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• Simon says:

  17 Apr17 April 09:02

  Delta ground agents have a countdown clock prominent on their tablet/devices that they carry round during dispatch. Simple thing but no doubt focuses the mind. 3 of my last 4 flights with them have pushed back early.

• Alex G says:

  17 Apr17 April 09:17

  I’m surprised BA see punctuality as a priority. There is so much slack built into the timetables that it is common to leave 45 minutes late but arrive on time.

  Personally, I would prefer them to concentrate on improving on board service and loading enough food for everyone.

  • Richie says:

    17 Apr17 April 09:49

    Food costs money, apologising for not loading food doesn’t.

    • Tiger of ham says:

      17 Apr17 April 21:21

      This made me LOL. My fav is when I fly CE and they only load 7 trays and they have 12 rows.

      • Mr. AC says:

        19 Apr19 April 07:42

        That’s really interesting. I fly CE a lot, and often I’m somewhere close to the last row (booking close to the dates of the flight), yet they’ve never ran out of food by the time they get to me. Not only that, 2 days ago on a return flight from CPH I was in 8F – last row, last seat – and they had all 3 food options remaining!

  • jjoohhnn says:

    17 Apr17 April 09:55

    Improve punctuality, reduce slack, increase aircraft utilisation, increase profits.

    AA/DL/UA have other advantages at Heathrow – they fly lots of routes to/from Heathrow, not just back to their one hub airport, so they have more options if a plane goes tech – they could switch in an aircraft that was due to go somewhere else later whilst the original one is being repaired.

    BA have less options at their long haul outstations really as they only fly back to LHR. You can see this evidence so much so that United are opening a maintenance hangar at Heathrow. They have 23 daily flights from LHR!

    • Londonsteve says:

      17 Apr17 April 13:01

      Why couldn’t BA accomplish the same thing at JFK considering the sheer volume of daily flights?

    • newbie says:

      17 Apr17 April 15:15

      Not sure about that, if AA/DL/UA plane goes tech at Heathrow, they usually bring a spare frame from the US which means a multi-hour delay.

• David S says:

  17 Apr17 April 10:11

  I touched down at 12:10 (30mins late) last Friday on a flight from Barcelona having had my flight from the day before cancelled. We then sat on the taxiway for 30 mins as no gates available. Disembarked at 12:40. Sped through immigration but had to wait 50 minutes for the bags which didn’t appear until 13:40. £16 extra parking fees plus £15 waiting fee as taxi was outside based on forecast arrival time. BA is a shambles. There is nothing good about it any longer and if they manage to achieve 90% punctuality on the JFK route it will simply be at the expense of everyone else who’ll be deprioritised.

  • Rob says:

    17 Apr17 April 10:27

    I did think that!

• Andrew. says:

  17 Apr17 April 10:41

  This probably won’t go down well on here, but if BA really want to improve their performance, they need to rethink the size of cabin bags permitted.

  56 x 45 x 25cm was fine when they were running twin aisle 767-300s on domestics with their generously sized bins, but it’s all single aisles inadequate bins and boarding/disembarking nightmare now.

  • Richie says:

    17 Apr17 April 10:48

    Haven’t you seen the new bins on short haul planes?

    • sigma421 says:

      17 Apr17 April 11:13

      If they spent the money to retrofit the 320 fleet with these 90% of the problems would disappear overnight. Only a few of the most recent 320neos have them.

      • Richie says:

        17 Apr17 April 11:19

        Some of IB’s A320s have them as well.

    • Andrew. says:

      17 Apr17 April 11:43

      Possibly…

      There still seems to be problems with accommodating the hand luggage on domestics though – and plenty of tantrums from people who think that overhead bins are for fragile items or object to people dropping a bag onto coats and jackets.

  • sigma421 says:

    17 Apr17 April 11:15

    If they could make Heathrow baggage handling more reliable, I’d gladly check a bag. The prospect of a 90 minute wait at domestic reclaim is the main thing that puts me off.

  • Richie says:

    17 Apr17 April 11:28

    I’d rather be on an A220 with fewer passengers per length of fuselage, IAG need to look closer at them, perhaps even A225.

  • Londonsteve says:

    17 Apr17 April 13:04

    But it’s just about their only advantage these days versus the low-cost competition. Allowing a trolley bag in addition to a smaller item to be placed under the seat costs them nothing but can make higher BA fares price competitive with low-cost carriers that charge peanuts for the fare and a King’s ransom for being allowed to take a trolley bag.

  • Jack says:

    17 Apr17 April 13:27

    No they don’t the size they allow is fine it’s the main advantage over LCCs on shorthaul and it will not fix the vast majority of issues which is people not listening and put small bags into the lockers . Heathrow is too unreliable to rely on checking bags

• Also says:

  17 Apr17 April 11:55

  IHG card is dead?

  • Phil says:

    17 Apr17 April 12:05

    Likewise, just had email

  • Matt says:

    17 Apr17 April 12:18

    I’ve just got the email. Closing on 27/06/23. We’ll get the free night voucher. That’s a shame.

• Jack says:

  17 Apr17 April 13:29

  I think many of the issues that BA have with punctuality are outside of their control at Heathrow and I’ve seen flights leave late but arrive on time or early and had it happen myself hence why time is built into the timetable. New York is their premium route so it makes sense to focus on this as a priority but hopefully it doesn’t affect other flights too much in the process as I say most of the time any small delays they catch up on route

  • dougzz99 says:

    17 Apr17 April 14:11

    What at Heathrow is outside their control, and contributes to delays?

    • Rhys says:

      17 Apr17 April 14:15

      Striking security staff, for one…!

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      17 Apr17 April 15:41

      weather and ATC for starters.

    • Jack says:

      17 Apr17 April 21:48

      security strikes, ATC and strikes by ATC staff abroad ie france as of late which has caused slot delays as well as weather for a start

• Dubious says:

  17 Apr17 April 16:42

  Bmi used to trade on their punctuality. They were good to achieving it whilst BA could not. Both were based at LHR.

• Bernard says:

  18 Apr18 April 07:42

  There is so many issues within BA this won’t work.
  They try and blame Heathrow and that they have a ‘bigger operation’. It’s just excuses for failure to invest in the right technology, failure to rethink process, and failure to retain and invest in experienced people. Heathrow ground handling is a mess, boarding always starts very late (contrast to AA or Delta where it starts early and avoids the boarding scrum then last minute panic with no shows at BA).
  Everything about BA has been cut to the bone and it shows. The failure to invest, failure to lead (where is BA’s invisible CEO?), and the compounded mistakes and poor judgement of terrible previous CEO Cruz are all coming to fruition.

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