Aero Icarus/Flickr" width="100%" />
Having a delayed flight is pretty much one of the worst things that can happen when you’re on vacation. So when a Scoot flight that was supposed to depart Sydney for Singapore at 1:30pm Sydney time (10:30am Singapore time) on Saturday got held up due to an aircraft technical issue, passengers were understandably upset – especially since they were stranded in the Australian city for 24 entire hours.
The airline told Channel NewsAsia that the flight was retimed to allow engineers to rectify the issue, and it had arranged for hotel accommodation and transportation for the affected passengers.
Unfortunately, complications arose with some of the 53 travelers who accepted the offer of accommodation (the rest were either Sydney residents or did not require assistance). Complaints included having to wait in line for hours before being put up at a hotel, unreliable transport, insufficient rooms, and logistics problems at the airport the following day.
The 234-passenger Scoot flight TR1 eventually departed on Sunday at 1:33pm.
A Scoot spokesperson issued an updated statement on Sunday night, explaining that the holiday season had resulted in “limited options” for transport and accommodation.
“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience experienced due to the delay in ground transportation to the hotels, and miscommunication between our airline representatives and the hotels which resulted in some unavailability of rooms,” the spokesperson said. “We regret the disruptions to the travel plans of our passengers.”
Ironically, Scoot CEO Lee Lik Hsin chose this very same weekend to speak about how the industry model for budget airlines has changed.
“It’s no longer the bad old budget airlines of the past, leaving you stranded. We all take care of our customers. We have to,” he told Channel NewsAsia in a separate statement (before the Sydney incident).
“Customers sometimes fret that services are being taken away from them and they actually have to do it themselves. But many customers would prefer that and from that they get a better price and better value.”
Unfortunate timing, indeed.
