UNI Air is demonstrating how monopolies in Confucian Economies do not always produce high quality service
Such a Bad Airline—Never Again? UNI Airlines
By Kevin Stoda in Manila—a Victim of UNI Airlines business practices
On Monday, I published an article on CEBU PACIFIC AIRLINES’ growing reputation as a dangerous and cruel airline partner in Southeast Asia.
http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/security-issues-double-bookings-and-cebu-pacific-airlines/
Today, I want to follow up with a short writing on UNI Air, which I also mentioned in the article above. UNI Air is the only operator to and from the main island of Taiwan to the Matsu Islands where I live and work. UNI Air is joined together with EVA air the national carrier but they are operating to a great extant independently--and evidently UNI Air owners and operators have no desire to live up to the high standards of EVA.
UNI DOMINATES DOMESTIC MARKET OF TAIWAN
UNI “airline has had the largest market share in the domestic Taiwan market in recent years, and has expanded to include international flights.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uni_Air
UNI Air “operates mainly to domestic destinations, but also operates scheduled international flights to Bangkok, Hanoi and Seoul from Kaohsiung and chartered flights to Bali and Jeju from Kaohsiung.” It also flies to China and Japan.
However, on my island of Matsu—namely the island known as Beigan--, UNI Air often cancels its last flight each day. There are three flights daily to Taipei from Beigan and much of the time the last flight is canceled ostensibly due to weather conditions. The abused locals on Beigan are aware of these foibles and the belief is widespride that UNI Air just likes to cancel under-booked flights.
This forces locals to go to the neighboring island of Nangan and catch flights on daily or weekly basis.
MURPHEY’S LAW AND UNI AIR
However, locals in Matsu had told me that because Friday nights are full on UNI Air from Beigan the last flight on Friday always goes—i.e. no matter what.
Well, to make a long story short, Murphey’s Law was in full-effect last Friday (December 10, 2010) and UNI Air canceled every single one of its three flights to Taipei from Beigan. UNI Air’s irresponsibly failed to contact many of its passengers all day long. My family was one of those un-contacted groups of passengers.
NOTE: Had UNI Air notified me and my family in a timely manner, we 3 Stodas could have taken a boat over to Nangan and taken one of 6 or more daily flights to Taiwan.
More disconcerting is the fact that UNI Air has offered no financial refunds nor vouchers for the nearly 10,000 Taiwan Dollars I lost out on that Friday night—when my family of 3 failed to make its connection on Cebu Pacific flights from Taiwan’s International Airport near Taipei to Manila.
Worse still, none of the staff at UNI Air in Beigan spoke passable English. Meanwhile, the most that a customer service manager in Taipei for the firm could do was to bow and apologize—no offer of compensation was apparently even thought about.
I will have to find a way to complain to some consumer agency in Taiwan about UNI Air behavior—if I can find someone who can speak English.
SABENA
Back in the 1980s, a German once joked to me that the one-time national airlines for Belgium, named SABENA, actually stood for “Such A Bad Airline—Never Again.”
Whereas SABENA no longer exists in Belgium due to international and regional competition, the domestic dominate UNI AIR continues to own most of Taiwans local markets—and UNI Air is demonstrating how monopolies in Confucian Economies do not always produce high quality service.
By Kevin Stoda in Manila—a Victim of UNI Airlines business practices
On Monday, I published an article on CEBU PACIFIC AIRLINES’ growing reputation as a dangerous and cruel airline partner in Southeast Asia.
http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/security-issues-double-bookings-and-cebu-pacific-airlines/
Today, I want to follow up with a short writing on UNI Air, which I also mentioned in the article above. UNI Air is the only operator to and from the main island of Taiwan to the Matsu Islands where I live and work. UNI Air is joined together with EVA air the national carrier but they are operating to a great extant independently--and evidently UNI Air owners and operators have no desire to live up to the high standards of EVA.
UNI DOMINATES DOMESTIC MARKET OF TAIWAN
UNI “airline has had the largest market share in the domestic Taiwan market in recent years, and has expanded to include international flights.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uni_Air
UNI Air “operates mainly to domestic destinations, but also operates scheduled international flights to Bangkok, Hanoi and Seoul from Kaohsiung and chartered flights to Bali and Jeju from Kaohsiung.” It also flies to China and Japan.
However, on my island of Matsu—namely the island known as Beigan--, UNI Air often cancels its last flight each day. There are three flights daily to Taipei from Beigan and much of the time the last flight is canceled ostensibly due to weather conditions. The abused locals on Beigan are aware of these foibles and the belief is widespride that UNI Air just likes to cancel under-booked flights.
This forces locals to go to the neighboring island of Nangan and catch flights on daily or weekly basis.
MURPHEY’S LAW AND UNI AIR
However, locals in Matsu had told me that because Friday nights are full on UNI Air from Beigan the last flight on Friday always goes—i.e. no matter what.
Well, to make a long story short, Murphey’s Law was in full-effect last Friday (December 10, 2010) and UNI Air canceled every single one of its three flights to Taipei from Beigan. UNI Air’s irresponsibly failed to contact many of its passengers all day long. My family was one of those un-contacted groups of passengers.
NOTE: Had UNI Air notified me and my family in a timely manner, we 3 Stodas could have taken a boat over to Nangan and taken one of 6 or more daily flights to Taiwan.
More disconcerting is the fact that UNI Air has offered no financial refunds nor vouchers for the nearly 10,000 Taiwan Dollars I lost out on that Friday night—when my family of 3 failed to make its connection on Cebu Pacific flights from Taiwan’s International Airport near Taipei to Manila.
Worse still, none of the staff at UNI Air in Beigan spoke passable English. Meanwhile, the most that a customer service manager in Taipei for the firm could do was to bow and apologize—no offer of compensation was apparently even thought about.
I will have to find a way to complain to some consumer agency in Taiwan about UNI Air behavior—if I can find someone who can speak English.
SABENA
Back in the 1980s, a German once joked to me that the one-time national airlines for Belgium, named SABENA, actually stood for “Such A Bad Airline—Never Again.”
Whereas SABENA no longer exists in Belgium due to international and regional competition, the domestic dominate UNI AIR continues to own most of Taiwans local markets—and UNI Air is demonstrating how monopolies in Confucian Economies do not always produce high quality service.
Labels: uni air bad airline stories Taiwan Asia confucian economies development trends cebu pacific
posted by Kevin Anthony Stoda at 11:17 AM
1 Comments:
December 19, 2010
UNI AIRWAYS
8F, no. 117, Sec. 2, CHANG-AN.E. RD.
TAIPEI 104 TAIWAN
Dear Customer Service and Voucher Officers,
I am writing to claim from UNI AIRWAYS either (1) a sum of TWD 9,580.46 or (2) an equivalent sum in vouchers valid for UNI Airways and her EVA (and related partner owning airlines).
This cost was placed on my shoulders (and pocket book) by UNI AIRWAYS failure to notify me at any time on or before December 10, 2010 that all flights on Beigan Island had been canceled. (Many other passengers were not notified by UNI Airways in Matsu, so I see the failure to notify me and my family as an act of costly and systematic negligence on the part of UNI AIRWAYS operating on Beigan.)
Had I been notified in a timely manner and transferred my family by ship to Nangan, I would have been able to make my flight (with accompanying wife and child) that very night of December 10 on Cebu Pacific—a flight which I had booked (paid for on Nov. 13, 2010) nearly a month earlier, i.e. a flight set for 1:25 a.m. on December 11, 2010 to Manila.
With this claim I am including in this mailing:
(A) Copy of my new ticket—which I had to wholly pay for online after learning of the canceling of the 7pm and earlier flights. This ticket was scheduled for 1:25 am on Dec. 12, 2010 cost a sum of TWD 9,580.46 . We were able to make that flight by flying the next day and repaying for a flight to
(B) Copy of my original UNI air ticket showing my wife’s name, Maria (Victoria) Stoda & me (Kevin Anthony Stoda leaving MFK to TSA at 19:00 and arriving supposedly at 19:50. On this copy, you will note that we eventually took the flight from MFK to TSA at 10:40 am. (We then had to wait 13 hours for our flight in the Taipei area for our international airport flight.)
( C) A copy of the original ticket I had booked for a flight set for 1:25 a.m. on
December 11, 2010 to Manila. This ticket had become useless after UNI AIRWAYS had kept to their secretive No-flight PLAN in effect without notifying me and many other passengers on December 10, 2010 in Beigan.
( D) Copies of the canceled flight by UNI Airways which was only confirmed
a day after the flight at the Beigan Airport.
I teach at 3 public schools on Beigan Island. Some of my colleagues by chance were able to transfer from Beigan to Nangan (island and airport) via boat in the late afternoon of December 10, 2010. They claim they heard only about the Beigan cancellations by chance. One was told by a bus driver. No one at UNI AIRWAYS in Beigan contacted them about the cancellation and aided them in changing their flight etc. on December 10, 2010.
Please either give me a check for TWD 9, 580.46 by January 15, 20100 or send me vouchers of over 10,000 dollars before then so I can use UNI AIR and EVA Air flights to and from Beigan/ Taipei/ and Manila flights in the future.
Yours,
Kevin Anthony Stoda, English Teacher
Ban Li Elementary School
No. 59, Ban Li Village
Beigan Township
Lienchiang 210
Taiwan
Phone 0836-55222
Fax: 0836-55070
RSVP
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