Facebook post from the CEO:
Hello Scoot Community.
As many of you would have known by now, one of our flights was disrupted over the weekend which caused consequential delays to a number of others. We appreciate all that has been shared and discussed on our Facebook pages over the past few days, and know that many of you were anxious and frustrated. I’ve been reviewing your comments and I thought that, in addition to extending my own apology, it might be useful to share a little more information about how we’ll improve communication, the compensation for delays and what actually transpired over the weekend. It’s a long post, but bear with me.
We realize that one of the main causes of frustration was the timeliness and frequency of information. We have, in fact, been working for a few months on a SMS alert system designed specifically to provide timely information when flights are disrupted due to weather or other events. This system is due for implementation in just a few weeks….or, as Murphy’s law would describe it, just a few weeks too late. Too late is, of course, too late, and we’re sorry.
We’re also aware that many of you had questions regarding compensation. In keeping with our Guest Promise, we’ll be issuing a SGD50 voucher to every passenger on the flights which were delayed beyond 4 hours. All passengers who were denied boarding were given tickets on the next available Scoot flight and offered a SGD200 Scoot travel voucher each, and those who chose to buy a new ticket on another airline can obtain a refund from us on the sector that was not flown, and claim against their travel insurance for the new ticket.
We'd also like to be transparent about the issues lead to the delays, lest it clarifies your queries. The whole saga arose just before our Singapore-Bangkok flight on Saturday (19 January), when engineers discovered a technical fault with one of the doors at the back of the aircraft during the pre-flight check. Whilst the aircraft was completely safe to operate, Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore rules required the seats in rows 57 – 65 to be empty.
As the flight was fully booked, emptying these seats necessitated the unfortunate step of seeking volunteers to take a later flight, in return for compensation. The need to ask passengers to travel on a later flight was entirely due to the need to vacate rows 57-65 for safety reasons, and was not due to overbooking of the flight.
Regrettably, we were unable to find the necessary number of volunteers, so advised the last passengers to check in that they would be transferred to the next flight and compensated. Despite the terms of carriage requiring compliance with safety related requests such as this, a few refused and physically prevented the flight from boarding. Various efforts of Scoot representatives and the Airport Police failed to resolve the matter and eventually, after a six hour delay, some other passengers agreed to travel at a later date and the aircraft departed for Bangkok.
Upon the aircraft’s return to Singapore the door fault was fixed within a few hours, but by then every flight to be operated by that aircraft was behind schedule - including the flight to Tianjin on Sunday (20 January), and, due to passengers connecting from Tainjin, to the Gold Coast later that day. After much effort, the schedule was restored on Monday evening, though some guests whose connections had been broken remained enroute home.
To cut a long story short, a small technical glitch and the actions of a small number of people had substantial consequences on the travel of many others. The irony is that had we proactively delayed the Bangkok flight by a few hours to fix the fault – guaranteeing disruption to nearly 800 people’s plans - the rest of our schedule would have been virtually unaffected.
I'd still like to remind, however, that we are a no-frills airline. We believe that most of you understand this travel model enough to know that the only way we can offer fares as low as we do is, in part, by not keeping the same large teams of airport or customer support staff as our much more expensive full-service brethren, and that some degree of self-reliance is a quid-pro-quo for a cheap, safe ticket. We have always tried to be as clear as possible in our terms and conditions of carriage, which must be acknowledged as read and accepted before a ticket can be issued, that we do not provide meals, drinks or accommodation in the event of disruption, and repeatedly state that travel insurance is highly recommended. Snow, fog, typhoons or the occasional technical glitch are just some of the issues that are a fact of life for any regular traveller, and although less than 1% of our flights have been affected by more than 15 minutes due to engineering reasons since our launch, unforeseen events do occur. We at Scoot are travellers too, and trust us, we dislike disruptions at least as much as you do. But they sometimes happen, and pretending that they don’t, or thinking that despite every statement to the contrary we were just joking in our recommendation to take travel insurance, won’t prevent them from happening.
We absolutely understand your frustration, but what’s done is done. There are things that we can learn from this, and I assure you that we will. But, more than anything, we will continue to focus on providing great value, safe and – as best we possibly can – fun and reliable travel. Thanks for taking time to read this and, whether you’ve commented for or against us, thanks for your passion.
Campbell Wilson
Chief Executive Officer
Scoot
