My CEO Life

I travel a lot for my roll as we continue to build out the business into new markets.  As such i get to travel on many and varied airlines and most of the time long haul.   So i thought i would start a new section of the site about what i really think about certain airlines and give you the real inside scoop.

My first victim is Emirates.

For those of you who dont know them, they are based out of Dubai in the Middle East and are one of the most progressive airlines (and countries). I have flown Emirates a few times and it is usually long haul and between Europe and Australia and Asia.

The Good

• Excellent service
• Great food
• Friendly cabin staff with great language skill – the are from around the world
• Dubai airport is wonderful
• The inflight entertainment system is second to none – hundreds of choices

The Bad

• The food services as SO SLOW – so if you want to work, you just have to be patient
• The seats are not the most modern and sleeping on them is really hard!
• Dont really have an alliance for frequent flyers – i am meant to be getting united points but they are yet to come through

The Ugly

• Not all planes are modern so if you are unlucky (usually between Middle East and locations in Europe) — the planes suck!
• On my last flight, the great entertainment system didnt work and there was nothing they could do about it — imagine 14 hours and no TV
• Check your flights – recently flew from Dubai to Rome but had to stop in Milan on the way – not fun!

Would be great to hear your travel stories

A week or so ago i wrote about the not so good service i received on a recent Emirates Airlines flight.  Well i thought i would go further than just bleating about it on this site.  I decided to write an email to the customer service people.

Now normally you write these things and nothing happens.  However, imagine my surprise when i received an email back from a customer service manager in Dubai followed by a phone call.  We chatted, he listened (VERY GOOD), and then explained how they have had problems, apologized (EVEN BETTER) and then outlined their improvement approach.  This was fantastic.

However, he then went one step further and offered my a free upgrade to the next class level on my next flight.  He didn’t need to do this but it has certainly created a strong customer and of course, i will make sure my people fly Emirates too.

Amazing what great customer service can do.