Despite a few hiccups, I think that my experience with them has been alright (fortunatley not as bad as what a lot of you have experienced!). Maybe I have low expectation of them given they are still a budget airline so they are not the worst among other budget airlines.

However I experienced first time in my life of “missing a flight” not because I was late, but because the ground crew left duty earlier than the 60min window and nobody was able to check me in…And Scoot did not have web check-in service for the airport I was departing from…So I was forced to “miss my flight”.

I called their customer service hotline and got the usual response from a junior staff saying there is nothing that they could do to help. Sent my feedback via their online form and got some standard response. Simply wanting to share my experience with other travellers really so you can judge based on the facts.

This is the feedback I sent to Scoot:
“I would like to write to inform you about the incident that led to me not being able to check in for my flight hence missing the flight.

Your itinerary suggests that check in counters close 60mins before the flight at 17:55. I arrived at the counters 60mins (16:55) before the flight and there was no one around already. Upon checking with airport information counter, they advised that the counter booking was until 16:45 so the ground staff would have left more than 60mins before the flight. Then I called the hotline and your staff also advised that sometimes for check in at HK airport the check in counters will be closed more than 60mins before the flight.

I’m sure this is not the first complaint you have received on this issue as I saw another traveller arriving a few mins after me who was not able to check in too.

Can I suggest that if your HK ground staff tend to leave the check in counters more than 60mins before the flight, should you then amend the itinerary to advise travellers to check in 70 or 80mins before the flight? I am a frequent traveller in general and specifically with Scoot too and I have never experienced this problem with other airlines where the ground staff disappeared before the official close…

This causes disruption to travellers schedule and not to mention the cost involved to purchase a last minute new ticket which is most likely to be a lot more costly.

Can I also suggest to implement the online check in in more large airports? The online check in for Singapore airport is great as it saves travellers time and is one important consideration for frequent travellers and am sure will help you win more business over other competitors too.”

Brownie point to them that they replied to me almost immediately but with a very standard response:
“Thank you for your writing to us.

We refer to your submission received through our Online Feedback Form.

Kindly accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience you may have experienced in respect to your flight recently.

At Scoot, we take pride in ensuring our customer’s satisfaction.

Unfortunately, we did not meet your expectations.

As our valued guest, we will take note of your feedback for the check in counters and the online check in in more large airports.

This will be passed to our relevant team for their internal review, and make necessary corrective actions to improve our services.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused and if our service on this occasion did not meet your expectations.

Should you have other concern, you may write back to us or contact our call center.

We appreciate your support and we look forward to another opportunity to serve you.”

Despite this unsatisfactory experience with them, I think we still need to be fair and not to discount them completely on certain areas that they’ve done well. But I might not book their flights again especially if it’s departing from the same airport with ground crew who weren’t performing their duty properly…

By Kiyan Tam, Facebook, on 17 Jan 2019