Singapore Airlines CEO apologises for company's website issues

Goh Choon Pong says airline has "no excuses" for its failure to deliver online services

The increasing ire of Singapore Airlines customers over continued problems with its new website which was launched on 22 May have led to its chief executive officer, Goh Choon Phong, being forced to publicly apologise.

In an email sent out to customers this week, Phong said it wanted to offer a "sincere apology" for issues that arose from the new website which included a new single payment system and interface to create itineraries.

"As with all new initiatives that we undertake, the intention behind the website revamp was to improve on our customers' experience with us." I am truly sorry that the new website, with its technical problems, has instead caused much aggravation for many of our customers. We make no excuses for our failure to deliver an acceptable level of online service," he said.

Phong also said it would be opening an investigation into the problematic website revamp and continues to work on the existing defects. "An in-depth investigation as to how the issues that arose went undetected is well underway, and we are treating this with utmost importance," he said.

Passengers wanting to check in online since the website launch in May have been unable to after personal details entered into the system disappeared and members of its frequent flyer club Krisflyer who had saved reservation and passport numbers also found all their details had disappeared. Customers took to a number of forums including Flyertalk and Whirlpool to vent their frustrations.

One Flyertalk forum user wrote that it was “unbelievable” that a premium carrier like Singapore Airlines could "launch a website so full of bugs and depend on their customers like us to be their beta testers".

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

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