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

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• Rupert says:

  28 May28 May 10:20

  Didn’t apreciate it at the time but I was clearly very lucky on Saturday. Flew into LGW from JFK at 1000 with 1100 connection to AMS. Whilst about to board the captain came out and addressed tbe crowd, appologising that BA’s global IT was down and they didn’t have the legal paperwork to continue, so were looking for workarounds. “Make yourselves comfortable and get a cup of tea as we may be here for some time”.

  At 1240, 2 mins after an update of “no news, next update in 20 mins” boarding was called. Then more wait as all loading calcs were done with pencil and slide rule, and finally take-off at around 1300.

  Don’t know if it was related, but on Monday 22nd I’d found the BA app and online record of these flights inoperable, yet my other booked flights in June fully accessible. That continued throughout the week, and even the BA staff on the phone couldn’t help or check me in. At JFK checkin was without problem.

  Suspect from the little tidbits floating around that the IT problem was systematic, progressive and several days in the making…

  Iirc, SAS became famous amongst buisness recovery folk in the early 2000s for triplicating its entire datacentre operation with many miles between each, so that if a plane was to crash into one at least one of the others could pick up the demand in a matter of seconds. What we don’t know yet is if this BA problem was one where redundancy could have helped. There are IT situations where no ammount of backup would have been able to relieve the situation any faster. Suggest we let some facts emerge before castigating BA’s IT policy.

• Voda_boy says:

  28 May28 May 10:38

  BA Gold helpline, 60 minute wait at 10:30am BST (call answered 11:30am) for flight rebooking.

• BA2 says:

  28 May28 May 10:41

  Not in any way trying to condone yesterday, which was handled terribly, but just to correct a few misconceptions/ideas in the comments thread, hopefully helpfully…

  – Staff don’t “lie” to customers. They give out the best info they have at the time, which is not always correct. BA’s handling of internal comms yesterday was shocking, but please don’t take be mean about frontline staff as it’s not their fault they can’t help you more
  – there is no central oneworld reservations system, so another airline can’t accept you unless BA hands you over. If BA can’t get into their own reservations lists they can’t see who was supposed to be on a flight (emails don’t work as you could have changed bookings in the meantime! And for security you wouldn’t want just to let anyone on…)
  – if you rebook on another carrier you’ll only get a refund for your original flight, not the new one. EU261 does not cover self-booked alternative flights. There is a small exception in BA policy for domestic customers who catch a train in major disruption, as this is a fixed max cost (off-peak ticket) and not variable like flights, but otherwise this is an insurance claim. Anyone who chooses not to travel will get a full refund on their original booking and without question
  – customers who need a protected sector if they skipped one can get this by calling in. If you’re not travelling for a few days best to leave it until the lines are less busy
  – the process of ‘arriving’ passengers stuck in the airport is determined solely by UKBF, not BA. Imagine the daily mail headlines if suddenly every tom, dick and harry were let in with no checks!
  – BA Holidays has significantly more flexibility in handling disruption than BA flight only, this is partly thanks to package holiday regulations. BAH customers affected yesterday will be entitled to rebook their entire holiday at another date if they so choose. Moral = book a package wherever you can
  – to the guy who suggested using MAN-LHR cancelled crew to op his delayed CityFlyer flight, please think about it… CityFlyer is a separate subsidiary and own/manage their own crew. Mainline crew are not trained on Embraers (most have never even seen one!) so are not legally allowed to operate them. I’m sure you wouldn’t want an unsafe operation now, would you?
  – automated EU261 won’t work as most customers don’t book direct with BA and therefore BA doesn’t necessarily hold contact details/credit card numbers for them. Don’t forget that as clued-up leisure customers you are not representative of BA’s overall customer base

  And for the ‘other’ story…
  – most customers do book indirect (even leisure ones); in some downroute markets it’s nearly all of them. This will be big
  – agents who agree to be funnelled through NDC won’t be hit in the same way

  • Adam says:

    28 May28 May 10:51

    On your point about not being covered for the cost of a self booked alternative flight, this was the very clear instruction that BA staff were handing out at Gatwick South yesterday afternoon, as they handed over the Duty of Care leaflet. She gladly gave her name, such was her confidence in giving this advice……for me a rebate of a flight I booked over 9 months ago against the price of scare commodity flight needed in the next 24 hours, does not seem very fair given the obvious price differential. What would my insurance company wish to fund the cost of misinformation by a third party?

    • Mike says:

      28 May28 May 12:23

      Adam; you make an excellent point re the price differential. Doesn’t seem fair to be financially punished under these circumstances. BA going to be hit hard over this in respect of EU claims, expenses hotels etc

  • TripRep says:

    28 May28 May 12:08

    Automated compensation not possible for those pax that book via 3rd party.

    So another advantage to book BA directly?

    ie Proactive automatic EU261 compensation is perfectly possible for pax that book direct.

    Compared to battling 3 months with CEDR that’d be a real “enhancement” 😀

  • Paul Hampton says:

    28 May28 May 12:16

    My suggestion was to replace a flight attendant, not a pilot on the Embraer. The captain agreed with me that it would be a perfectly logical thing to do, but central ops wouldn’t allow it. So 94 passengers who could have otherwise departed, albeit very late, had their plans ruined because a single flight attendant felt poorly. Not a very robust arrangement under any circumstances, let alone an IT meltdown.

    • Sam says:

      29 May29 May 07:58

      Cabin crew need to have trained ratings on particular aircraft, just like flight crew. Each crew member can hold a rating on three aircraft (or aircraft families).
      No LHR/LGW based crew would have a rating on an Embraer, as this aircraft type doesn’t operate from either of these crew bases.
      The captain gave you a false understanding of what would be possible. It would not have been the fault of Ops team in preventing this from happening. It is more of legal thing that affects all airlines in the U.K. (and further afield).

      For a crew member going sick, that would indicate that BA Cityflyer, does not have a robust enough standby cabin crew structure. Rather than not being able to move crew about to operate flight illegally to the whims of 96 pax and a captain giving false understanding.

  • CV3V says:

    28 May28 May 13:14

    Thanks for the detail, it summarises where BA are at now, but (in my humble opinion) not where they should be. They should have well rehearsed procedures and plans for both staff and pax, and they should have a system to get people onto other flights. On a normal day, if i were travelling on a staff standby ticket i could use it amongst a big list of airlines who will accept the voucher. (unless the concessions system has changed, its been a few years). If i was travelling on a train which had issues then there are procedures to get me onto a train with another company (or bus). The Amadeus booking system was still working, i could still go to MMB on Finnair and type in a booking reference to show the details.

    Saturday was an epic fail. It showed short sightedness, hoping that the worst case scenario won’t happen and a lack of forward planning.

    Regarding the switching of cabin crew, thats a good point regarding different aircraft types, a reminder that crew are there for health and safety. But then again, CityFlyer crew also won’t have been trained on selling MnS sandwiches. No offence to the crew, but shows what a joke BA Mainline management have become.

    This from a company whose headline for their AGM was ‘show me the f@cking money’.

    • BA2 says:

      28 May28 May 13:22

      Most staff tickets nowadays are closed to one airline, but in principle I take your point. This only works when you know your ticket number rather than PNR (how many passengers do?), and there’s still no guarantee in Amadeus that the coupon hasn’t been flown so this is risky for accounting purposes. However, I personally think there should be efforts at oneworld level to streamline this – SkyTeam does something along those lines and it would make sense to follow. But we all know alliances are for airlines’ benefit rather than customers’……

      • CV3V says:

        28 May28 May 14:16

        Thanks BA2, good to know the facts. Its BA (Mainline) management who will correctly be carrying the can for Saturday, a shame thats its the frontline staff who get the abuse off the frustrated passengers.

        Makes you wonder if the Ryanair / Easyjet approach to substantial problems is better i.e. go home all flights are cancelled and we can’t do anything for you! At least you know where you stand as opposed to spending hours in queues to be told the same thing.

• Gavin Tugby says:

  28 May28 May 10:59

  I arrived at T5 yesterday for a flight to Madrid. 9:30 and there was a massive queue for First wing, we sailed thru this as we were hand baggage travellers…and then it went downhill from there. About 5 flights were announced in the two hours between our arrival in the lounge and our departure time of 11:35. As we were on the Iberia flight we thought there may be a change we would still go…sadly this was not the case. I was INCREDIBLY hungover and the Flounge was really hot so not a pleasant experience…anyway the lounge got fuller and fuller as time went on. BBC news reported all flights cancelled til 6pm – a BA tannoy announcement called ‘fake news’ on that – but 20mins later announced the very same. Meanwhile the queue to exist the airport was 4 hours estimate – well done border control for NOT really reacting to the issue (i’ll come on this point in a bit).
  Anyway – we knew this was going to carry on past 6pm as soon as it was announced. at about 5pm our Iberia flight trundled away from the remote stand and flew off empty.
  BA lounge staff tried their best but really their repsonse was poor. No information, no systems. Some silly b*tch who was drunk has a complete meltdown in the lounge shouting and screaming at the staff – so they decided to remove all alcohol – No exactly fair on the 99% of passenger who were well behaved and taking it in their stride…there were also reports from catering they were going to remove all food at 7pm and kick us out (at least 3 people told me this) but they then decided to keep the lounge open. At one point (probably 6pm ish) there was a massive queue to get into the flounge but there was no space, another flare point which the ‘dragons’ managed pretty well.
  Anyway – long story short – i arrived at 9:30am and left at 9pm having being fed and watered pretty well (arriving with hangover was a big mistake!) I feel truly sorry for the passenger stuck on aircraft on the taxiways – there was a tokyo 787 which sat on the runway for 8 hours….wow!

• Ian says:

  28 May28 May 11:18

  This is not new. This April the BA site was down for a whole day. since then you can’t use a map to search for avios availability. You can do it on the app for a similar effect, but on the desktop it seems to be gone. This hasn’t been a very good year for ba hasn’t? For comparison sake. I’ve travelled with ryanair yesterday. Yes with ryanair. It’s been while since I’ve travelled with them and I was impressed. The flight left before the scheduled time and arrived ahead of time and luggage delivery was prompt. With two bags allowance and seat allocation I was very happy. So, for short haul BA won’t have my business for a very long time.

• chris says:

  28 May28 May 11:20

  Flew LHR-JER friday, bag didn’t make it, got an email from them saying the bag would reach saturday, it didn’t, i’m flying out today and p****ed as hell with the suckers. unable to get to them via phone.

  • @mkcol says:

    28 May28 May 12:51

    Didn’t know BA flew Heathrow to Jersey.

    • chris says:

      28 May28 May 16:09

      sorry, meant LGW-JER

• Alex W says:

  28 May28 May 11:36

  I stayed at the Renaissance at Heathrow last night (on the way back from Arsenal’s spectacular FA Cup triumph 🙂 ).

  The check-in queue was immense. I felt very smug bowling straight up to the elite counter in my tatty football garb. Checked in within 30 seconds and given lounge access. Great end to a great day!

  • Paul Hampton says:

    28 May28 May 12:18

    And this contributes to the discussion how?

    • Alex W says:

      28 May28 May 12:38

      That having elite Marriott status thanks to Amex Platinum helped me to skip a huge queue caused by the BA disruption.

      • Paul Hampton says:

        28 May28 May 12:57

        So other than a very tenuous link to being at a hotel near LHR, pretty irrelevant then. Not entirely unlike Arsenal for the foreseeable future

        • Alex W says:

          28 May28 May 13:44

          Haha we’ll see.

          I thought using hotel status to avoid the disruption was quite relevant to the article.

        • JP says:

          28 May28 May 13:45

          …says the Chelsea/Spurs/ManU* supporter

          * delete as appropriate

• TripRep says:

  28 May28 May 11:37

  Nice to see BA & BA2 on here, hope you hang around long term. I value your contribution and challenges to our “clued up” opinions.

  I have great respect for majority of front line BA staff working under huge pressure, I would suggest many are carrying out policies they are not comfortable with themselves.

  Regarding lying, whilst I appreciate someone from BA keen to cooperate on HFP would not deliberately lie….

  But sadly I do believe many pax are often misinformed and misled, so it’s either unlucky, calculated or incompetent. I have also witnessed BA’s attempts to obfuscate passenger rights under EU261 and it’s never a good experience.

  End result feels the same, you feel like you’ve​been played.

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