On Sunday night flying in the Northeast was a mess. Flights out of the three DC-area airports were paused while the FAA’s air traffic control organization suffered an equipment failure at Potomac TRACON. Flights resumed shortly after 7 p.m. Eastern time, but there was a backlog to clear. Some flights cancelled, for instance as crew exceeded their maximum duty hours.
Royal Air Maroc flies Washington Dulles to Casablanca five days a week using a Boeing 787-8. After several hours staff hadn’t communicated at all with passengers. Then they finally cancelled the flight. And the passengers went into revolt. Staff fled for their safety.
According to one of the passengers in the gate area, who filmed the incident:
Due to all of the issues with flights being grounded, they never updated us passengers until this moment. There are hundreds of women and children sleeping on the floor. They refuse to give food or hotel vouchers and the employees packed up and left us with no answers. We just want answers.
Passengers chant “No hotel, no hotel!” The airline wasn’t offering to pick up hotels, presuming arguing that the delay and then cancellation was beyond their control. The lack of communication with passengers, though, is what allowed frustrations to boil over.
Staff seeing risk to their safety from passengers is hardly new. It usually happens with Spirit Airlines flights. In fact, when Spirit faced an operational meltdown two summers ago the airline told staff to hide from passengers and not wear their uniforms for their own safety. Taking cancellation frustrations out on front line employees never makes sense, and threats to safety for poor communications are disproportionate and not constructive. But the airline bears some responsibility for allowing matters to escalate.
(HT: Drew S.)
No flight to Casablanca? At least they’ll always have Paris.
@Quo round up the usual suspects
I like friendly mellow easy going passengers
Oh, dear, hundreds of women and children sleeping on the floor with no cash, credit, or insurance for hotel. Last year, I had Safar Flyer Gold status, and I’ve been tempted to fly RAM; instead of QR, my preferred OW airline. And I’ve had friends with good flights on them to Europe in the last couple years. I’m kind of glad, now, that I didn’t end up in a metal tube at 39,000 feet for a dozen or so hours with such lovely fellow passengers. Don’t get me wrong, they’re on QR, too, but not so much.
Anyway, can’t blame the wage slave staff for escaping. Yeah, I’ve had difficulties with ground staff of many airlines; but generally learned that I only will get robotic responses, and, when they’re off the clock, they really are off the clock.
I have often used this flight (Fyi, Gary, it’s half the time on the 787-9 which is far superior but random as to which days). Other than the station manager most of the ground staff are contracted in my experience. Of course they don’t care. The reality is that lack of communication (if there was none) or any sort of understanding as to the situation rests with the station manager. Who was probably hiding inside his/her office.
Why are people saying can’t blame staff, low paid or not. They failed in basic communication. I have nomidea how this airline is even in OneWorld. The staff are, like it or not, the face of the airline. The passengers were treated with no information nor planing. This is solely down to the handling agent for the airline. No one faces up to responsibility these days and simply run to hide. Shame on the handling agent staff and indeed the airline. As always the excuse is “lowlly paid”…no one asks them t.be in customer front line.cintavt jobs. Get over it..deal with it or leave.
@Johhny I am Shocked! Shocked!
Worth noting that passengers have right to duty of care if traveling to the EU even if it’s not airline’s fault.
Maybe, just maybe the staff tried letting everyone know what their situation was but nobody would shut up long enough to listen.
At my job, I don’t yell over anyone. I just stand there and wait until they stop yelling. If it ends up time to leave, I leave.
The lack of proper communication and basic customer service is obviously severely lacking. Most carriers have a “force majeure” clause in the contract of carriage. Since the actions of the FAA and/or the weather is beyond the airline’s control, they could have, at least, quickly made passengers aware of the issue so that alternate plans could be quickly made before rooms ran out. Possibly have a deal pre-made with several hotels in the area. Very poor customer service.
What is there to communicate early? “We MAY have to cancel the flight”?
RAM has chosen to subcontract with the cheapest subcontractor ground handling agent which usually means understaffed, underpaid and couldn’t care less….. it’s not their fault… they probably get no information from RAM network control, don’t blame them, blame Royal Air Maroc!
Why this kind of think happening again and again?
This is a falsehood. It may never be proper decorum. But front line employees have power to effect change within an organization, and “frustrations” are a push for that by consumers.
Really they want to give any answer to them. Such a weirdly they are doing OMG!
This story is ridiculous. First you give the airline a free pass, you say employees are not responsible, then you throw Spirit under bud as if they are the only airline with issues.
Air travel is becoming a free for all where no one wants to take responsibility for anything other than smooth operations.
We pay quite a bit of money for a service. At the very least, we should have some compensation when things do not go as planned.
But, the problem is us. We allow them to have these crappy rules where they take our money, make up reasons for delays, and make it very difficult to either receive a refund, or get compensation.
No surprise at all that frustrations would boil over after hours and hours of delay with no communication from the airline, and no attempt to compensate either. There aren’t many direct flights to Casablanca from the U.S., so many passengers would have been connecting with no place to stay in DC.
Blame the airline here. They could have done the right thing, but didn’t.
why did you delete my comment, Gary?
There is complete anarchy in American society and increasingly in western society, airlines don’t have the tools to be able to deal with the problems an increasing and different clientele bring and the NK agent did what was necessary – which is to shut down the boarding process and keep the problem from spilling over onto the aircraft.
Airlines going cheap and failing to prioritize customer comfort is why flying is no longer what it used to be. And airlines get the customers the airlines deserve.
Royal Air Maroc messing up? Why should I be surprised.
#PLM #PaasengerLivesMatter
Blame lies at the Management Level with the egotistical SOBs making the decisions on Policy and the treatment of Customers, not the Customer facing Employees. When trouble unbfolds Management at All Airlines and many businesses play Houdini and have the act of disappearing down pat. Rarely do you see a Manager take Ownership of a situation and resolve ANYTHING. FACT
My heart goes out to all involved- – the passengers who were stuck and gate agents who were undoubtedly given neither the information needed nor the discretion to defuse the incident.
I flew Air Maroc as recently as a month ago and found them to be professional and caring. I also got stuck in Dulles 10 days ago when there was a 14 hour flight delay to an Allegiant flight. What most passengers can accept is delay, what they cannot accept is no meaningful information about what is going on. No communication, Confusing messages and erroneous information are what cause passengers blood to boil. To the airlines: hire your own staff, train them, tell us what is going on as soon as you know, and above all be honest about what you can and can’t do.
EU261 says:
June 27, 2023 at 6:44 pm
Worth noting that passengers have right to duty of care if traveling to the EU even if it’s not airline’s fault.
Uh, unless I missed this, as I live in EU, so I doubt this, Morocco has never been part of EU, in spite of Casablanca.
True…however…https://euflightcompensation.com/best-flight-delay-compensation-companies/morocco/
I really don’t get it, if they are in DC, they already are in the Casa Blanca 🙂