BritishAir: Rot in hell.

[Voyager]

My daughter is on her way home from Germany, and is now stuck in Heathrow due to the snow. Unluckily for her, she if lying on BritishAir.

They are not responsible for the weather, but they are responsible for not giving a crap.

She has been on line for hours, of course. She is 20 from the front as it turned midnight in London - and the desk closed because it is midnight and time to go home.
She does not have her bag either. And again, at midnight they stopped unloading them. Tough shit, customers.
My wife and I have been trying to get through to perhaps book her on another flight. The web doesn’t work for this kind of thing. But they seem to not have invented the queue. Hit the code for changing flights, get ten seconds of music, and then “all lines are busy - try again later” - and it hangs up on you.

Lazy scum. May they all eat rancid fish and chips and puke their guts out.

[Candyman74]

British Airways you mean? Are they still having strike problems?

[Voyager]

@Candyman74

British Airways you mean? Are they still having strike problems?

No - but after midnight the non-strike and strike versions are equivalent.

[suranyi]

It isn’t just British Airways. I have a coworker whose husband is trying to fly home through Amsterdam on KLM. His flights are just as messed up as your daughters. He also has had no information about rebooking and he’s been trying for many hours.

[KevinShi]

You could always say to them “I hope you say that to [someone prone to stabbing people] and they stab you”. Lolsaurus i saw that in Forum rules, i mean come on its pretty funny

[The_Tooth]

That’s too bad. I’ve had nothing but goodness from British Airways. They found a seat for me when Lufthansa went on strike the day before I was to leave Canada, the airplane food was quite good and not hospitalish in the least, and they gave me two little bottles of entirely acceptable single-malt scotch.

[suranyi]

I just heard that there’s a huge blizzard covering much of western Europe. Airports and airlines covering the whole area are greatly affected.

So, to reiterate the point I made above, it’s not just British Airways, and it’s not just London.

[Voyager]

As I said, I don’t blame them for the blizzard or the canceled flights - just for their “customers are annoying us” reaction to it.

Here is a news story.

First, Terminal 5, the British Air terminal, closed and had problems long before any of the other terminals did.
Second, when the desks reopened the next morning, there were three, count them three, workers put on. My daughter was 20th in line, it took her nearly two hours to get there.
Actually, I’m wrong - there were 6 customer service clerks. The other three chatted with the working three until their shift officially started an hour later. Someone took a picture of them, and they got quite irate.

Oh, and when the desks shut down the night before, they came around yelling at people to clear out of the airport and go home. Kind of tough for those who came on the Tube, which had stopped service quite a bit before.

And most people don’t have their bags, since the baggage claim area looks like something out of Bosch, and bags are randomly distributed across all five carousels.

Somewhere around 9:30 this morning, the police showed up - though the crowd had been quite well controlled. Soon after they decided that they were no longer handling changes in person, and all had to be made by phone or the web. Fine, except that before this it was impossible to change tickets for trips which were officially in transit, and the phone line was busy, as I had said before.

Another datapoint = on the bus to the hotel which my wife booked for her, my daughter met a nice American woman with three small kids. She is married, and is traveling, to a guy from Ghana. He did not have a British visa, since he had not expected to do anything but change planes, and so was not allowed off the airport and was in fact put into detention. At least he has food and a bed - I hope.

My daughter did get put on another flight - which was promptly canceled. However, my wife, by some miracle, got through and got her a flight on Tuesday, which somehow did not get wiped out.

[Rumor_Watkins]

First, I sympathize with you and your family, especially if your daughter is a minor.

However. (you knew that was coming, right?) Why should British Airways go out of their way to accommodate people’s fucked-up travel plans due to something entirely out of their control? Why should the customers be charged with any less of a degree of preparedness for low-probability events?

[Frank]

@Rumor_Watkins

Why should British Airways go out of their way to accommodate people’s fucked-up travel plans due to something entirely out of their control?

Because they accepted money to transport someone from Point A to Point B?

[Rumor_Watkins]

@Frank

Because they accepted money to transport someone from Point A to Point B?

Subject to a very lengthy conditions of carriage which outlines their duties and responsibilities when unforeseen circumstances such as inclement weather occur.

what’s your point?

[suranyi]

@Frank

Because they accepted money to transport someone from Point A to Point B?

Things happen which are out of the airlines control. In the end. the best they may be able to do is refund the money and say, “Sorry, we just couldn’t do it.”

Before that happens, they’ll try to transport the person from A to B, but given the weather, it may be a while. Easily days. But that’s not British Airways fault. It’s the same on every European airline right now.

When these weather systems hit, nobody goes anywhere, it doesn’t matter who accepted money for what.

[Frank]

@Rumor_Watkins

Subject to a very lengthy conditions of carriage which outlines their duties and responsibilities when unforeseen circumstances such as inclement weather occur.

what’s your point?

I don’t believe that keeping some employees on overtime to help try and straighten out the mess is going out of their way. Yes, weather happens and can’t be helped. How the business deals with their customer when that happens is telling.

I don’t see the OP demanding that his daughter have been put on a private jet by BA and have the runway shovelled by the board of directors. All she wanted was to rebook her flight and acquire her luggage. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

[Rumor_Watkins]

@Frank

I don’t believe that keeping some employees on overtime to help try and straighten out the mess is going out of their way. Yes, weather happens and can’t be helped. How the business deals with their customer when that happens is telling.

I don’t see the OP demanding that his daughter have been put on a private jet by BA and have the runway shovelled by the board of directors. All she wanted was to rebook her flight and acquire her luggage. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

this is from Heathrow:

We have 200 aircraft parking stands and have a team of several hundred people working to treat these airside areas and to keep passengers in the terminal as warm and as comfortable as possible while we do everything we can to get Heathrow moving.

We are removing 30 tonnes of snow from each stand, but the temperature remains firmly below zero and Heathrow’s capacity is limited to the extent that all parking stands are occupied by aircraft, making the job of clearing and treating them more difficult.

Safety is our first priority and we hope this course of action will allow us to offer a fuller service to passengers and airlines using Heathrow tomorrow.

maybe getting bags off an airplane at midnight in unseasonably cold weather so that you don’t, OH MY GOD, go 24 hours in the same change of clothes isn’t A1 on their list of priorities?

people are told not to put medications and important documents in checked baggage. further, it’s not unheard of to suggest that a change of clothes be taken in your carry on if your checked baggage is met with delay or misplacement and you absolutely can’t deal with wearing a shirt for two days :dubious:.

and I’m not sure what you think they could accomplish at midnight? individually tell all travelers that BA isn’t quite sure when they are going to be able to get them back home while listening to 5 minutes of complaints of something they have no control over?

[Frank]

@Rumor_Watkins

and I’m not sure what you think they could accomplish at midnight? individually tell all travelers that BA isn’t quite sure when they are going to be able to get them back home while listening to 5 minutes of complaints of something they have no control over?

If that’s what it takes, yes. It’s called customer service.

[DianaG]

@Rumor_Watkins

maybe getting bags off an airplane at midnight in unseasonably cold weather so that you don’t, OH MY GOD, go 24 hours in the same change of clothes isn’t A1 on their list of priorities?

See, I’m of the opinion that “If you can’t get me out of here, at least give me back my stuff.” is a completely reasonable request. If the planes were actually moving, someone would be out there unloading luggage at midnight in unseasonably cold weather. It’s their job, and they need to be doing it.

[Rumor_Watkins]

@Frank

If that’s what it takes, yes. It’s called customer service.

Lol, so you would want to sit in line for an hour plus just to be told at the end of all that that there was nothing that could be done for you. Because that’s customer service?

Europeans aren’t as pointlessly obsequious as that.

[Rumor_Watkins]

@DianaG

See, I’m of the opinion that “If you can’t get me out of here, at least give me back my stuff.” is a completely reasonable request. If the planes were actually moving, someone would be out there unloading luggage at midnight in unseasonably cold weather. It’s their job, and they need to be doing it.

Where do you see that the planes were actually moving? The airport was effectively shut down, it seems.

[Rumor_Watkins]

missed edit window: we have no details about this luggage mishap. all we know is that they apparently stopped unloading luggage at midnight. what does that suggest to you? that there was a shit-ton of luggage to unload. who knows, maybe they wouldn’t have gotten to it until 4 AM - at which point you’re sleeping overnight in your day old clothes anyways. maybe the airport closes (unlikely, it’s heathrow, but then again they seemed to shut the airport down) and they weren’t going to get to that luggage until a point when the passengers were kicked out of the terminal. and, as i mentioned earlier, maybe they had other more important things to do with their staff than unload every last bag so all the princesses in the world didn’t have to sleep in the same t-shirt they wore that day.

[Zsofia]

IF they were moving. In other words, the baggage handlers would be moving baggage because that’s what they do. Why is it unreasonable to expect that they do it now? They’re gonna have to do it sometime anyway.