Last night my wife flew out of town here, bound for Helsinki in Finland. She's attending a work conference on..... something or other. Anyway, she was flying as far as Stockholm that evening, staying at the airport hotel, then taking the morning flight to Helsinki. Sounds simple enough. Being the good Swede that she is, she had booked the cheapest fares possible, to get the best deal for her company. If this were in NZ, the employee would have booked Business Class in order to screw the employer as much as possible. Another tick in the nice box for Sweden. So she booked the last flight of the evening to Stockholm and then the first flight in the morning out of Stockholm to Helsinki. Travelling the whole way with Norwegian Air.
Now, I've travelled with Norwegian Air a few times. And a couple of things should be noted about them. First up, they are a budget airline. Their tickets are cheap. That's a good thing. There's a market for that, especially when it comes to short haul holiday travel. They fly directly to some of the lesser known holiday destination sites which the bigger mainstream airlines don't service so well. It's good that there is a company who does that.
The aircraft operated by Norwegian Air are not especially grand. Most are a little tired, it has to be said. Not uncomfortable, but they do look a bit worn and scruffy inside. However, considering you're not on them for more than about 3 hours at a time, they are perfectly adequate for the purpose. If you want more luxury for your bum, spend more money on your ticket.
I had a quick count up and I've flown Norwegian Air about 10 times. As far as I can remember. Because they were cheap. What I do remember is that every one of those 10 flights has been late leaving it's departure airport. Every single time. You can set your watch by a Norwegian Air flight being 30 minutes late to anywhere. Someone told me once that the budget airlines pay a lesser airport fee, so they are often pushed aside to accomodate for full fee paying flights. Could well be. All I know is that their timetables are rather meaningless. This is important to remember if you're planning a trip that includes any changeover flights. An airline company will hold a connecting flight for one of it's own planes, but not for a plane operated by another company which is late. An SAS flight will wait for an SAS flight, but an SAS flight won't wait for a late Norwegian Air flight. And Norwegian Air doesn't care that you've missed your SAS flight, they have no agreement to keep to another airline's schedule. So the trick there is to try and book the whole way in the same direction with the same carrier. That way you've got some come back against the company if things go wrong. We've been caught before, that way. We split up the booking, trying to get the best deal. One flight in the middle was late, and the flight after that told us to get stuffed. So try and stay with the same company the whole way.
Which brings us to the point of my latest gripe. We arrived at the airport last night, in good time, and checked in through the automatic check-in machines. When my wife typed in her booking number, she was automatically checked in, both to Stockholm that night, and also to Helsinki the next morning. There was no option offered to check in for just the first part of the journey to Stockholm. The machine printed out 2 shiny boarding passes, and a baggage tag for the bag she was going to check in. When we went to put the tag onto her bag, we saw that there was just one tag, detailing the entire trip to Helsinki, via Stockholm. This presented a problem as she was going to be needing her suitcase that night in Stockholm. So would need to be able to pick it up. We needed some help.
So off we trundled to the manned Norwegian Air check-in desk. We explained the situation to the woman behind the counter, that we had checked in right through to Helsinki but would need the bag to be checked in only as far as Stockholm. Apparently, this simple request causes a melt down of ticketing personnel. So be warned never to ask this request again. Unable to grasp what we were saying, and repeatedly pointing us back to the ticketing machine, the situation rapidly decayed to the point where the Norwegian Air ticket person started shouting at us to shut up because she was feeling confused. It took probably about 15 minutes before she caved in, wrote a scruffy hand written tag, slapped it onto the bag, spat on it (well, you could tell she wanted to), and snarled that we would have to check in manually again the next morning in Arlanda. Which was our suggestion in the first place.
I was left with a few unanswered questions, which I dared not ask for fear of her leaping the counter and attempting to squeeze the life out of me.
Were we the first people ever to make a booking with Norwegian Air taking the last available flight for the day, and then taking another Norwegian Air flight in the following days ? Would not anyone who flew on the last flight for the day want access to their luggage that night ? Most of us don't pack our pyjamas and fluffy slippers into our handbags.
If, as it seems, the Norwegian Air automatic ticketing machines have no option but to check luggage right through to a final destination, why do they allow people to check in with the machine knowing full well that they won't have access to their luggage ? Can the machine not see that the two flights being checked in on the same booking number are on different days, stop the process, and direct people to the manual check-in desk ? Or at least come up with a warning message giving people the chance to cancel out. Followed by a warning message about the check-in staff.
I refuse to believe that we were unique in our adventure. This must happen on a regular basis and Norwegian Air have really dropped the customer services ball in not having a simple system in place for just such an event. Their front desk people are another story all together. I'm not going to refer to them as customer service because that would imply that I was viewed as a customer, and that I received some form of service.
So, budget or not, a big fat smack around the ears for Norwegian Air. Air travel is still a luxury item, and you live by the good will of your passengers. Remember that.
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