erkpod
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Air Berlin lost luggage: The German airline melts down on social media. - Slate Magazine
If you’re looking for your afternoon fix of schadenfreude, you should mosey over to theTwitter and Facebook feeds of Air Berlin. Over the past few days, the social media presence of Germany’s second-largest airline has become a mesmerizing spectacle of shaming and apology. As with any train wreck, it’s hard to look away, but watching a company, rather than an individual, melt down on the Internet seems especially surreal. Maybe the German language has a word for it. My word for it is oy.
Air Berlin has hubs at the Berlin and Dusseldorf airports. It primarily serves bustling European cities, but its flights go to 150 destinations all over the world. It’s got a fleet of 129 aircraft and earned profits of less than $9 million in 2012, the same year it joinedOneworld Alliance, which includes aeronautic heavyweights like American Airlines and British Airways. (Ledgers from previous years are swimming in red ink.) But the company’s best-kept secret—now a secret no longer—is that it is a portal to a strange, disorienting, Kafka-esque universe in which bags disappear or are abducted, and the bureaucracy in charge of locating them tweets bromides at you while adamantly refusing to help.
At least, that’s the conclusion you might draw after reading reams of customer complaints on Twitter and Facebook. The problem seems to have started when an Aug. 9 flight from Stockholm to Berlin took off without loading any luggage. Almost 200 bags idled in the Stockholm airport; passengers’ inquiries were met with endless redirects. One customer even unveiled a Facebook group called Airberlin 8109 Stockholm to Berlin - Where are our bags?!?!? The somewhat reiterative description reads:
“A group for those who flew on AB 8109 from Stockholm to TXL on 9 August 2013. NONE of the checked luggage was loaded on the airplane—almost 200 missing pieces missing among the passengers. Little to no information has been provided. We filled out forms and were given baggage service numbers to call, but the phone line has no answer all day. Days later, still no information whatsoever, nobody to call, no information, not sure what to do. Baggage company says to contact airline; airline says to contact baggage company. Vacations & weddings ruined. We still can't comprehend why the captain decided to take off before any pieces of luggage were loaded. We need support from Air Berlin—please get to the bottom of this. This isn't one lost bag, it's a whole plane of lost bags!”
(article continues)
How does a group of baggage handlers forget to load a planeload of luggage? What role (if any) would the flight crew have in overseeing the loading & unloading of passenger luggage only? I wonder if anyone has made a Hitler video entitled "Hitler finds out his baggage has been lost by Air Berlin & they can't help him find it"
If you’re looking for your afternoon fix of schadenfreude, you should mosey over to theTwitter and Facebook feeds of Air Berlin. Over the past few days, the social media presence of Germany’s second-largest airline has become a mesmerizing spectacle of shaming and apology. As with any train wreck, it’s hard to look away, but watching a company, rather than an individual, melt down on the Internet seems especially surreal. Maybe the German language has a word for it. My word for it is oy.
Air Berlin has hubs at the Berlin and Dusseldorf airports. It primarily serves bustling European cities, but its flights go to 150 destinations all over the world. It’s got a fleet of 129 aircraft and earned profits of less than $9 million in 2012, the same year it joinedOneworld Alliance, which includes aeronautic heavyweights like American Airlines and British Airways. (Ledgers from previous years are swimming in red ink.) But the company’s best-kept secret—now a secret no longer—is that it is a portal to a strange, disorienting, Kafka-esque universe in which bags disappear or are abducted, and the bureaucracy in charge of locating them tweets bromides at you while adamantly refusing to help.
At least, that’s the conclusion you might draw after reading reams of customer complaints on Twitter and Facebook. The problem seems to have started when an Aug. 9 flight from Stockholm to Berlin took off without loading any luggage. Almost 200 bags idled in the Stockholm airport; passengers’ inquiries were met with endless redirects. One customer even unveiled a Facebook group called Airberlin 8109 Stockholm to Berlin - Where are our bags?!?!? The somewhat reiterative description reads:
“A group for those who flew on AB 8109 from Stockholm to TXL on 9 August 2013. NONE of the checked luggage was loaded on the airplane—almost 200 missing pieces missing among the passengers. Little to no information has been provided. We filled out forms and were given baggage service numbers to call, but the phone line has no answer all day. Days later, still no information whatsoever, nobody to call, no information, not sure what to do. Baggage company says to contact airline; airline says to contact baggage company. Vacations & weddings ruined. We still can't comprehend why the captain decided to take off before any pieces of luggage were loaded. We need support from Air Berlin—please get to the bottom of this. This isn't one lost bag, it's a whole plane of lost bags!”
(article continues)
How does a group of baggage handlers forget to load a planeload of luggage? What role (if any) would the flight crew have in overseeing the loading & unloading of passenger luggage only? I wonder if anyone has made a Hitler video entitled "Hitler finds out his baggage has been lost by Air Berlin & they can't help him find it"
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