Financial Times

Senior SriLankan official hassled along with other passengers

SriLankan Airlines last week refuted statements by several passengers on a London-Colombo flight that had an emergency landing in Germany due to a technical fault in the aircraft, that the airline was found wanting in providing basic services on the ground.

But one of the passengers was a senior airline staffer, traveling with his family and his version of events corroborate what most of the irate passengers say.

N. Prabaharan, SriLankan’s Regional Manager for UK, Europe and Americas, said in a report to the management that it was after some reluctance that ground staff agreed to a request by the purser to serve meals on the ground on board the plane. “In hindsight if the meals weren’t served, the passengers would have been more irate in the holding area as refreshments were served only many hours later.”

He said when the passengers were bused to the ‘holding area’, airline representatives turned down his (Prabaharan’s) request to serve refreshments saying it would take two hours.

He has reported that passengers were told not to leave the ‘holding area’ (in the airport) to the toilets or refreshments by immigration. This angered the passengers and heated arguments followed. After some time they decided to allow the passengers to leave the holding area by retaining the passports and boarding cards, according to his observations.

Prabaharan said while there were heated arguments between economy class passengers and the ground staff he felt that the staff was distant and indifferent which exacerbated the situation. Refreshments for economy class passengers were provided only much later

He said there were also delays in the baggage arriving in Colombo which angered business class passengers. He recommended that a standard refreshment meal/voucher at Frankfurt airport be offered to passengers immediately in case of long delays and called for an improvement in the attitude of Frankfurt staff, suggesting that the airline having its own staff could help.

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