Dear Engineer Al-Molhem,
As Director General, I am sure you think you are doing everything possible to improve services on Saudi Arabian Airlines, and there are certain to be problems beyond your control. But could you please consider some small issues that are within your authority, and would take minutes to resolve?
For months now, there have been complaints that it is impossible to buy an airline ticket with a credit card through the Saudi Arabian Airlines website. Arab News tried on eight occasions over three months to purchase a ticket though the website and the transactions never could be completed. Neither MasterCard nor Visa was accepted, but Sadad went right through.
Surprisingly, the menu to purchase with a credit card is still there. It would take a Web developer just minutes to shut down this purchase menu, but instead Saudi Arabian Airlines customers waste their lives trying to make impossible credit card purchases. Passengers in the know either use Sadad or those coming from other countries are forced to go to travel agents and pay hundreds of riyals more for their tickets.
Then there is the issue of the poor passengers who cancel their reservations after tickets have been purchased. When a passenger cancels his reservation, the airline doesn't give him a cancellation code if the cancellation is done by phone and even if he goes to the airline's office, there is no receipt for a cancellation. This leaves the passenger at the mercy of the airline's IT systems. Too often the passenger is in for a shock because when he goes to make a new reservation, he will find that the original ticket is "suspended," not canceled, and the ticketing agent will charge him a hefty fee to open the ticket. Can the passenger argue? Of course not. The passenger has no proof that he cancelled the reservation, and of course, Saudi Arabian Airlines' IT systems and staff are quite perfect. The use of such cancellation codes is common in the travel industry and could be easily implemented by Saudi Arabian Airlines, if only the choice would be made to do so.
As for online check-in, the boarding passes to be printed at people's homes are poorly designed. The information printed on the boarding pass, such as passenger name and seat number isn't duplicated. Passengers must know to print two copies of the boarding pass so the gate attendant can keep one, or face unpleasantness at the boarding gate. The check-in information is incorrect as well, with boarding passes informing passengers that the baggage check-in closes three hours before domestic flights. A redesigned boarding pass form would take less than an hour to create and load to the website, alleviating customer misery.
Engineer Al-Molhem, perhaps you could find a few minutes in your busy schedule to direct your IT team to deal with these minor issues, which are causing such grief to the passengers.
