By 
By Paul Moore
A colleague of mine recently travelled to Hong Kong to visit her daughter and three grandchildren. As you would imagine a flight to Hong Kong is not an inexpensive thing so she opted for economy class which on such a long haul flight is harrowing.
The project we are working on had some air miles available, so we gave her them to allow her to upgrade to premium economy. Not much difference really and it is certainly not business class but at least it gives more leg room and a seat which goes back far enough to allow a decent sleep if any such thing exists on a flight.
When she arrived at the airport to check in she was both astonished and heartbroken to discover that the airline had overbooked the flight and she had been bumped back into economy.
Try as she might, even insisting on talking to the flight manager, she was denied the seat she had paid for. I suspect it was because it was paid for by air miles rather than real cash, but whatever the reason it was unacceptable and while compensation of a sort was offered and eventually paid, it did not make up for the disappointment or the discomfort.
She rang me from the airport to ask if I had any suggestions, but I am sorry to say I had none.
If she rang me this week it would be a different story. I now have the example of an enterprising young man from Dublin who faced a similar injustice.
He had booked to travel from Letterkenny to Dublin on the express bus but when he turned up it had been overbooked, was full to capacity, and he was left standing of the bus depot forecourt.
The fact that it was the last bus of the day made his plight even more aggravating. Such was the enterprise of the young man that he did not seek a refund, or return the next day for the next bus, but took matters gloriously into his own hands.
RTÉ News reports that he found his way to the bus parking yard and tried a number of the buses parked there. He found one that was open and entered sitting for 45 minutes without doing anything. How I would love to know what he was thinking during that 45 minutes.
Was he contemplating taking revenge through some kind of vandalism? I am fairly certain not given what transpired. Was he thinking this is my opportunity to do something I have always dreamed of doing? Perhaps. Was he taking full cognisance of the controls and thinking to himself, this cannot be that difficult? I think so.
After 45 minutes he turned the key – which inexplicably had been left in the ignition – and headed off down the road to Dublin. After 237 kilometres later he arrived at Sherriff Street in Dublin, parked the bus up, turned off the ignition and headed off home. The only way in which he could have bettered this expedition would be if he had picked up other travellers along the way and give them all a free ride to the capital.
When eventually apprehended, he ended up getting 18 months in prison, but even the judge must have been impressed by him as he delivered it as a suspended sentence.
All the young man wanted was to get home and he had been let down by a broken system which, in my opinion, is driven by profit and greed rather than concern for the passengers, just like my colleague on the way to Hong Kong.
I had to meet her recently to talk about her staff development and she looked deeply bewildered when I suggested that learning how to fly an Boeing 747 might be a useful option.
