A BA check-in agent writes about how they select passengers for downgrading and offloading

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• uk1 says:

  16 Mar16 March 11:16

  On our last F 241 to SIN a month back we had the dreaded “checfk in at airport” greeting but thankfully in our case I believe it was because the passport details I had logged on BA.COM had an expiry less than 6 months which wasn’t SIN compliant and I had a new passport. They never explained at LHR the reason so I am guessing. It was a horrible 24 hours where you manage to convince yourself you’re bumped.

  This does need taking to MCOL in my view and I think the focus should be on the “imbalance of rights” ie an unfair contract on the basis that the customer does not have the right to cancel say the return leg on a 241, but BA behave as though they have the right to effectively sell the seat you have “purchased” and reserved to someone else at the last minute. So you can’t cancel but they can simply sell your seat to someone else. This doesn’t sound defendable to me but what do I know?

  This isn’t cancelling for reasons outside their control but a wilful purposeful commercial decision to sell “your” seat to a higher bidder and cancel your contract knowing you are going to travel because you have OLCI already. I think if argued that way that they are in wilful and avoidable breach of contract and you should be entering the cost of a replacement future flight in the claim. As a 241 before the outward leg is flexible it should be the replacement cost of a flexible ticket.

  We have been going to SIN two or sometimes three times a year in F on 241’s for many years buyt this uncertainty and apparent bad treatment has really added a nerw bit of stress I do not like a bit and I think it heralds a change to plan B whatever that turns out to be.

• Stuart says:

  16 Mar16 March 11:43

  OLCI can be withheld for a number of reasons so this shouldn’t be a automatic warning flag.

  I’ve had it a number of times recently where passport need to be checked for US, Chiba and Japan

• uk1 says:

  16 Mar16 March 11:46

  🙂 ….. it doesn’t stop a pessimist worrying though ……

• Vk314 says:

  16 Mar16 March 12:15

  Despite living in the UK and BA being the most convenient in terms of access to the world, I have NEVER flown them and do not intend to fly them given their mediocre service, inflated prices and horrible hard products in all classes.

  • Nick says:

    16 Mar16 March 15:17

    If you have never flown them, how can you say that the product is horrible and the service mediocre? There are certainly better products out there but I don’t think it is fair to call it horrible, and the service can be excellent

  • BruceN says:

    16 Mar16 March 18:15

    Lol.
    Have you ever been on a plane?
    Sounds like sour grapes if you’ve never tried them.

    • the real harry1 says:

      16 Mar16 March 18:27

      lol

      hard to call their prices ‘inflated’ – on our regular route to Europe, BA’s often cheaper than the LCCs!

• Monopolies commission says:

  16 Mar16 March 12:20

  What is also interesting to me is that once voluntereed you are not rebooked onto another service right away but have to wait in limbo for a potential re-onboarding…

  I was travelling QR J SIN-DOH-LHR and was asked at check in if I would accommodate being moved to another Airline due to over booking. Once I agreed I was immediately taken to SQ check-in counter and booked on their flight…no case of having to stand around waiting just in case someone does a no-show.

  If someone is offloaded I’d expect them to be reaccommodated with priority, not made to wait around until departure as they could then be missing out on alternative routings! What a poor mindset!

• Peter K says:

  16 Mar16 March 12:28

  It’s seems like this new system from BA is a FLY in the ointment! (Sorry)

• HB133 says:

  16 Mar16 March 13:58

  I once volunteered to be bumped… it was on a 3 flight a day mid-haul operated route and I was on the morning flight whilst my wife was on the late afternoon flight. At check-in I asked if it was overbooked and told yes, they were looking for volunteers but as a silver, I wasn’t in the pecking order for bumping. After volunteering, I was sent to the A-zone desks, given a voucher to cafe nero (to make up for the lounge IF they didn’t need me and put me on the flight last second) and told to come back 45 minutes before take off.

  I saw a few others in more distress than me (involuntary bumped) waiting and they all got on the flight (I’m sure one in my nice exit row seat).

  For me, i got a £600 voucher (the flight cost about £3-400) and I went through and worked from the lounge all morning before joining my wife for a late lunch and flying that afternoon.

  The one downside is that I went from an exit row to the last row of the mid-haul A321 and endured being constantly bumped by crew and passengers waiting for the toilets. But for the £600 which paid for most of the flights for our summer holiday, it was worth taking one for the team :-).

  So, moral of the story, if it’s voluntary and you’re flexible, it CAN be worth it…

  • Ro says:

    16 Mar16 March 17:03

    A voucher for Cafe Nero?
    That is horrific. Nothing is worth giving them custom

    • Rob says:

      16 Mar16 March 18:26

      I was once given a voucher to spend in the terminal when my flight was delayed. Unfortunately, the voucher was for Heathrow T2 (the old T2) and I was rebooked from T3. But the voucher was only valid in T2. Landside, as we couldn’t get airside as we now had T3 boarding passes.

      The only outlet open was a Wetherspoon’s pub. My wife and I had been given £60 to spend – tricky at 9am in a Wetherspoon’s – so we ordered 2 x breakfasts and then paid the bill of everyone else in the queue! This was 2008.

      • the real harry1 says:

        16 Mar16 March 20:47

        I think I’d have opened a tab at the bar 🙂

  • RussellH says:

    16 Mar16 March 20:31

    This was last century, but it was most certainly worth volunteering to be bumped. BA put out a tannoy message at SFO offering $200 in cash or $300 travel voucher for those volunteering to take the flight several hours later. We had tickets through a newspaper promtion LHR-SFO RTN in economy for around £240. We were taken to a separate desk and given boarding passes for the later flight, plus our vouchers for $300. We had plenty of time to go back into SF for a meal in Chinatown.

    When we got home I had a closer look at the vouchers – they had been incorrectly filled out so that they could, in fact, be cashed in. I took mine in Edinburgh airport late one Sunday night; there was only one person on the BA desk. She looked at the voucher and said that she could certainly cash it in, but could I please wait while she went to find some more cash. She came back about 5mins later with a pile of £20 notes and gave me £300 (not $300) – the lighting was not very good!

    I walked back to my car as fast as I could in case she changed her mind…

    • Alan says:

      16 Mar16 March 20:39

      Haha fantastic result!

      I remember volunteering to be bumped off the last BA LHR-GLA flight of the night one weekend – the agent was so grateful! They asked me to take a seat while they sorted out the preloaded compensation card and hotel and asked if I would mind waiting while they sorted the rest of boarding – I was a student and in no particular rush! They then came back with the card and said if I didn’t mind waiting for another hour or so they could squeeze me onto the last British Midland flight (which left later) – they did so in business so I got to visit the lounge too! Superb customer service for sure 😀

      • the real harry1 says:

        16 Mar16 March 20:52

        we used to be pleasantly surprised by BA, now we are nearly always disappointed by how bad & low they have come in terms of customer service – don’t blame the staff, blame the management

• Simon says:

  16 Mar16 March 14:26

  Slightly OT: 23 or 24 years ago I was on a redemption ticket on Delta out of LGW where they had not been able to confirm a seat for me as all three of their depatures were oversold. I was given a “seatless” boarding pass that got me through security to the gate, where I hung around watching everyone else board on the first flight, which went without me, then the second. Once everyone was on the third departure I’d resigned myself to going home and trying again the next day. Eventually the gate agent came over and said “I’m very sorry, we only have one seat left and it’s a smoking seat. In business class. Do you still want it?” I did; it transpired that the smoking section comprised two seats and the other person only managed to have one cigarette in the entire flight because he didn’t like to smoke when I was eating.
  Anyway, it raises two questions:
  1) back then flights were regularly oversold by a percentage which varied by route (and possibly season) because the airlines knew that a proportion of people wouldn’t show up. I assume that this is still the case, probably in an ever more sophisticated manner. Just how oversold must a flight be for FLY to start offloading people pre check-in?
  2) Several tales in the comments about people being made to wait at check in, and not being allowed through to wait at the gate as I was. I assume that this is due to security enhancements?

  • Alan says:

    16 Mar16 March 21:05

    Re #2 – no, just a couple of years ago I was on a flight to CPH with SAS. My flight had been cancelled due to bad weather and they were happy to waitlist me. I had Star Alliance Gold then (and did gently point this out to ensure I received the priority waitlisting that is promised with it!) – they then provided me with a seatless boarding pass that got me through security and into the SAS lounge. Thankfully some folk decided not to travel and I made it onto the flight, even got bumped up to business (albeit not a big difference on intra-Europe flight!)

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