Do "Budget" Airlines Perform Any Worse than Other Airlines When it Comes to Service Levels

Ever since budget airlines were introduced, they were considered to be a blessing sent straight from heaven. All of a sudden, flying became affordable to everybody and anybody. However, as the trend continued to grow, budget airlines faced their fair share of criticisms that ranged from flight delays to even bad food. It has continued becoming a bigger problem as budget airways are constantly looking for new ways to make quick money. So, the question to ask now is, are budget airlines worse than regular airlines when it comes to service?

To start off with the first aspect, which is pricing, budget airlines are cheaper, no doubt. Passengers can take a flight to a destination of their choice, without any major hindrances, by paying a mere sum of 30 pounds. However, when problems do arise, budget airways fail miserably at addressing them. For instance, if you follow UK airline news, you would probably know that EasyJet and Ryanair do not have customer service helpdesks, which means the passenger, has to solely rely on a premium rate phone number that costs around a pound per minute. It usually ends up in the passenger spending way more than the reimbursement amount that was due to them.

Not only does it affect the customer, it is also counter productive to the concerned airlines’ business. It prevents the airline from gaining any significant feedback on its services. How is an airline service supposed to gain insight on its performance when customers are discouraged from providing feedback?

Another Common problem constantly reported in flight news, UK is the extra charges that budget airlines charge passengers for baggage and insurance. When all this adds up, budget airline tickets are almost as expensive as luxury airline tickets. Luxury airlines might, in fact end up looking as better options as they, at least, do not have strict rules concerning baggage.

No-frills does not mean bad customer service

When budget airlines offer a no-frills service, it is understandable because the whole point of a cheap flight is to get from point A to point B with as little expense as possible. It would not be wise to expect any form of luxury from such a flight. However, a lot of budget airlines tend to misunderstand ‘no-frills’ as a way to treat customers poorly. There have been reported cases of flight attendants misbehaving with passengers. One just has to browse through old flight news, UK to recollect incidents about the poor service for which budget airlines are famous.

Who can forget the famous incident involving Ryanair leaving its passengers stranded in Italy without any support during the volcanic ash incident?

Very rarely will you hear the same about a reputed airline such as Lufthansa or British Airways. The bottom line is that though, budget airlines were on a positive path in the beginning, their lack of customer support cannot be neglected. On the other hand, luxury airline services continue to retain their loyal customer base despite their premium ticket costs.

Stephen Godden, am the author of this article for Flight Delay Refunds and Blueway Limited is the main resources of Flight Delay Refunds company provide a full service of delayed or cancelled flights.