Another case of Not to Fly, and Not to Serve

Here I am, in Jeddah, BAEC Gold, booked on BA132 back to our green and pleasant land on Thursday 6th November (tomorrow/today in Jeddah) – apart from I’n not going, nor are the other people booked on 132 as BA has just cancelled the flight due to ‘technical issues with the outbound aircraft’.

Whilst I understand that aircraft sometimes revolt (in fact BA’s B747’s are always revolt(ing)), I cannot understand why, with precisely 9hours to go until departure I get a text message telling me of the cancellation and when I call the ‘gold line’, I get pitiful answers, a complete lack of understanding and knowledge no better than my 11 year old son’s.

Imagine the conversation:
Q – What options have you got for me to get home on the 6th as planned?
A – None, sir. All I can do is get you on the same flight on the 7th.

Hmmmmm.

Q – How about this wonderful new Oneworld partner, Qatar, have they got space?
A – Let me check, please hold…20mins pass…Yes, sir! We can get you back home from Doha tomorrow, but you will need to get yourself to Doha – BA won’t book the connecting flight.

WHAT?!

Q – How about BA from Kuwait, Riyadh, Bahrain, Dubai, Abu Dhabi…or Qantas from Dubai, etc. surely there is a seat somewhere?
A – No, Sir. We have no availability.

Urm, ok, well a quick check shows available seats on flights out of Dubai, no problem.

Q – Right, well put me on the flight on Friday, but I guess you will be arranging me a hotel, or at least covering the costs of Hotel and food etc.?
A – I don’t know that yet, sir. We have not been advised.

I give up. Looks like I’m in for another ‘dry’ day in Jeddah….

To Fly, To Serve – or not, as the case may be,

I cannot see why the call handler on the gold line would need to be ‘advised’ on how to handle a cancelled flight surely there any airline should have SOP’s in place for such a situation.

As a minimum they should inform you to your rights under EU261, looks like 400 Euros should be coming your way at least

You have my sympathies as well…

In the future I would suggest simply ending the phone call with the first customer service advisor and calling straight back again. You would be surprised how many times just by speaking with someone different, you will get a very different (and many times positive) resolution.

Too many cases to recount where I’ve had success doing this but have these have included short hauls in Europe (LHR to ARN, where I was told there would be a 2 day delay due to the hols) and longhauls from both the US and Asia return to Europe.

The most noteable ‘success’ was a longhaul flight (in Club World) from Europe to Sydney where there was an aircraft issue. The first representative offered a seat 24 hours later (I would have missed a full day of meetings), as I was half expecting. I said my ‘thank yous’ and called straight back. The second representative said that she could put me on a flight leaving 3 hours after the orginal flight, on Thai Airways (in Business as well). An absolutely excellent resolution knowing that Thai not only competes head-on with BA on the Europe-Sydney route but also is not even in the same alliance.

Regarding your attempt to get rebooked with Qatar Airways, it shouldn’t matter whether it was 1 or 2 sectors, QR (a One World member of course) fly them both…

Let us know how you get/got along.

When this happened to me far closer to home, in FRA a couple of months back… I was directed by text to call the German BAEC line (CLOSED over the weekend).

I then tried to call London, held for 40 minutes – gave up.

Ended up with 25,000 avios for the delay, which for my travel profile was perfect… at least 5 free sectors to FRA….savings around £1,000

I thought I would follow up on the BA service ‘post event’.

To be honest, the Customer Services Rep that I spoke with last week was great, she listened intently to my issues and sought to get all the ends tied up as soon as possible – even agreeing there and then (without me asking) to sort out my EU compensation. I sent her my receipts for hotel, food, taxi’s and she replied within 5 hours with confirmation that they will be paid and also that my EU compensation claim will be granted, no quibbles.

The EU compensation was ‘instead of, not in addition to, any Avios points awarded for service recovery’. This suited me fine, as i was granted €600.

One week on, and both payments for expenses and compensation have been made, this GCH is happy, and Mrs Falcon7x will have some more cash for shopping!

You should be able to claim EUR400 as this is an EU regulated airline flying 2940 miles and cancelled due to technical reasons. I wrote an article on my http://bugadvisor.com/2014/11/11/eu-flight-delay-compensation-claim-up-to-eur600/ site a week or so ago

I and a colleague recently flew BA to BAH connecting onto a GF flight to KWI. After boarding the aircraft at LHR, we were informed that there was a problem with the flaps and that this was being looked at. As time went by, it became evident that we were likely to miss our connection to KWI. I advised the CSD of the situation and he indicated that he would get a message to the BA ground staff in BAH who would take care of us. Eventually,we departed LHR to arrive BAH about an hour late causing us to miss our connecting flight. Upon disembarking at BAH, we were met by a member of BA’s ground staff who had our detail in her possession. Given that there was no later flight to KWI other than one in the middle of the night, i indicated that I presumed that BA would provide hotel accommodation. This didn’t appear to be a problem and we were asked to take a seat whilst this was arranged. After some time, the BA lady returned, looking somewhat sheepish, to advise that she had had to obtain authority from BA’s Station Manager, who conveniently was unavailable to speak to directly, and who advised that he was not prepared to provide hotel accommodation given the fact that our connection was by a separate ticket rather than on BA paper! This is not withstanding the fact that connecting non-BA flights cannot be booked on ba.com. His apparent solution was to suggest we take the middle of night flight which would get us to our hotel in KWI well after 3am ahead of a meeting that we had scheduled at 8.30am. We had deliberately chosen to travel this route rather than take the direct BA overnight flight to KWI as we needed to get a decent nights sleep before our meeting. The BA lady was clearly unhappy with the decision that she had been instructed to impart, recognising the fact that I and my colleague are both Gold Card holders and that one of us (me) is a Gold for Life with some 50,000 Tier points. We were told that BA was not prepared to assist in any way and we were asked to leave the airport. This will now become the subject of a separate issue between me and BA – I have suffered similar circumstances of missed connections previously with BA along with other legacy airlines also where there has been no question of being looked after. However, it seems that in almost every aspect of BA’s operations, it now behaves as a LCC. Clearly an airline to be avoided given its apparent contempt for its customers who have loyally supported it, through bad times and good, over the years.