Last month a pair of Iberia FAs prohibited me from taking pictures onboard my flight from Madrid to Los Angeles. I reached out to Iberia via Twitter and asked for photo policy clarification. Yesterday, I received a final follow-up note.
I already shared my initial back-and-forth in an earlier post entitled, Iberia Apologizes, Clarifies Onboard Photo Policy.
There, I shared a Twitter conversation in which we exchanged the following notes–
From Iberia:
Hi. We apologize for the situation that has arisen. Photographs on board are not prohibited. However, it is not possible to photograph the personnel on board, maybe has it been a misunderstanding on this point, that they believed that you wanted to photograph the staff. If you need photos or media for your agency, you can also ask for that, contacting Iberia Agencias. Do you think it was a misunderstanding? Regards.
My response:
I thank you for your prompt response. I don’t think it was misunderstanding because I clearly stated that no personnel or passengers were photographed. Perhaps you can speak to the purser of the flight today, just to clarify the policy. I understand that it may be curious to a crew why a passenger photographs his seat or the meal, but I think customer photos are so much more helpful than corporate/media photos. That is why I prefer to take them myself. I again emphasize how impressed I was today during flight until this occurred.
Iberia’s response:
Thanks for your kindness. We will move your comments with our colleagues so they can verify what happened. Can you indicate your Iberia booking code and the route in which this situation has occurred? Regards.
Iberia Follows Up on Onboard Photo Policy
I provided the relevant info and figured I probably would not hear back. It took nearly a month, but yesterday I received the following note via Twitter:
Hello, Matthew. Firstly, we’d like to take this opportunity to offer our sincere apologies in relation to the incident during your flight with us. We do allow passengers to take pictures from inside the aircraft and are happy to even use the pics on our social media channels. Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding, our onboard crew haven’t provided the most accurate information and denied your request to take such pics. The only thing that we do not allow is passengers taken pictures from other passengers or crew members, since this might violate privacy rights, which clearly wasn’t the case. Therefore, please accept our apologies. Kind regards
I do hope that Iberia actually talked to my crew and heard their side of the story. More importantly, I hope that the crew now is aware that it is perfectly fine (and not illegal!) for a passenger to take pictures of the cabin.
CONCLUSION
I am very pleased at the level and quality of engagement from Iberia. This situation could not have been handled any better.
So…. the conclusion means the crew simply wants to smoke ASAP? If their boss read your blog, I couldn’t imagine what their superior would say to them, especially if the boss didn’t smoke. Lol
Wow you got a response.
I’ve submitted complaints to Iberia about 3 distinct matters over the years, they have proceeded to claim they had “lost” the complaints – multiple times.
One of these was about racist discrimination.
The initial response “the remarks are acceptable in Spain” – ‘cultural differences’.
I can assure you the relevant remarks were not acceptable in Spain.
Another one, was about cabin crew verbally abusing vegetarians. Supposedly a joke to announce on the PA “this passenger has some terrible disease and can’t eat normal food”.
I need to start a blog so I can get responses like that.
An interrogant would want to know how a crew trained by IB made such an error interpreting airline policy. Crew shouldn’t issue commands or threats unless they can cite rules as written in their procedure manuals. Otherwise the crew exposes the airline to negligence and liabilities.
Yes it could have gone better. They could have, and probably should have, offered you compensation for this. Then again, its more than I would have expected anyway, so I’m not complaining.