STRIKE TO GO AHEAD: British Airways issues strike guidance for Heathrow Terminal 5

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• SammyJ says:

  30 Mar30 March 08:38

  I guess the lounges will be quiet for once, if we’re not getting in until 3hrs before and then spending most of that time in security queues.

  My concern is what happens when the queue is longer than the maximum time they’re allowing for me to check in. Surely everybody will be in the same boat – will they delay the flights, which will cause even more chaos as there are never enough free stands at T5 anyway for inbounds?

  • Rob says:

    30 Mar30 March 09:01

    Flights have to go due to slot and gate controls plus crew hour restrictions. Whether passengers are on them or not isn’t really relevant.

    • Paul says:

      30 Mar30 March 20:54

      It is relevant if they checked in bags!
      I would imagine that conformance will need to be ditched or there really will be carnage with passengers checked in unable to board and then having to get bags back from a secure area. This is seriously challenging even when fully manned.
      Personally I can see a large tranche of cancellations now by BA for this weekend. its going to be ugly

• SammyJ says:

  30 Mar30 March 08:43

  I also don’t really see the difference between long and short haul for check-in opening… the same security line isn’t going to be any quicker for a SH flight than a LH one, and the gate doesn’t close an hour later on SH 🤷‍♀️ What am I missing?!

  • Nancy says:

    30 Mar30 March 08:49

    I guess long haul flights start boarding earlier and have more people to check in (larger planes), have more bags (generally not short trips with hand baggage only) and might require more checks (e.g. visas etc).

    • SammyJ says:

      30 Mar30 March 09:13

      They all check in at the same desks though, so the amount of luggage they’re checking in and their destination is irrelevant – they’ll all be in the same queues, the only difference is the boarding procedure and timescale, and they don’t start boarding LH 90 mins early compared to 30 for SH. And they’re specifically telling everyone to check their hand luggage in if they can.

      Can’t help feeling that we might see the max 2/3 hours changed to a min of 4 hours if this becomes an issue.

      • Lady London says:

        30 Mar30 March 12:47

        Yes they should triage the queues and put more resources onto longhaul at a minimum

  • Rhys says:

    30 Mar30 March 08:53

    Most short haul destinations have multiple flights a day, so it’s easier to bump someone up. With long haul, if you don’t make the flight you might have to wait 24 hours.

    • SammyJ says:

      30 Mar30 March 09:15

      How does that help the airline or the passenger though? Everyone is in the same boat, so if a full plane load all miss their flight, that’s a full plane load trying to get in the next one, hanging around all day, and vying for customer service.
      And not all SH have multiples, similarly not all LH are single rotations. NYC for example.

      • Rhys says:

        30 Mar30 March 09:32

        Many more SH destinations have multiples.

        Do I really need to elaborate how waiting 3 hours for the next flight versus 24 hours is better?!

        • SammyJ says:

          30 Mar30 March 09:44

          No, because I’m not entirely stupid. Do I really need to elaborate on the point I just made? Yes, there are many SH destinations with multiple rotations, but there are also many without, and both SH and LH that don’t even fly daily. And as the day progresses there will obviously be fewer later flights.

          The 2/3hr distinction doesn’t discriminate based on how many rotations a day a destination has. There is no way that ‘3hrs being better than 24hrs’ is a primary reason for BA/LHR to specify 2 v 3 hours. I’m just interested to know what the logic behind it actually is, and I’m pretty sure that it isn’t because they don’t care if you miss your SH flight for that reason!

        • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

          30 Mar30 March 10:22

          And the fligths BA tends to cancel are those with multiple rotations.

          If there are half a dozen flights to AMS or Belin and only one to KEF it’s one of the AMS/BERs that gets canned.

          BA will easily cancel a JFK in favour of another long haul destination especially as they can also shift some pax to AA.

          Despite what some people think BA isn’t tottally stupid and has done this before

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    30 Mar30 March 10:22

    Volume of pax I think – way too many SH flights to have them arriving earlier and getting in front of late arriving pax for earlier flights

    • SammyJ says:

      30 Mar30 March 10:46

      I’m sure there is logic to it somewhere with volume as you say, just seems an odd distinction to make given the circumstances. If people arrive at the requested time, check in bags as requested, and then find that security lines are 1h+ (not unrealistic by any means), LH folks who still have 90mins until departure will be neck and neck with SH on 30mins to go.

• Tracey says:

  30 Mar30 March 09:23

  As a data point, last weekend my son had a flight cancelled after he had checked in luggage and gone through security. He managed to get re-ticketed airside, so there is some ticketing available for these sort of situations.

• babyg says:

  30 Mar30 March 09:24

  “we would like you to check your hand luggage in.. but we wont open check in earlier than 2 hours before your flight”.. this will hardly encourage anybody to take this generous offer up… no way i would stand in the queue to give them my hand luggage which would likely get lost, and only delay me more (at both ends) for almost zero benefit.

  • JDB says:

    30 Mar30 March 10:50

    @babyg well, if everyone takes your view rather than acting for the greater good, then they will have contributed to longer queues; well done.

    Check in and baggage handling are not an issue for this strike so “likely to get lost” makes no sense, but people unnecessarily taking too much hand luggage is bound to exacerbate any problems.

    • babyg says:

      30 Mar30 March 12:58

      Checking bags isnt going to help. Lets be honest, besides I’ve (well the airlines have) lost my baggage on no less than 3 occasions in the last six months, so i speak from experience. Also frequent travellers with HBO are not the problem here, and BA offering people to line up in yet another queue wont really help and will likely make the issue worse. EG i could go directly to the lounge… or i could slow down people checking in….

      • JDB says:

        30 Mar30 March 13:23

        You must be very unlucky! We haven’t had a missing bag in the last ten years of travelling maybe twenty times a year. Your comment re the ‘frequent traveller’ is unfortunately wrong – they always seem to be the ones who think they are so experienced/important they are above the rules and can get away with things, so don’t bother to take out the iPad, take off belt, flash watch or whatever so they get re-screened. Seen it so many times.

        • babyg says:

          30 Mar30 March 16:26

          I would guess they are not really Frequent Flyers then, as most of us Frequent Flyers do all we can for a frictionless experience (hence we travel HBO and don’t check in any luggage). Our primary goal is to limit the amount of time spent getting from Taxi to Lounge to Gate.. anything that slows that down (going to check-in, getting re screened because ipad/belts/watches) simply doesn’t happen for true Frequent Flyers IMHO.

        • bafan says:

          30 Mar30 March 16:27

          LHR lost my bag 3 times in 2 months last December. You sound inexperienced…no shade.

        • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

          30 Mar30 March 17:29

          LHR lost nothing. The airline you flew with did.

      • sayling says:

        30 Mar30 March 19:12

        The fewer cabin bags are carried through security, the fewer items require screening/scanning – ipso facto, security queues would be shorter.
        I haven’t (yet) used bag drop off, but if you check in online 24 hours before your flight, you can go to the (presumably straight forward) Bag Drop Off area and – hey presto – nothing needs scanning at security and everyone gets through security a LOT quicker

• Bunter says:

  30 Mar30 March 10:06

  Out of interest, who screens the hold luggage, HAL or G4S?

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    30 Mar30 March 19:50

    Additional question who does the SSSS screening?

• G says:

  30 Mar30 March 10:07

  Thoughts to all those disrupted but reading this article made me astonished to learn there is no dedicated ticketing team at Heathrow.

  Madness.

  • sigma421 says:

    30 Mar30 March 10:14

    There was but BA decided it was a luxury it could no longer afford. All ticketing is done by a back office team at one of BA’s contact centers. You may get lucky and stumble across someone who is ticking trained by dint of having been around before BA axed the function but it’s luck of the draw.

    Simple stuff like rebooking from one cancelled BA flight to another can be dealt with by non-ticketing trained staff via the system (when it’s working…) but anything more complex needs a phone call.

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      30 Mar30 March 10:55

      Reticketting is not the same as rebooking.

      A simple rebook from the 10am flight to the 3pm does not require trained reticketting agents

      Reticketing is needed where there has been a change in date or involves multiple carriers.

      The vast majority of issues don’t require reticketting at all.

  • Numpty says:

    30 Mar30 March 10:47

    I experienced this lack of ticketing capability at EDI and actually thought if i had been in LHR it would have been simple to sort. So at EDI i just got told to call up BA to get it fixed, that’s fine when you can get through quickly. On first attempt at calling, after a 30 min wait and getting through the guy at the other end kept saying he couldnt hear me (I was in an airport, outside was just as noisy as inside) and he hung up!

    • John says:

      30 Mar30 March 13:55

      Well if he really couldn’t hear you then what else was he supposed to do

      • babyg says:

        30 Mar30 March 18:16

        you’re missing the point john…… there should be people at the airport to help with this…

• can says:

  30 Mar30 March 10:27

  Any idea how it’d impact other terminals in LHR?

• JDB says:

  30 Mar30 March 11:30

  @Colin MacKinnon – thank you, that’s an interesting decision. The passenger put up a fantastic fight and was seemingly given quite a lot of flexibility to amend his case as events unfolded. I note that ultimately the passengers didn’t win their case for breach of contract so weren’t awarded the cost of the £869 replacement tickets but they did get €800 compensation between them as well as a refund for the unused tickets.

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