Tiger Airways: ‘Airways’ premiere wrap-up
14 Jul
Photo Credit: Ed Zitron
Well, some may say Channel 7′s premiere of ‘Airways’ sure clipped the cat’s claws. Indeed, there was the ‘warts and all’ approach promised by the marketing folks… With the warts certainly in full splendour. Here is a summary of the episode:
- Adelaide folks get so excited about leaving Adelaide that they propose marriage in check-in queues. Well, I guess that’s one way to pass the time.
- If you keep people in a waiting lounge during a 10-hour flight delay, Con the Fruiterer will get angry
- You’re on your own, kid. No-one will ever be kind enough to wake you during boarding. Sweet dreams!
Well, Twitter had a thing or two to say, too:
Tariff: I dunno but #Airways on 7 gives #TigerAirways a bad reputation.
kentboehm: Is “Airways” an anti Tiger propaganda piece? #7 #tiger #airways
Personally, I think that ‘Airways’ completely lacked balance and should have had more convincing feel-good stories beyond the hokey wedding proposal and the stock ‘got a group on a flight’ case study. To its credit, it did display the professionalism of their flight crew and check-in staff; this I encourage. In the future, I would like to see episodes that are not only entertaining, but that Tiger Airways’ staff can take pride in. Until then, I feel that Channel 7′s ‘Airways’ may be chasing its own tail.
‘Airways’ – Tuesdays on Channel 7 @ 7:30pm.
IMO there are two ways you can look at a show like this. Yes it showed problems but all airlines have problems. Low Cost carriers sometimes more than the rest because they’re running with smaller fleets so if something goes wrong the flow-on can be dreadful. But then again that’s also how they get the cheap prices.
You can watch the show, focus on the problems & say “wow Tiger has a lot of problems”. Or you can watch the show, look at how people react and say “my god, look what Tiger has to deal with sometimes”.
The beauty of these shows is that to some degree they do have the capacity to allow you to see both sides of the story. Yes people were delayed but their reaction to that caused even more problems both for themselves & other passengers.
Think about the women who went ballistic & accused Tiger of being inconsistent with the pram when they were totally consistent. If she knew enough to book an infant’s ticket out & a child’s ticket return then she would have had to read the section which explained that a child’s ticket price does not include any free baggage. OK, she didn’t read that bit or misunderstood it but you could either look at it and say “they were unfair” or look at her and say “how embarrassing, I hope I’d never react like that …..poor staff being abused like that”. At the end of the day it wasn’t about whether a 2yo kid needs a pram – if its so important then check what’s allowed and pay for it if needed. Its not up to any airline to simply allow free anything that someone may “need”. I “need” clothes too when I travel but I don’t expect free baggage on a cheap ticket.
Then the Coptic Church group (and what a wonderful advertisement for compassion, understanding & patience for that group!) – a solution was found for them. The guy used his distress over the health of the elderly/ill passengers as the reason Tiger should jump through hoops to get them all on the same flight – but when Tiger delayed boarding so these elderly/frail passengers could board first without being trampled he went berzerk, assaulted security and one of his group even collapsed because of the fuss they created … not Tiger. Yes people were upset because of a delay & I understand that. Tempers were frayed but hey.
I sometimes don’t think people understand how unreasonable passengers can be at times – and how little they give a rats about other passengers let alone airline staff. Yes you’re paying for a ticket but it doesn’t give you the right to be abusive & obnoxious, make other passengers late, stressed etc.
Thank you for your comment, travel_buzz. People seem to consider themselves to be in an unusually privileged position when it comes to air travel and I completely agree that the Tiger staff dealt with this attitude exceptionally well during the show. That Coptic Church scene in particular was a prime example of this.
My primary concern is that potential customers may interpret these experiences to be typical, despite most passengers having a positive and enjoyable flying experience with Tiger. It would be unfortunate if Tiger Airways found themselves trading entertainment for bad press.
Many thanks again, see you on Twitter!