Slow Going At Iberia Airways

I read only yesterday that demand for Iberia Airways had slowed. How serendipitous it was that I was sat in Barcelona Airport enduring a delay at the hands of the same airline.

The two things may have been an unfortunate happenstance but taken with my experience of flying out with people over-packed in a small departure area at Gate 11 in Heathrow Terminal 3, getting onto a heaving plane and taking off an hour late, perhaps it is the norm for the airline. On board, everything is chargeable and although the flight attendants are invariably polite, handsome or pretty, it doesn't make up for the fact you are shelling out a whacking €2.50 for a tomato juice.

The return journey had all the hallmarks of a smooth event. I arrived early-ish to see if I could get on the earlier flight. Iberia is one of the few airlines who actually will try to get you a seat on an earlier flight without laughing in your face and asking you to pay a bank bail out figure for a new ticket as BA does. They tried, but the flight was full. I thought to myself that the Telegraph clearly does not know what it is talking about when it comes to demand. But the Barcelona-London route is incredibly popular.

In the week, I had to arrange a flight to Barca, then on to Madrid and back to London. Iberia came out as over £900 for the itinerary. I costed it up using Easyjet for the out and inbound legs and it was half the price. Iberia clearly have a price problem as they are competing against budget airlines but trying to pass off their service as premium.

So sitting at Barcelona airport yesterday I noted that all the Easyjet flights got away on time and that many Iberia flights were half empty to destinations like Lyon and Bordeaux. So when a London flight was called, I duly queued only to find that in fact I was in the line for the earlier flight to London which should have taken off two hours before and was turned away for obvious reasons. Reassuringly, our flight was called next and it seemed to be maybe just a few minutes late only. We got aboard the bus to take us, having had our boarding cards torn or the copies taken, passports were checked and on we went. The bus did a languid circuit before arriving at the plane and the two pilots could be seen doing their checks in the cockpit. The bus stayed outside, doors firmly shut and pumping humid air into the passenger compartment. The notion was dawning that something was wrong. A lady in a yellow jacket walked down the steps, muttering into her walkie-talkie, struggling to put on her sunglasses to look more officious and conferred with our driver. Without a word, he nodded and we were driven back to the gate and the doors opened and, like condemned sheep at the slaughterhouse, we disembarked without a single word uttered to any of us. When inside the gate we learned that the pilot was not actually checking his instruments but more likely barfing into a bag as he had come over all sick. Or perhaps it was a ruse as he had tickets to a bullfight or whatever, or was on a promise.

We were told that a new pilot would be found - relax, they are an airline after all so they should have plenty. We sat back in our places and waited a while. Then the chaos started.

An announcement told us that the flight was now delayed until 18.45 which was over a two hours delay. People were disgruntled but slowly began to disperse and I went upstairs, found a bar and sat down with my paper, a packet of peanuts and a frothy cerverza. I had munched the bag of peanuts and taken two sips of the amber nectar when an announcement, barely audible above the hub-bub, told me that the flight was now delayed until 19.00. I sat back and sipped my beer, called my wife and tried to chill out.

Minutes, later, maybe half a pint's worth, an announcement told us that the flight was ready for boarding. It seemed we were getting away no more than an hour late at this rate. I gulped down the half of beer I had left, picked up my bags and went to the gate where a small throng of people had accumulated but was suspiciously, and markedly, smaller than the original number that had tried to get on the flight. After several more sweaty minutes, the buses arrived and we had the daft charade of staff trying to work out who we were from the remains of our boarding passes; the security guys just wafted us past without looking at our passports and we got on the bus. Someone told me that a pilot had arrived from Madrid and was, I assume, about to knock off but was told to take the plane to London and back. It's hardly the same as asking a taxi driver to do one more fare, this was a 4-6 hour round trip. I didn't even think about whether his inbuilt tachometer had enough hours left, the instinct to get home was strong. We all boarded and there were chaotic scenes as a family seated around me found that there were already people in their places. A farcical game of musical chairs was played and the poor chap who lost just stood there like a lemon holding his boarding card stub with a face like a slapped backside thinking, 'What about me?'. He was duly whisked off the business class which he seemed consoled about until he realised it was two small rows at the front with a curtain behind it.

Amid all the confusion, three things struck me. One, my row was empty except me. Two, there seemed to be far less people on the flight that had originally queued and three, a rather annoying tape of music was playing of really drab music sung by the likes of Katie Melua. An announcement proclaimed that indeed, passengers had dispersed across the acreage of Barcelona airport and many could not be found - we were 24 short and could not take off without them. The tape whined on, louder if anything.

We waited with increasing agitation for the missing people as the tape played on and you could feel a Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch brewing. People arrived and there was more confusion as another family arrived to try and sit exactly where the first family had displaced the original occupants of the rows around me. Once more there was a game of musical chairs ending in the bizarre situation of one family being split by the other - how they could not have been rearranged simply so that each sat together seemed beyond the pretty airhostesses, but organisation was not to be their strength.

The first fuse blew a few seconds later, as a pompous grey-haired Englishman threw down his Blackberry in rage and screeched for the music to be turned off. He had peaked too early - the pilot simultaneously announced that due to the late arrivals we had missed our take off slot and now had to wait until 19.40 to get away. Given we had started to board at around 18.15, this was a long time to spend on the plane in the turgid heat, listening to the moaning music. Tempers were starting the fray.

The pompous man pressed his call button for the first time and the hostess arrived swiftly. He demanded to know why we were late. She explained in clipped English that passengers had thought that the plane would not take off until 19.00 and so had gone to eat and clearly had not heard the new announcement. Fortunately, everything was running so late that when they came down to board for the time they thought they had to, we were all waiting for them. He was particularly dissatisfied and started a rant about the fact that no one had offered any free drinks or a sandwich, which was a fair point, and it may be sensible to crack open the bar with some freebies to keep the punters happy. She smiled sweetly and said she needed higher authorisation and the man replied, 'Who? The bloody Pope?'

This final remark was returned with a frosty glare and his card had obviously been marked. I mentally noted to myself that if I were him, I wouldn't order a sandwich tonight as visions of 'Road Trip' and french toast came to mind. He chanced his arm at one last thing before the hostess retreated - could she change the damn tape as it was driving him crackers. She smiled and said yes and left. She did not change the tape, if anything, I could have sworn it got louder as some fool droned out a cover of 'What a Wonderful World' for what seemed the nth time.

We sat and waited for the take off slot and mercifully the captain managed to get the air conditioning to work and an ominous vapour appeared above the overhead lockers as fresh, cool air was pumped into the stuffy cabin. The pompous man started nattering his complaints to a general audience, none of whom spoke back or looked at him. He was now openly declaring it would be the last time he flew on Iberian and I could feel the share price almost plummet as he spoke. And the tape was now, he made clear to us all, 'Doing my bloody head in.' He had a point - the damn thing was now playing, for at least the third time, a saxophone version of 'Hark the herald angels sing' which was highly inappropriate, and awful, given the stifling humidity of the cabin. I realised that I had heard the very same tape on the flight over and the whole jigsaw of why Iberian were suffering lower passenger manifests was now dawning on me. The service was rubbish and the music was crap.

At precisely 19.15, for no apparent reason and without warning, the captain started his engines and we trundled off from our position. He came on the intercom and said that we were still on for a 19.40 take off but he would hold at a point to wait his turn at the end of the runway and it might be useful in case we were given an earlier slot. I liked his style while mentally trying to calculate how much precious fuel that might burn in doing so and approximately what tonnage of CO2 we might be unnecessarily pumping into the atmosphere but erased the thought as the lure of getting home and having a cold glass of wine and a shower was far too strong.

We got to our holding point and, as if the pilot had seen a gap in the traffic, we rapidly turned onto the runway and, again without any warning, we gunned our engines and we were hurtling down the runway at a rate of knots, giving the air crew just enough time to stow their accessories from the safety demo and get to their seats. We were airborne in short order and still the music droned on above the scream of the engines as the plane sought height with the City lights to our left, the sea to our right and turbulence all around us. The skipper announced he had got clearance to go - which was a relief to us all as I had visions of some other captain shouting into his radio, 'Oi, stop that man. That's my take off slot,' or worse - and he said that the expected flight time would be one hour and fifty minutes but he would see if he could shorten that. Whether his Sat Nav allowed the selection of shortest and fastest routes, I don't know, but maybe he knew a short cut across the Bay of Biscay or he was just going to keep the throttle at maximum. I opened my book while nervously hoping that he was keeping a close eye on that fuel gauge after all.

The inflight service is rubbish on Iberia. I actually bought a sandwich combi which included a beer. The beer was fine, the sandwich dry and tasteless and all for €9.50 which would have made Michael O'Leary slather with excitement. The pompous man was moaning about free drinks but did not mention the Pope again, although he did once more ask if the tape could be changed or turned down. Again the staff smiled and nothing further was done about it. The families around me snored quietly despite the bumpy ride and before we knew it, we were descending toward Heathrow. Of course, as we had evidently nicked someone else's slot across France, we had arrived early and we were sent to detention in a holding pattern somewhere near Croydon as we flew repeatedly over the 'twenty pence' building by the station at East Croydon. The music had been turned up as part of the landing preparations and now the pompous man was scrunched up in his seat with his eyes shut and fingers placed in his ears. Every now and then he would take them out and shout, 'This effing music is doing my head in,' to which a lady near by said, 'Just effing ignore it like the rest of us.' The retort was a mistake as clearly he wanted to engage someone in the argument and he berated her for the poor service, delays, and rubbish music as if the lady owned the airline. She took it all pretty well before calmly saying, 'I hope you feel better for getting that off your chest. Sadly, for you, I can do bugger all about it so just shut up.' I was waiting to join in the round of applause but there was none so I just pretended I was clapping along to the music.

When we finally got on our approach, the plane was blown all over the place with the engine pitch going up and down like a dentist's drill. Looking out of the window I was sure we were being blown off course or would land upside down - if we had any fuel left. But as always, just feet above the runway, the air seemed clear but it did not stop the captain from putting down the plane with a huge thump, on one wheel. As soon as he got the second down, the nose went down with a mighty bang and the brakes were applied very heavily. The music went up several decibels and we were back at someone's monotonous version of 'Clouds' which the pompous man screamed at.

More chaos ensued as the plane stopped short of its parking position and several Koreans leapt to their feet to retrieve their bags from the overheads. One locker opened and a laptop bag, complete with laptop inside, dropped out and bounced off the side of a man's head. The Korean was unrepentant while the man rubbed his head in bewilderment - if only it had been the pompous man. It was clear several people had connecting flights to places like Korea, New Zealand and Australia but there were no announcements about priorities or that there were staffing waiting - it was every man for himself. Duly, the pompous man bellowed into his phone that his driver was to take him for an 'effing curry' and he got his bag and started barging his way down the plane. At this point, I had had enough as he was distressing an Indian gentleman who was trying to herd his kids in the cramped space ahead of me. I made myself 'big' which is difficult for a small chap but all those years of rugby finally paid off. The man attempted to get past but I just stood my ground.

'Some of us are in an effing hurry,' he said, possibly to whoever was on his Blackberry as he still had it to his ear. I ignored the comment. He then began pushing, while still jabbering into his phone. I stood still - the kids were delaying us all but I didn't care as I deliberately waved people ahead of me to carry on. Pompous man lost it. 'I said I was in an effing hurry,' he said to the back of my head as if I cared.

We finally got off the plane and as we were on the jetway, pompous man tried to overtake. I blocked his line skillfully and he really got angry as he told whoever was on the phone that he would call back. 'What's your problem?' he demanded of me, as he tried to struggle past. 'The kids on the jetway don't need to get run over by people like you or listen to your language, mate. Just grow up and wait your turn,' was my terse reply.

He wasn't impressed, then again that wasn't the aim. He waited for his opportunity at the end of the jetway and then stormed past mouthing something to himself which clearly made him feel better. The glorious moment came when we got to Passport Control. There were literally thousands of people in a massive queue going back out of the hallway. Pompous man barged his way through to the Fast Track lane and he literally sprinted down it. We all slowly made our way into the normal section where a sign said '25 minutes wait from this point'. Minutes later, pompous man was being led back in angry conversation with an immigration official who was telling him that the black restrainer he had ignored was to show that Fast Track was closed. As pompous man tried to blend into the queue way ahead of the end, a rather burly bloke next to me put an arm out and said, 'Go to the end, smart arse - I've had enough of you for one night.' In splendid slow motion, he was led away by the official toward the back of the huge queue stretching all the way back almost to our jetway. It was the last I saw of the idiot.

But my focus on the pompous man served a purpose. I could have been pompous man with great ease. I usually get very uptight about airline service and delays - more specifically the lack of information. In this instance, the information had not only been lacking but the little that did come out was conflicting, causing further, unnecessary delays. Iberia should have laid on a few drinks or food vouchers, there were a lot of kids on the flight and they must have been hungry and thirsty by the time we took off, some three hours late. There is no excuse for poor or no communication and it is the single most irritating thing about air travel. You expect it of Ryan Air and Easyjet as they have the mind set that 'what you don't pay for, you don't get' and with them service is certainly that, respect is another. But Iberia are not low budget and they are not cheap.

So if Iberia Airways has a problem on demand then last night's performance will not have helped as there were many on the flight who vowed never to use them again - I dare say pompous man was one and I was certainly another.

One last comment on the joys of international travel - what on earth was happening at Terminal 3? Going out on Wednesday was bad enough as the terminal was crowded to the gills and the departure gate seating far too small for the manifest of people for the aircraft which took an age to check through. But passport control was a shambles coming back last night, with at least a thousand people queuing and very few positions manned. When they did, eventually, open up a couple more positions, the staff then blatantly took an age to check each passport, almost inviting the inevitable rudeness they got from several people. The queuing system was shambolic as well with people shoving and moving around and no actual lines formed. Contrast this to somewhere like the US where there are regularly large volumes of people to be checked, there are always well organised lines and people to direct you, however officious and sour-faced they may be.

Heathrow is decending into a mess and depsite a brand new terminal being built to ease the loads on the others, it has got far, far worse. It is not a pretty sight for foreign travellers arriving, it's chaos for EU arrivals and it has nothing to do with more rigorous checks - it is simply lack of staff at peak times and slow systems that take around 30 seconds to check a home country passport.

That, at least, cannot be blamed on the luckless Iberian Airlines.

The Glamour of International Travel

As I sit in alone in a small room in Barcelona, where I have somehow damaged the airconditioning switch so that I am inside a medium sized refrigerator when the outdoor temperature is 25 degrees, I am once again pondering what's good about international travel.

A young American lady sitting across the aisle on the plane over told me that she was spending 4 months in Spain and was looking forward to it. I agreed - it was a great adventure. She asked me how long I would be in Spain and I replied one night. After a day in meetings, I was to spend a night in the hotel and then another morning of meetings, then plane home. I must have done this a hundred times in the last year, it seems, and I cannot remember the last time I actually kicked back and had a moment to myself to enjoy some of the spectacular cities I have visited, from Rome to Stockholm to the inside of Copenhagen airport only. I lie. Now that I think of it, I did manage a trip around the harbour of Hamburg in an open top boat, breathing diesel fumes, sun beating on my head and sweating profusely in a suit. I saw several scrap heaps, empty dry docks and Roman Abramovich's new yacht covered in plastic - and all the while I kept glancing at my watch worrying that I would be late for my meeting.

The day had not started well. Due to travel costs, the cheapest flight got me to Barcelona just 40 minutes before my meeting, cutting it all very fine. The plane was packed so full that there was nowhere near enough room in the departure lounge, let alone on the aircraft, for us all to comfortably sit. It was fashionably, but bloody annoyingly late - by well over an hour and so my slim margin of error was already burnt away before I started, causing one of those stupidly fractious journeys where I felt like going onto the flight deck and telling the pilot to put his foot down. How he would have laughed and either shot me as a terrorist or pointed to the throttle as being a lever not a pedal.

In the cost consious era of business travel, I found myself in the section called 'Basic' as classified by Iberia Airways - a euphemism for 'abattoir class'. This is a level that makes Ryan Air look like the Orient Express. A mere tomato juice cost €2.50, rivalling any of O'Leary's rip offs. The good news was that they do not charge extra for check in, bags, jetways or fast queuing - just get to the front and stand up quickly. And you get a real seat allocated to you beforehand. That made the return flight to Barcelona exactly half what I paid for a recent Ryan Air one way trip from Frankfurt-Hahn airport to Stansted. Oh yes, believe me - Ryan Air advertise cheap flights but I paid, with check in, priority boarding and one tiny bag in the hold, exactly double the price to go for a flight double the distance to Barcelona, both ways. One other, nit-picking point - Frankfurt-Hahn airport is around 200km from Frankfurt, and is a god forsaken hell-hole infested by more flies than a festival of rancid horse manure. Granted it was hot but even I couldn't see the waitress in the small cafe for the fog of flies in the room. Some of us think London Luton is stretching the imagination, but this is like calling Birmingham Airport a London airport.

Whenever I mention what I do or where I go, it always sounds good that I have been to Germany last week and Spain this week etc. But when you sit like 'Billy Nomates' alone catching up on the day's emails and messages with a motley room service sandwich half eaten at your side and only two channels with English on and both are boring business news running the same endless loop, it really is not as glamourous as it sounds.

Tomorrow is 28 degrees in Barcelona - I am only hoping the office I visit has good ventilation or else it will be another day in a sticky shirt, preying for a shower. Hands up all those who know what I'm talking about.

Beware of The Glossy Adverts

I love a good advert and my bank uses the one with a small child saying goodbye to its pet iguana or something as the family has to move - then sees the same pet in the new house in San Francisco or somewhere. Details are hazy but you know the one.

HSBC. Don't get me wrong, 90% of the time they are fine. In fact I run 90% of my business banking on the internet and so I rarely have to speak to anyone and only go to the Bank to get cash. The HSBC Internet Banking service is pretty good - I can set up new suppliers and pay them easily and I can transfer money to my private account for wages and expenses instantly. It isn't as reliable as it should be and there have been several times of late, annoyingly at month end, when the portal has been down. But, again, 90% of the time it's fine and meets my expectations.

As so often is the case, it is when you have to deal with human beings when things start to go wrong. Last month I was on a business trip to Valencia (lovely city by the way) and I had stayed at a Hilton Hotel there. So I checked out and paid my bill with my business card and then met a potential client in the restaurant for lunch. I tried to pay the bill and my business card was refused. The lady thought there may be a fault with the machine and so I counted out the last of my cash and paid. It was a very unimpressive sight for my potential client who has since declined to do business with me although it would be a stretch to say because of that incident but it certainly gave no real confidence that he was dealing with a guy from the UK with sound backing. The hammer blow came as we walked through reception as the cashier told me there was a problem with my bill payment. I bade farewell to my potential client, who by this time probably thought I was a serial crook, and tried to sort things out. It appeared that my bank had tried to take the money on the card twice. They ascertained that the bill looked as it was paid and all was well.

A short while later, I tried to fill up the hire car with fuel and pay with my card. Again it was refused. This time I had to use a private card as I had no cash left. Meanwhile, the hotel had tried to call me again and had left a message on my mobile that they were not sure if the bill was paid correctly and suddenly I was panicking. I was in a foreign country, my business card had failed and I had a very big hotel bill outstanding, no cash and only a private card left which was close to its limit.

That's when the fight started, so they say. I called the HSBC customer support line and was routed to somewhere very foreign and to someone who got completely the wrong end of the stick. They thought this was a private card and could not relate it to my business, firstly. Secondly, they told me that they had put me on security hold as the Hilton Hotel had tried to take the payment twice and so looked fraudulent. We had an esoteric discussion of who Hilton Hotels were and how hotels take a pre-authorisation for the approximate amount beforehand, and whether this constituted fraudulent behaviour. I also pointed out that I had stayed at the exact same hotel some weeks earlier and spent a similar amount of money. I had bought air tickets and car hire in Valencia before. As they wanted me to 'heads up' where I am going on business, I told them if they observed my account they would have noticed that I had travelled to Spain at least 5 times in the last few months, Sweden twice, Italy 3 times, France 5 times, Denmark, and Germany. The pattern of my spending would have indicated that I was likely to be on business again and so the Hilton transaction would have made sense.

But sense and logic does not come into it. The block was finally removed and I asked for a manager to call me so that we could understand each other. No such call came although my 'Personal Banking Relationship Manager' did try to call on my home phone in business hours when I was in Sweden and quite how she was involved, I don't know.

The whole thing seemed to have subsided. Then a week or so before the end of June, I got several notices from online suppliers that my card details were due to expire - fairly important suppliers for my online back up, web hosting, email hosting, business travel booking and anti-virus software, all of which were due to be renewed in the final month of my fiscal year, July. I checked the card and it was due to expire at the end of July so I thought I would check this was ok. I went to my HSBC branch and had a short meeting with a Business Banking executive who called card services and everyone reassured me that my card was good for all July and the new one would be sent at the end of July. I also asked about why a manager had not contacted me and they said it would be looked into. No call has been received since.

Inevitably, the card was refused on 1 July by my online suppliers and I had the nasty situation of online backups stopping, and my web services about to be withdrawn. I called HSBC who said all the suppliers were wrong which I informed them did not actually help resolve the situation. The new card was due at the end of the month and that was that.

Business Cards are vital for cashflow in my small business. I book all my travel through Expedia who also indicated my card was dead, and many of my suppliers are paid that way as they do not give me a credit account - my card becomes that credit line. So to be denied it when I had a business strip to Sweden, South Africa and Germany coming up, was crippling as well as for other suppliers - I could be defaulting on payments which would look very bad on a small business.

So I got angry. I made my first futile gesture - I tried to call a manager. Managers at HSBC, like many firms to be fair, do not take calls. That is what the call centre does. Escalation is via email and managers do not speak to customers. I have no idea whether the HSBC CEO, Paul Thurston, thinks that is good business practice but he ought to try talking to a call centre when he gets involved with a supplier letting his business down. Of course, it is different for small businesses - if I were a sprawling corporation I would have an account manager, golf days and rugby tickets plus a bat phone to someone who gives a damn.

But small businesses are nobodies, just profit machines as we pay for everything we use.

So having been thwarted by the lunacy of invisible, deaf and dumb managers, I had to listen to the pathetic attempts to put things right. The one thing everyone agreed upon was to not issue a new card and cancel the card about to be sent as this would automatically cancel the current card which could still be used in retail outlets. So my only recourse was to wait for the new card and somehow manage my suppliers in my final month of the year.

Then I took a potential new client to lunch last week and my card was refused. I tried to make light of the situation but his comment floored me as he said, 'I am sure times are hard for small businesses.' It was bye, bye to a £50k project as he subsequently went with a larger firm for his services.

I called HSBC to find why they had done the one thing they had said they would NOT do, which was to send out a new card immediately and cancel the current one. They even compounded it all by lying - they said the new card had been sent the week before. Spookily, it never arrived, so what had actually happened was that someone simply cancelled the old card.

Where that leaves me is with a mass of suppliers awaiting their payment, no ability to book travel and run my expenses unless I do it on my private card and have another battle with HMRC as to whether my expenses are for private consumption or business and lose out.

HSBC, still no sign of any manager to speak to, called and even offered a derisory £100 as a 'goodwill' gesture to stop me taking this to the Banking Ombudsman. They warned that the Banking Ombudsman does not recognise the time I have lost in trying to sort this out when I cannot do billable work for clients and so will offer nothing for it.

And there's the rub. Until banks get hurt by their stupidity in the real world, then they will never do anything about it.

HSBC has a lot going for it - it is a good bank for most things. But when it lets customers down, there must be a way to get things done properly, quickly and without all this rubbish about call centres. Managers must get involved and get mobilised, make calls and really own issues and do the things that not only solve the problems but reassure the customers that a) they care and b) they have access, should they need it, to people who can get problems solved.

Banks and so many other companies employ this whole defence mechanism which shields managers from the real issues businesses face and it is because they are more interested in the make -believe profits of the investment world rather than the bread and butter customers who yield the only sustainable profits they make. That's why when they cut jobs after making billions of losses in the investment sector it is always at the customer facing end.

I don't know if I have the time and inclination to either fight HSBC on this or to take it to the Banking Ombudsman but it really galls me that banks have so little focus on customer service.