Share your BA shut-down experiences …. and BA adds £16 to Expedia etc bookings

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• Oz says:

  28 May28 May 08:12

  Terrible management of the whole situation by British Airways staff at Zurich airport yesterday. I knew there was a problem on Friday night, as I tried to check-in online about 11pm for a flight the following day (Sat 27 May) and was not allowed as system was “very busy”. Spoke to the call centre and they said that it was “scheduled maintenance” and that I should not worry, but try again in two hours!

  Went to Zurich airport on Saturday and checked in no problem for BA 715 ZRH to LHR at around 13:00 for a 15:45 departure. Staff at check-in desk said everything was fine and were gladly accepting passenger bags and issuing boarding passes. Our flight said it was on time right up until about 15 mins AFTER departure time, when it was cancelled on the screens. No BA staff came down to inform us of any issue.

  We all then had to scramble around to find a BA rep, who told us:

  1. Systems are all down so nobody can be re-booked / re-routed
  2. Systems are all down so no vouchers can be issued for food or accommodation
  3. Systems are all down so getting checked bags back to people is going to be a serious problem
  4. We should feel free to book our own onward flights with Swiss Airways etc. using our own funds and we can claim for these costs from BA afterwards

  I asked a BA supervisor to put point 4 in writing for us, but they refused and simply handed out a standard EU 261 form.

  Meanwhile, I walked back to the check-in desk and BA were still checking people in and taking their bags for the 18:40 to LHR! I had to tell all these poor people not to hand over their bags, as they would not be able to get them back once BA inevitably cancelled the flight later on and left them stranded in Zurich! It seems that I had more information via Twitter than the BA check-in desk representatives had.

  The whole situation was atrociously handled by British Airways, all the way from the lies about “routine maintenance” from the BA call centre down to leaving their front line staff with no information, and making no effort to inform passengers that their flights were going to be cancelled until after departure time!

  Thank god for Amex Platinum and Swiss Airways!

• Paul Hampton says:

  28 May28 May 08:18

  Family of 5 here and we had a rollercoaster of a day at Manchester Airport yesterday. We were checked in to depart on the BA Cityflyer service to Nice, which became delayed due to the late arrival on inbound aircraft from Alicante.

  Unlike other BA flights we were assured that our aircraft would depart and some 2 hours later, with the aircraft finally on the stand, ground staff began manual bag and ticketing procedures.

  All looking good until, but then nothing for another hour and with the one ground staff flapping, the captain came to address us and inform that a member of crew was sick on board and medically unfit to fly. Their efforts to obtain a replacement were being hampered by the IT outage and they would continue to try. My suggestion to use the spare crew from the 3 other BA flights that had been cancelled in the last half hour was declined.

  Finally, after another hour or so, they cancelled the flight and with 3 very upset children, we were taken back through passport control to collect our bags and join the melée at the BA check in area where we were told they could rebook or reroute via other airlines.

  This was also badly handled because due to the systems outage, it was not possible to look at these options, nor was it possible for anyone to transfer us onto let arlines with capacity to at least get us into France. Similarly, they could not arrange hotel accommodation or tell us whether to stay in the hope systems would recover or go.

  I too was given the letter which in essence said ‘every man for themselves’ and looked at hotels at the airport where the family could rest, while I would stay at the airport until the systems were available. In the meantime, other travellers took matters into their own hands, seizing the final seats on Air France, FlyBe etc in order to get closer to their final destination.

  There were no hotels available at the airport, so I had to instruct the valet parking guys to retrieve our car and we went home, where I would spend 90 minutes waiting to get through to BA, who have booked us on a flight via LHR tomorrow. I am apprehensive about this because although these seats are held, it seems Manchester ground staff haven’t officially offboarded us yet. So no doubt more hours on the phone today to get the tickets issued.

  There is also the complication of car hire. We are on a BA holidays booking with an automatic Mercedes booked at NCE. I need assurances from BA and Avis that they will be able to honour this booking and they were not in a position to do so last night.

  If there are any insurance or compensation experts on this thread I would appreciate your advice on how to proceed and what we are entitled to receive. My bank account bundled travel insurance told me that anything they pay would be net of anything BA paid out. I don’t think this is correct, but right now the priority is just to salvage some of our holiday and if all goes to plan we will arrive at our resort some two days late.

  • Rob says:

    28 May28 May 11:00

    Your insurance payout is net of what BA pays, yes (exc EU261).

    BA will not pay for indirect costs, eg pre booked hotels, as you are expected to have travel insurance for that.

    If BA claims ‘act of God’ to avoid 261 then technically your travel insurer could do the same.

    • Paul Hampton says:

      28 May28 May 11:33

      Thanks, Rob. It was a marginal call to accept the 48hr delay rather than cancel altogether. For the sake of their reputation I hope goodwill extends beyond the 261 obligations, otherwise for many it will be the last time they choose BA.

• Rose says:

  28 May28 May 08:20

  Five hours at T5 yesterday – lack of information was appalling. We queued for bag drop for 3 hours only to be told at the very front that ‘you are too late will miss the plane – go to zone E to rebook.’ This was obviously misinformation as no flights left all day. Zone E was unmanned by any BA staff and after further 2 hour wait unable to get through on call centre we made our own arrangements.
  We originally booked the 2 together Qatar business from Oslo to Male using BA to fly to Oslo yesterday. No alternative flights to Oslo so only thing we could do is change to economy from Lon to Male today on Qatar losing the business flight out and paying an extra £1000. Any advice as to whether we can claim this back from BA? What is One World alliance worth if they aren’t working as one!

  • Mark says:

    28 May28 May 09:06

    Your credit card is your friend.

  • Rashad says:

    28 May28 May 14:34

    I had to put a claim in when we have missed connection flight from Oslo to London as QR Flight from Doha was delayed 6 hours due to torrential rains. Amex Platinum insurer AXA informed me that I can make £350 worth claim per person

• Peter says:

  28 May28 May 08:20

  Questions should be asked why it took BA so long to confirm to travel agents that refunds were allowable for passengers booked to travel on 27 May. The first communication from BA Trade Support came in at 1551 confirming refunds allowable for passengers booked to travel on short haul flight; the email confirming refunds were allowed for long haul flights didn’t arrive until 1803!

  • Derek Scott says:

    28 May28 May 08:37

    Maybe BA didn’t notify Trade earlier as they had no systems to do it with?!?

• Mike says:

  28 May28 May 08:27

  All NHS dentistry management online -from submitted treatment claims to pension entitlement was outsourced to Capita a couple of years ago.
  It has without question been an unmitigated disaster to the point most dentists refer to them as Crapita and the system called Compass as Compost
  It is unintuitive,
  Newly qualified dentists with jobs to start were delayed for 4 months from doing so because of Capitas systems failures denying patients treatment and newly qualified dentists with £100 000 of student debt were unable to earn anything.
  I rang two weeks ago because I couldn’t get their online system to respond as it should. Whilst the lady I spoke to was very pleasant she couldn’t help but would talk to someone more senior and get back to me. I’m still waiting.
  Capita are an unmitigated disaster.
  B.A. KEEP IT IN HOUSE

  • Nate1309 says:

    28 May28 May 09:27

    Haha Compass is sooooo awful! Makes you wish we had Portal back!

• Ineverturnright says:

  28 May28 May 08:32

  First lets put things in perspective in light of recent terrible events : we had our holidays disrupted. We are lucky to have holidays.

  Second my flight was cancelled yest. I managed to get through to the BA gold line team who held the same flight out today and back on weds, effectively moving my holiday back a day. Need to call them today to fully process the change and have them sort out the hotel (booked via BA too)

  Means 1 extra day off work, paying change fees on things booked today that will now have to be done on Weds, and probably a lower value holiday (I’m sure a sat to tues trip was priced a premium vs a sun to weds at time of booking).

  Obviously will explore all avenues with BA and insurance but I suspect I will just have to write a lot of it off to experience.

• Derek Scott says:

  28 May28 May 08:34

  Interesting to read people’s perspectives. Having worked in customer-facing sectors for 30+ years, I have a view on how it was all portrayed across the media yesterday:

  The News Channels were keen to pounce on any whiff of lack of communication. I think it’s reasonable to assume that would have been easy, considering the disappointment/frustration factor that would have been strong in the terminal.

  Communications are never as good as you’d like, even when things are going well, so let’s be honest, BA were never going to be able to achieve a good outcome on this front. It’s easy to criticise, but put yourself in the staff’s position: a massive number of staff across an expansive estate, faced with 000’s of angry/frustrated passengers and a very fluid situation that could change quickly. The logistics alone are complex.

  Getting clear and definitive updates to all staff, to convey to passengers would have been extremely difficult, and potentially upsetting to some staff, let alone passengers.

  To say there was no Crisis Management Plan, I feel is extremely unfair. How would your company cope if they had the same set of circumstances? Of course you can bet there will be a huge post-Mortem on all fronts in the coming weeks, which hopefully will allow the Execs to revisit past/present/future plans and make significant improvements.

  I am due to fly to HKG on Wednesday with an overnight stop at LHR in Tuesday, and am comfortable BA will be doing all it can in the coming days. I’m a firm believer that no-one goes to work with the intention of doing a bad job, and as such, I have confidence that BA staff and crew will do their utmost in their control to make things right as quickly as possible

  • Alan says:

    28 May28 May 09:12

    Although they missed obvious opportunities too – the BA website (hosted on a totally separate system) didn’t say a thing about it on the front page when I looked yesterday – they could easily have put it into an emergency mode with all key info and status updates that pax required being readily available.

  • Mark says:

    28 May28 May 09:12

    What world do you live in!?

    I run a small business and I have backups for everything. Internet, servers, payment systems, phones, power.

    And any company that doesn’t deserves everything they get when things like this go wrong.

    It was like the time when Barclays payments went down a few years ago on the busiest Saturday of the year and all these companies moaned that they couldn’t take any money as they couldn’t accept cards etc, complaining that they lost tens of thousands. We’ll unless every payment method went down I’d have still been taking cards as I have simple redundancy in place!

  • CV3V says:

    28 May28 May 09:13

    Your are very generous to BA. Agreed nobody goes to work to do a bad job, but with BA its clear that there is a management culture to go to work and see how they can keep cutting costs and test how far they can go before too much bad PR and loss of revenue affects profits.

    How would my company respond in same set of circumstances? Well, if my office (and servers) burned down, we would move the same/next day to another office where a backup server is kept – and more importantly, paid for. The backup server could be switched to almost immediately. BA couldn’t even get a message on the BA website home screen.

    Also, it seems BA didn’t know what to do, they hadnt correctly planned for this event, which they should have done. They gave out mixed messages to customers ranging from ‘we will pay if you book with someone else’, ‘we won’t pay if you rebook with someone else, but will refund your ticket cost’ and ‘claim on your travel insurance’. Thats not a fluid situation, they should have a standard, prepared response.

    Where was the oneworld alliance? Why could a passenger not take their booking reference to another oneworld airline and get on a different flight to the same location? The scale of the problem would have been sharply reduced. Someone going to europe? put them on Eurostar. BA won’t pay for it? It makes train companies bus replacement approach look good!

    When then inquiry starts. Could it have been avoided? Could it have been handled better? Will this cost BA millions of pounds (IAG share price, compensation claims, lost future bookings?), yes.

    There were still thousands of people flying yesterday on other airlines, many on cheaper tickets (easyjet from LGW etc) who probably felt a mix of relief and vindication for not choosing BA.

    Crisis management should include for the worst case scenario, and the potential for it to occur (risk assessment) and then mitigated against. Yesterday was an epic fail. It is only fortunate they got the systems back up for today.

  • Aliks says:

    28 May28 May 09:47

    I think you hit the nail on the head with the Crisis Management Plan.

    Back in the 90s when I was doing business with BA IT, they would tell me that all the disaster recovery funding went to engineering. BA were proud that they could keep running through fog, breakdown of mechanical parts etc. They had fallback plans for all everything they could reasonably expect.

    Alas IT is at the back of the queue for management attention, and proper Crisis Management, and reasonably foreseeable events are not covered.

    • Jon says:

      29 May29 May 03:24

      Not long ago I was astonished that Malaysia Airlines, who are the process of switching to a new IT system, rolled out a website update that resulted in online booking becoming unavailable to anyone using a Safari-based browser (so iPad, iPhone etc). For about three weeks… I hate to think what that may have cost in lost bookings. They’ve since fixed that, although the new site only offers online booking and check-in to Safari users, no other content or functionality. The new back-end goes live on June 10th apparently – could be ‘interesting’. That a major airline could roll out a key business system without (I can only assume) properly testing it, and then for weeks fail to either fix it or roll it back, astonished me. Then BA’s meltdown happened… What is it with airlines and IT?! I know these are big, complex operations, and some IT failures are forgivable, but on the face of it, these appear both to be basic errors. Will be very interesting to see what comes out of BA’s post-mortem (if it’s ever made public, of course).

  • Michael says:

    28 May28 May 10:05

    Derek – I hate the throw the you weren’t there at you. Never mind communicating to staff. A brand new terminal with a tanoy system that was only used to broadcast the odd apology and security message at an inaudible level. It’s never the individual customer facing staff of course

  • 1nfrequent says:

    30 May30 May 12:40

    “To say there was no Crisis Management Plan, I feel is extremely unfair. How would your company cope if they had the same set of circumstances?”

    My company (which is by no means perfect) runs a crisis management exercise every year so it can test and improve its Business Continuity Plan and the exercise always includes an element where there’s an IT failure. As such, while you can’t be prepared for every eventuality, the senior management team are familiar enough with the BCP to be able to immediately implement it and start working their way through the problem rather than undergo BA’s bunny in the headlights approach.

    A big part of that BCP strategy, BTW, is to have a comms strategy in place. Everyone gets that a company won’t be able to give chapter and verse, but it’s straight forward enough to be able to say that there is a problem, there are numbers/social media accounts you can contact to try and rebook etc and then information updates on line and in real time as and when new points come in. It’s really not rocket science and given BA has been through IT issues before, the response should have been a hell of a lot slicker than it was.

    I really feel for BA’s front line staff – they were utterly shafted by an incompetent, cowardly senior management team.

    1F

• Steve says:

  28 May28 May 08:40

  Had a return points booking made using with Avios and companion voucher. When found out flights were cancelled yesterday booked another airline last minute.

  I want to use my BA booking for the return leg, but seeing as not flown the outbound with them will this be an issue?

  Had no joy trying to call them.

  • John says:

    28 May28 May 10:11

    It will be an issue but call them on Monday when things have calmed down

    • Julian says:

      28 May28 May 11:05

      You honestly think things will have calmed down on Monday?!! I would imagine their call centres will be in meltdown for several weeks after this incident. But it could all be avoided if they provided a way for customers to rebook their flight online in these circumstances.

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