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

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• Patrick says:

  28 May28 May 08:47

  Just wonder how much this will cost BA in compensation claims…. Maybe more cuts will be needed to pay for it?

  • TripRep says:

    28 May28 May 08:55

    If they are on the hook for EU261/2004, it would be millions. If everyone claimed maybe upto £100 Million GBP. ???

    • Sam Redfern says:

      28 May28 May 09:00

      300 cancelled flights yesterday in total. Average it to 200 pax per flight (yes some are more and some are less) and take the middling €400 mid haul compensation level.. racks up to just short of £21m in just EU261 claims. Let alone accommodation, rebooking, sustenance and clothing for the lost bags.

      • TripRep says:

        28 May28 May 09:28

        And how many mote flights delayed over this period that will also be liable for EU261/2004.?

      • Lewis says:

        28 May28 May 09:44

        Also to add to that all the empty flights they sent out last night to get pax for the return flights this morning.

    • Mark says:

      28 May28 May 09:19

      I bet the £100 million, or any other possible loss, wasnt included in the cost benefit analysis for outsourcing. How many companies have outsourced and regretted it? eg Sainsburys with their IT fifteen years ago left the same people doing the same roles but working for the outsourcer, but where they used to be paid £50,000, they were now costing Sainsburys £500,000.

      Many customer service roles now outsourced to places like India are coming back now the wages there have been catching up with those here, with 10-15% wage inflation for over ten years.

      The outsourcers staff have allegiance to the outsource firm, not to the company who has outsourced. Thats the problem.

  • CV3V says:

    28 May28 May 09:20

    There is also Monday’s hit on the IAG share price to take into account, the loss of bookings on Saturday with the website being down most of the day, and the loss of confidence and people booking with other less risky airlines. I think Mr Cruz won’t be getting his bonus again.

    Years ago before the BA strikes started i almost booked a flight to Oz with BA as it was the cheapest option, after a friend (BA crew member!) advised me not to do it the BA crew were likely to go on strike and i paid more to fly with Emirates. BA went on strike as predicted, and i flew with Emirates and got Silver status which then kept me flying with them in preference to BA.

    • Lady London says:

      28 May28 May 14:39

      Cruz would be easy to sacrifice officially on the basis of this. Even though the roots of this are probably in outsourcing errors sanctioned by his predecessor.

      Why any business would outsource their key systems….#Really?

      The current business mania for outsourcing even core systems and ops has got to stop.
      This time it’s gone too far and British Airways will have lost its customers’ respect.

• Sam Redfern says:

  28 May28 May 08:58

  Due to fly out to Bahrain yesterday on BA. All know what happened.
  The BA staff I interacted with in Galleries First were all professional and under immense strain considering all of their normal resultion channels were cut off. The larger issues were with HAL and Border Control and the inflexibility of their processes to deal with situations like this.

  TA managed to get me a seat on QR in the evening. 13 hours in total at LHR, silver lining… the MH F lounge is rather nice, certainly gives GF a run for its money.

  Now in Bahrain and hoping to get my luggage soon, as I need to fly on to Chicago on Tuesday…

  • JP says:

    28 May28 May 11:06

    are we allowed to ask…..your trip, work or pleasure?

• Iain Chalmers says:

  28 May28 May 08:58

  We were in Houston due on the BA196 out at 8:25pm. We had a call saying we’d been moved to 194 departing slightly late at 5:30. Perfect service from our perspective but appreciate the F seats and GCH bumped us up the list I’m sure.

• Ben says:

  28 May28 May 09:04

  Fairly lucky I suppose. Flew BA cityflyer BHX-IBZ last night, flight delayed 2h45 so didn’t make it here until 5am but at least we made it. Pleased to get my free g+t on cityflyer at least!

• Henry Young says:

  28 May28 May 09:04

  It beats me why anyone flies BA. I have avoided them like the plague for 20 years. The perpetual way between staff and management has distracted both sides from actually delivering good service and running an effective airline. There are alternatives for practically every route, and I have always taken alternatives what ever the price. Even when cheaper, this and the many prior events demonstrate the false economy. BA would be best off simply giving up and ceding its slots to firms who can actually operate airlines.

  • Julian says:

    28 May28 May 11:13

    Are you honestly saying that you would prefer to travel on Easyjet or Ryanair in preference to BA??!!!

    • CV3V says:

      28 May28 May 12:52

      Short haul domestic, or europe, my preference is for Easyjet or Ryanair. No question about it, and thats with oneworld status. Flights are much cheaper, options such as speedy boarding work well (and far better than BA priority boarding) and i avoid the delays of using Heathrow.

      • Ro says:

        28 May28 May 14:01

        Couldn’t agree more. Absolute no benefit to flying BA for short haul except for a couple status credits, which is completely offset by the increased cost.

        • Genghis says:

          29 May29 May 07:12

          +1 I prefer Easyjet around Europe for work and pleasure. And LGW is much quicker for me to get to

• David says:

  28 May28 May 09:14

  Mixed experience for me.

  I was supposed to fly on the 07:55 from JFK to LHR yesterday, and would’ve then flown Ryanair STN to TXL early this morning. The delays meant I would’ve missed the flight out of STN had I taken any of the evening flights from JFK, which all fly overnight.

  I must applaud the BA counter staff at JFK – especially the manager who came in on his day off – for taking a very human approach to my particular challenge and rebooking me onto a flight with another One World carrier direct to TXL. Although technically my BA contract was only about travel from JFK to LHR (and that was exactly the ‘computer says no’ response I got from the call centre) the staff on the ground saw the bigger picture. Under the circumstances this was absolutely the right customer service oriented solution. Although I’m now exhausted from having been awake since 4:30am Saturday, I’m where I should be at a similar time to when I expected, and have avoided a massive faff to change the second flight and then attempt to claim it back and/or seek compensation.

  When I left the counters at JFK the manager was busy arranging for any passenger wanting to fly back to LON yesterday evening to board one of the two American Airlines flights due out. Great work from him, which has probably avoided a torrent of angry complaints and retained some goodwill.

  On the downside, I also suffered from a lack of information and communication at the beginning of the day, which was not just a bit rubbish but also quite unsettling. I agree BA need better contingencies and back ups.

  Also, when incidents like this happen protocols agreed in advance should simply be activated so it isn’t pot luck who you speak to at a call centre or whether you get a kind-hearted member of ground staff that dictates how customers are treated. I was lucky this time, but others less so, and I don’t feel all that confident I would be again(!)

• Cgray says:

  28 May28 May 09:25

  Drove 2 and a half hours to Gatwick south yesterday for the 2.45pm to Ibiza. On arrival in departures the queue was strangely out onto the travelator. Luckily priority line for ba a lot shorter. No one said anything around this time at midday that system meltdown had happened. Waited nearly an hour to get to front of priority line then had 2 labels stuck on each case saying fallback.. asked check in guy and he said system down they were working on it..

  Went thru premium line all quiet, did some shopping, only when I got to the ba lounge did it become clear something other than bank holiday spring to mind. The lounge was busy and people started saying no flights were going out. Then we saw the ba site saying all flights cancelled til 6 and so did the tv.. but no staff in the lounge would confirm..

  It would have been good if the tannoy system in the lounge was louder, this then would have meant we all could hear what was being said. Instead of that lots of people kept checking what was happening. We got told if you leave the lounge you can’t come back in. Three flights did go off we think after that each flight had to go to gate 14 to then go back thru border control, collect bags and leave. I had to wait til nearly 6 to be called to go to the gate. As I drove to the airport and could not find any other decent flights I did not drink and then I drove home. No Ibiza for me, luckily the lounge was calm and fully stocked with food and drink. The situation was a nightmare, could have been better or worse. Now to get some money back! Took me 2 hours to get home again. Definitely had better days.

  • JP says:

    28 May28 May 11:15

    Travelling alone…to Ibiza?

    I’d have needed (and definitely consumed) a drink…or ten!

    • Cgray says:

      28 May28 May 19:21

      Haha.. my friends travelled out on ryanair the day before!

• Exasperated! says:

  28 May28 May 09:32

  Friends flying to the States today… in First. Just arrived at Heathrow about 2 hours before their departure and told that they are not allowed into the airport…!

  Obviously no communication from BA, no advice online to not come to airport until 1.5 hours before departure, nothing on app, and no reply to Gold line after 45 mins this morning when we tried to check flight status….

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