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Bits: Barclays / IHG compensation payments, BA toilet trouble

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News in brief:

More news on Barclaycard / IHG compensation

Following on from my article this week about Barclaycard closing the IHG Rewards Club card, it seems that the call centre has now been officially briefed to offer you £25 compensation for every £1,000 you have spent on the Premium card if you have not yet triggered your free night voucher.

This is in addition to the pro-rata card fee refund that you will receive in April.

By a huge coincidence, this is exactly the same amount that I suggested readers should ask for when I wrote my article on Tuesday …….

British Airways BA 777X 777 9X

When BA cabin crew clean your plane ….

A couple of weeks ago, The Sun ran this story about BA cabin crew at Gatwick being paid £10 to clean short haul aircraft when they arrive late.  They don’t do a great job as they have no cleaning materials but it does allow the plane to take off again more quickly.  As part of the time saving measures, the toilets are not emptied.

I didn’t write about the story at the time because, frankly, a steady drip drip of ‘anti BA’ stories isn’t a lot of fun to read or write.

Yesterday, however, I received a shocker of an email from a reader.  British Airways had done this on a LONG-HAUL flight to Mauritius.

Our reader boarded his delayed Club World flight from Gatwick last Monday to find his seat covered in crumbs and grease marks on the windows.  It had already been announced over the PA that the cabin crew had tried to clean the plane instead of the contract cleaners due to a marginally late arrival.

However, as with ‘quick turnaround’ short hauls, it seems that the toilets had not been emptied.  After 10 hours of a 12 hour flight, the crew announced 3 of the 4 Club World toilets were closed as they were full.  A few minutes later, it was announced that ALL of the toilets on the plane were now full and closed.

BA has offered our reader 10,000 Avios as compensation.  This is, apparently, the most they are allowed to offer for any disruption now following the new ‘compensation scale’ introduced last year.  As the readers was on a £7,000+ BA Holidays package I have encouraged him to reject this and seek a larger sum through the Small Claims Court.

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Category

British Airways and Avios, IHG One Rewards

Comments (112)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Tim says:
    12 Mar12 March 08:29

    Is it a human right to use a toilet? What about if you have a medical condition that requires regular access to the toilet?

  • Neil says:
    12 Mar12 March 08:37

    At a time when other airlines are improving the customer experience BA seems hell bent on driving customers away. I know AC is fixated with Norwegian at Gatwick but come on, at least they have working toilets I presume.

  • xcalx says:
    12 Mar12 March 08:40

    So this was a cash booking. Looks like the second half of 2 for 1 passenger swerved a bullet.

  • David Butcher says:
    12 Mar12 March 08:57

    We flew London to Houston with BA in January and although the toilets kept working there was no water for hot drinks so no tea or coffee all trip, and no water in the washbasins so they were giving us bottled water to wash our hands. I have to say that my last few experiences with BA convince me that the airline is heading steadily downhill. I avoid them when I can.

  • Janet Thomas says:
    12 Mar12 March 09:10

    Re.IHG/Barclaycard. Don’t let Customer Services fob you off! I am only one month in & they only offered a pro-rata refund on £99 fee. Asked to speak to a manager & said I wanted to make formal complaint & requested a full refund plus percentage of spend already made. They agreed & I already have £99 plus £125 back into my account.

  • John says:
    12 Mar12 March 09:46

    The plane should have landed at the closest airport.

    Disgraceful that it was allowed to continue.

    I hope that the captain and senior crew were sacked over this incident. Mind you they would probably have been on strike on any other day.

    • Rob says:
      12 Mar12 March 10:05

      I think the number of divert options for a fully loaded 777 as you get close to MRU – given that you need a runway large enough for it to be able to take off again as well, fully loaded – isn’t huge.

      • Andy says:
        12 Mar12 March 12:43

        Well, it seems that it wouldn’t have been quite as “fully loaded” when it took off again.

    • TGLoyalty says:
      12 Mar12 March 10:29

      Captain and crews fault BA are too tight to pay for cleaning crews?

    • Alan says:
      12 Mar12 March 11:01

      What a ludicrous proposition, why should the captain and crew bear the brunt of BA’s extreme cost-saving approach? I also can’t imagine there were many diversion options at that stage and it seems more sensible to have continued.

      • Lady London says:
        12 Mar12 March 14:11

        They chose to leave on time with an aircraft that wasn’t serviceable, in my view.

        I am not even sure Ryanair has done this too often… Ryanair has certainly done the same though.

        If someone had been forced to “go” and any extra cleaning charge accrued to finally clean up the aircraft as a result, I presume they’d have not been liabel and been fully covered?

        Perhaps I could recommend the latest model of camping toilets for BA to keep in the ceiling of the toilets, to be bought out for such emergencies.

        And pretty soon the £10 will be rolled into their normal salary…

        • Alan says:
          12 Mar12 March 14:17

          Who knows what was reported to the captain by the turnaround manager? Clearly they shouldn’t have left like that but to suggest the captain and crew should be sacked as a result (as the OP was suggesting) is sensationalist and unfair on them I would suggest.

  • Arun T says:
    12 Mar12 March 09:50

    If the facts of this are true; that BA didn’t bother to get a full cleaning team and didn’t empty toilets based on cost – then this is far worse than any 2for1 downgrade policy they may have! Can’t blame the front line staff – but BA management seem to be completely killing the airline!

  • ThinkSquare says:
    12 Mar12 March 10:14

    Emptying the waste tanks would save a load of weight on the flight. There’s your cost saving of the day, BA. You’re welcome.

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