News Forum - Thai VietJet cancels Phuket – Bangkok flight last minute over 1 extra passenger

[Thaiger]

Budget airline Thai VietJet cancelled a flight from Phuket to Bangkok minutes before take off last night because staff couldn’t find a seat for one passenger. The plane was already taxiing on the runway ready to depart. Flight vz2305 to Bangkok was scheduled to depart from Phuket at 8.25pm. More than 300 passengers boarded and the plane began taxiing down the runway ready for take off. However, right before the plane was about to depart, airline staff realised they couldn’t find a seat for one foreign passenger. The pilot coordinated with the flight control tower and decided to turn the plane […]

The story Thai VietJet cancels Phuket – Bangkok flight last minute over 1 extra passenger as seen on Thaiger News.

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[HolyCowCm]

Really? How about one of the jump seats not occupied. 

[Havana]

So what happened to these stringent measures the cabin crew carry out including every passenger seated with their seat belt securely fastened prior to the plane moving?

As HolyCow mentioned, why not use a jump seat?

[Grumpish]

1 hour ago, HolyCowCm said:

Really? How about one of the jump seats not occupied. 

Or, as I witnessed on an internal flight between Calcutta and Delhi many years ago, just get them to sit on the floor next to one of the emergency exits.

[KaptainRob]

2 hours ago, Thaiger said:

More than 300 passengers boarded and the plane began taxiing down the runway ready for take off

Unless I'm mistaken TVJ use A320's with a maximum of 230pax so either the article is wrong or they had ~70 pax without seats 

Normal procedure is to off-load at least one volunteer and continue the flight.   Poor flight management all round.

[Skip]

This is typical of Thai VietJet air as well as VietJet air... from my recent experience anyone who books a flight with them is stupid or ignorant (I was ignorant... did not know how badly this airline is run)... total lack of plan for contingencies that are everyday occurrences... total lack of concern for patrons... DO NOT FLY ON VIETJET AIR. 

[Marc26]

4 hours ago, Skip said:

This is typical of Thai VietJet air as well as VietJet air... from my recent experience anyone who books a flight with them is stupid or ignorant (I was ignorant... did not know how badly this airline is run)... total lack of plan for contingencies that are everyday occurrences... total lack of concern for patrons... DO NOT FLY ON VIETJET AIR. 

I always read the website that has airline reviews

 

 

And most reviews of those two airlines were bad so never attempted to fly with them 

 

Especially because a major complaint by many people was that they often cancel flights 

 

 

[BJoe]

What you do is, find one passenger volunteer, give that person “incentives” ,  i.e. a luxury room with meals for a night and maybe a flight coupon,  then fly him or her to Bangkok at the earliest.   But why are you surprised at the handling of such a simple problem ?     It’s a thai affiliated airline run by…..Thais.

[Soidog]

6 hours ago, Skip said:

This is typical of Thai VietJet air as well as VietJet air... from my recent experience anyone who books a flight with them is stupid or ignorant (I was ignorant... did not know how badly this airline is run)... total lack of plan for contingencies that are everyday occurrences... total lack of concern for patrons... DO NOT FLY ON VIETJET AIR. 

Like many low cost carriers, they get away with it because they are cheap. The problems arise when you really need the flight to be on time. 
 

If I need to move around Thailand or SE Asia and in no particular hurry, I will use TVJ. If I need to be on time or on a connecting flight, I would rather pay more  and use Thai. That said, Thai have let me down a few times recently. Mainly changing flight times by an hour or two at short notice.

[KaptainRob]

As I posted in todays follow up article there's many holes in story told by Phuket News and/or AOT.  It appears that TVJ may have simply cancelled the other flight ex HKT and used 'mechanical inspection' as an excuse.  Whatever really happened it was a complete shambles exacerbated by a runway closed for repair.

Similar scenarios have played out in NZ and Australia recently with 2 airlines complicit in the failures to deliver service and no overnight accommodation provided.  Just a cold transit lounge floor!

[Soidog]

3 minutes ago, KaptainRob said:

Similar scenarios have played out in NZ and Australia recently with 2 airlines complicit in the failures to deliver service and no overnight accommodation provided.  Just a cold transit lounge floor!

Airlines won’t change their shitty behaviour until governments force them to. Their wafer thin veneer of customer service is exposed multiple times on a single trip. The airlines blame the airports and the airports blame the airlines. Stuck in the middle are the poor cattle. Sorry, I mean paying customers. 
 

The only thing I would say in defence of the airlines, is that the majority of the travelling public are as thick as a house brick. The number of times they announce that as we are about to land, will you kindly put your seat upright, close tray tables, open window shades and place any bags under the seat in front of you. And what do you see? People all over the plane reclined. Shades down. Bags blocking the floor. I don’t know how the cabin crew stay calm with them. The other one is - Please remain in your seat until the seat belt sign is switched off. As soon as the plane stops and often before, all you hear is the clicking of seatbelts and people standing up. 

[Marc26]

8 hours ago, Soidog said:

Airlines won’t change their shitty behaviour until governments force them to. Their wafer thin veneer of customer service is exposed multiple times on a single trip. The airlines blame the airports and the airports blame the airlines. Stuck in the middle are the poor cattle. Sorry, I mean paying customers. 
 

The only thing I would say in defence of the airlines, is that the majority of the travelling public are as thick as a house brick. The number of times they announce that as we are about to land, will you kindly put your seat upright, close tray tables, open window shades and place any bags under the seat in front of you. And what do you see? People all over the plane reclined. Shades down. Bags blocking the floor. I don’t know how the cabin crew stay calm with them. The other one is - Please remain in your seat until the seat belt sign is switched off. As soon as the plane stops and often before, all you hear is the clicking of seatbelts and people standing up. 

I just think Airlines are too complex that if one thing goes wrong it steamrolls everything 

 

Because they are great until they are not!

 

 

Knock on wood

I've had very good luck in the last 3 years or so

[Grumpish]

12 hours ago, Soidog said:

Airlines won’t change their shitty behaviour until governments force them to. Their wafer thin veneer of customer service is exposed multiple times on a single trip. The airlines blame the airports and the airports blame the airlines. Stuck in the middle are the poor cattle. Sorry, I mean paying customers. 
 

The only thing I would say in defence of the airlines, is that the majority of the travelling public are as thick as a house brick. The number of times they announce that as we are about to land, will you kindly put your seat upright, close tray tables, open window shades and place any bags under the seat in front of you. And what do you see? People all over the plane reclined. Shades down. Bags blocking the floor. I don’t know how the cabin crew stay calm with them. The other one is - Please remain in your seat until the seat belt sign is switched off. As soon as the plane stops and often before, all you hear is the clicking of seatbelts and people standing up. 

It does tend to be the low cost carriers that get it badly wrong - they run on wafer thin margins, usually have no "spare" aircraft if one goes tech, and often run on the legal minimum crew levels (which are set for  safety, not service). The full service carriers get it wrong as well, although the few occasions I got bounced because of over-booking I came out of it with a business class upgrade, so they are generally better at service recovery as well. A lot is you get what you pay for - I don't have high expectations with the low cost carriers, so am not too put out if things don't quite work out they way they should have.

[Soidog]

25 minutes ago, Grumpish said:

It does tend to be the low cost carriers that get it badly wrong - they run on wafer thin margins, usually have no "spare" aircraft if one goes tech, and often run on the legal minimum crew levels (which are set for  safety, not service). The full service carriers get it wrong as well, although the few occasions I got bounced because of over-booking I came out of it with a business class upgrade, so they are generally better at service recovery as well. A lot is you get what you pay for - I don't have high expectations with the low cost carriers, so am not too put out if things don't quite work out they way they should have.

I totally agree with the points you make and it’s always true that you get what you pay for.

The whole aviation industry needs a paradigm shift in my opinion. The industry has basically been doing the same thing for decades. Each airline is essentially the same. The airports dictate the whole “flying experience” with utterly ridiculous requests to arrive two hours before your flight. The whole security check is one big fiasco and then there is the same boring nonsense of boarding and going through the ever so boring safety demo that no one listens to. The announcement that “This is a non smoking flight” just about sums up the attitude. ALL commercial flights are non smoking. They don’t need to tell us this. A whole fresh look at how it all works is required instead of the copycat services, where only price or a sucky sweet is handed out before landing being the differentiator. It’s simply not good enough.
 

It’s the only industry I can think of that actually went backwards when they scrapped the only supersonic aircraft and now we all trundle along at 500-600mph. You arrive overhead the airfield only to be placed in the hold for 30 mins. You land and then sit on the tarmac waiting a further 15 mins for a gate to come free. You then have to wait a further 10 mins to disembark only to find you then get on a bus and driven for 10 mins around the airfield. Then you wait a further 20 mins for you bag to arrive.  It’s just crap basically!  

[HiuMak]

put him with the luggages and done deal.

[Grumpish]

2 hours ago, Soidog said:

t’s the only industry I can think of that actually went backwards when they scrapped the only supersonic aircraft and now we all trundle along at 500-600mph

I lived five minutes walk from Heathrow's southern perimeter back then and loved seeing Concorde taking off back then, afterburners on. A go round on landing was something else - the noise was enough to set off every car alarm within a mile of the runway.

[Marc26]

18 hours ago, Soidog said:

 

 

It’s the only industry I can think of that actually went backwards when they scrapped the only supersonic aircraft and now we all trundle along at 500-600mph. You arrive overhead the airfield only to be placed in the hold for 30 mins. You land and then sit on the tarmac waiting a further 15 mins for a gate to come free. You then have to wait a further 10 mins to disembark only to find you then get on a bus and driven for 10 mins around the airfield. Then you wait a further 20 mins for you bag to arrive.  It’s just crap basically!  

It "went backwards" so that people could actually afford to fly

 

People are freaking out over airline prices now and that would be the norm and more if it stayed how it was "back in the good old days"

 

 

With the exception of this current increase, we pay a pittance to fly if yiu really add it up

 

I don't love the experience a lot of times but I am flying across the country for $500-600

And a lot of times, for $1000 to go to the other side of the world 

 

So all things considered, it's well worth it

[Soidog]

5 hours ago, Marc26 said:

It "went backwards" so that people could actually afford to fly

People are freaking out over airline prices now and that would be the norm and more if it stayed how it was "back in the good old days"

With the exception of this current increase, we pay a pittance to fly if yiu really add it up

I don't love the experience a lot of times but I am flying across the country for $500-600

And a lot of times, for $1000 to go to the other side of the world 

So all things considered, it's well worth it

I disagree Marc. You simply can’t look at it that way. The fact is that aviation was heading towards a supersonic future and yet it never happened. The technology was there but the industry never embraced it.  The whole aviation industry needs to move forward. We are still doing what we did 40 years ago. Subsonic flights with a lot more hassle. It’s not progressing at all. What other industry stands still for 40 years and offers the same product? If aviation was in the media we would still have black and white TV and and stereo sound would be at a premium. 

[Marc26]

38 minutes ago, Soidog said:

I disagree Marc. You simply can’t look at it that way. The fact is that aviation was heading towards a supersonic future and yet it never happened. The technology was there but the industry never embraced it.  The whole aviation industry needs to move forward. We are still doing what we did 40 years ago. Subsonic flights with a lot more hassle. It’s not progressing at all. What other industry stands still for 40 years and offers the same product? If aviation was in the media we would still have black and white TV and and stereo sound would be at a premium. 

Of course it has advanced 

 

There are so many more routes that simply weren't available before

 

That Air Canada direct from Vancouver is a prime example

 

They had directs from LA and NYC to BKK but the economics didn't work with the planes they had to use

 

The economics now work because of the new planes able to be used 

[Soidog]

8 hours ago, Marc26 said:

Of course it has advanced 

There are so many more routes that simply weren't available before

That Air Canada direct from Vancouver is a prime example

They had directs from LA and NYC to BKK but the economics didn't work with the planes they had to use

The economics now work because of the new planes able to be used 

Well we will have to agree to disagree Marc.

Any industry that makes a giant leap forward with supersonic flight, only to let it fail and not progress further doesn’t count as much of an advancement to me. All you have described is more of the same. That’s volume it’s not advancement. 

[Mazz11]

On 12/3/2022 at 5:05 PM, KaptainRob said:

Similar scenarios have played out in NZ and Australia recently with 2 airlines complicit in the failures to deliver service and no overnight accommodation provided.  Just a cold transit lounge floor!

I concur KaptainBob, there are issues with airlines all around the world.

I was recently on a short flight from Perth to Kalgoorlie (1hr flight) on the major Australian airline (I will not name the company specifically, but they the one nicknamed the flying kangaroo) which is a very expensive flight, price usually equivalent to flying from Perth to Adelaide.

It was an early morning flight and I was not even offered a cup of bad coffee. Prior to covid you would get a full breakfast.

Service has deteriorated to become almost nonexistent and prices have gone through the roof.

I will say that I recently flew with Singapore Air and was very happy with the service.