LOT who are always late  at take off– and they never say anything at the gate – the crew is not helpful – and the whole experience is unpleasant (and even though I have a two hour layover in Vienna - I have missed the connecting flight, and more often than not I have to run to catch the next plane). So on the same route I have either a great experience, that makes me happy, or one that makes me want to give up airtravel altogether.
In an ideal world I want to keep doing the very early and very late flights, fly with Austrian Airlines and avoid LOT – unfortunately that is not possible so I am starting to travel via Munich with Lufthansa.
So Austrian Airlines are losing my business, because I want to avoid LOT – of course the real winner is Lufthansa who  do not need to do anything to gain the businessIt just goes to show that if you have a partner – you need to make sure their standards are not dragging you down.