Tiny Palmair waves past competition by minding the details
How does an airline with only one plane beat out heavyweights like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic to become one of the world’s favorite airlines? For UK-based Palmair European, it’s all about the details.
Remarkably, Palmair tied with Air New Zealand, with Singapore Airlines ranked as number one and India’s Jet Airways ranked as number two, in a recent customer survey.
Voters were asked to rate the airlines on overall experience and value for money from over 70 worldwide airlines. Their criteria included the cleanliness of planes, leg-room, catering quality and cabin crew performance.
Unlike his counterparts, the late founder of Palmair, Peter Bath, would always be at the departure lounge to greet passengers before standing at the tarmac in Dorset, where the airline is based, to wave off every single flight.
“When Mr. Bath founded Palmair, his belief was that if people were good enough to pay money to fly with him then the least he could do was greet each passenger,” says David Skillicorn, the airline’s managing director.
That job is now taken over by airport representative Teresia Rosesllo. She not only waves the plane off, she also checks passengers in and assign seats. According to Mr. Skillicorn, the evening before, Ms. Rosesslo goes over every detail of the flight.
She maps out the seating plan the night before on her kitchen table using special notes she has made for each passenger.
Those who want more leg room get it and families who want to sit together can. Other airlines charge for a service like this but not us.
We have taken out a row of seating to give the 130 passengers more leg room and put fresh flowers on-board for every flight.
Legacy carriers, are you paying attention?
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