[CathayLoyalist2]

.and yet another report which says there was indeed a power cut but the “contract engineer” booted up the system to quickly when power was restored!!. That is so unbelievable it is akin to a surgeon starting an operation before ascertaining the patient was indeed fully under. All customers want is an open and transparent answer, however frustrating but of course the lawyers will not allow that and insurance companies are waiting for a “wrong comment” to deny any payment to BA.

[FDOS_UK]

[quote quote=811071].and yet another report which says there was indeed a power cut but the “contract engineer” booted up the system to quickly when power was restored!!. That is so unbelievable it is akin to a surgeon starting an operation before ascertaining the patient was indeed fully under. All customers want is an open and transparent answer, however frustrating but of course the lawyers will not allow that and insurance companies are waiting for a “wrong comment” to deny any payment to BA.

[/quote]

It is plausible that there could have been a power interruption and then the equipment was restarted out of sequence (if that is what ‘too quickly’ means).

I reckon there will have been a few chain linked events resulting in the outage, but we’ll probably never hear exactly what happened.

[canucklad]

Morning Ahmad
Thank you millions for making me laugh to the point of shedding tears.

I can’t get the image of a beer bellied man with a construction workers crack bending over and pulling out a 3 prong plug and minutes later thousands of BA people trying their best to deliver world beating customer service find themselves staring at a diminishing blue dot on their monitor, .

In unison, all around the globe, all of them saying “ What the ******”

Whilst all the time, and 10 minutes later back in data centre, our boiler suited hero is munching on his bacon roll, reading the sun and sipping his well-earned cup of tea. Totally oblivious to the meltdown he’s just caused.

Hilarious, that a company flies state of the art equipment around our wonderful world is brought to heel by clumsy oaf.

[PhilipHart]

[Charles-P]

@
PhilipHart – And now I’m cko thinking about Trump in the Oval Office again !

[rferguson]

Although the actual power outage and how it came to be is essential to know the biggest criticism has to go to the manner in which BA handled the crisis.

I read all the papers the day after and while of course the Daily Mail was calling for someones head even the more ‘balanced’ journals were extremely critical of BA in the handling of it. Even the FT was scathing of BA’s actions (or inaction).The editorial column summed it up perfectly for me in their ‘BA has no good excuse for chaos at Heathrow’ piece.
‘ people can be remarkably tolerant of long travel delays when they are clearly unavoidable, clearly communicated and accompanied by practical efforts to limit the inconvenience and help those affected make alternative plans. None of these mitigating features was in evidence at Heathrow…. ‘

The staff employed at T5 would have been little help. Gone are the days when staff would be fully trained in ticketing and most would have probably been long enough to have at least witnessed one ‘crisis’. The poor ground staff these days are given the most basic of training – recruited in their late teens or early 20’s and essentially given tasks like helping people struggling with the self service check in kiosks or ‘crowd combing’.

[seasonedtraveller]

Latest statement from Mr Cruz below at 20.34 GMT+7

Sorry, very childish 😉

[FDOS_UK]

[quote quote=811200]Latest statement from Mr Cruz below at 20.34 GMT+7

<iframe src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/MrCPIrs90eg?feature=oembed&#8221; allowfullscreen=”” id=”fitvid0″ frameborder=”0″></iframe>

Sorry, very childish ?

[/quote]

Is that the IAG board trying to understand how their subsidiary just cost them €100m+ in a couple of days? 😉

[rferguson]

BA are in the process of emailing any Gold or Silver card holders impacted in the disruption and telling them they will maintain their tier status for two years regardless of how many tier points they collect in that time.

[UKFly79]

RF I confirm that my friend has just received a Gold for 2 years. He would have lost it in one weeks time, and he experienced no disruption during his flights last weekend. I have seen the email.

It’s a nice gesture and he’s delighted to use the first wing for two more years.

[Uranium235]

I finally have the time to post my experience and request a few suggestions from the learned folks on this forum.

Firstly, the executive summary: I was travelling from LAS to GVA in Business Class via LHR but was obviously stranded in the latter. Writing off the possibility of getting a flight on BA, I managed to secure a seat on another airline two days later.

Experience:
The first clue that something was amiss was the crowd of people in the lounge watching BBC (not BA) informing us of the cancellations. Eventually, a PA announcement informed people to head to a gate where they will be processed (does this mean re-booking or simply to leave the airport?). There were a few BA people running around informing people of what they should do – both verbally but also with paperwork explaining the situation and compensation entitlement but generally speaking, people were not sure what to do depending on their situation (i.e. should I stay and re-book or simply to leave the airport?). Over the course of 3 hours of queuing in the airport, I heard 3-4 PA announcements: not good enough. I would have preferred PA-Spam!

Anyway, I have some questions:
– Will I only receive the official EU compensation of EUR 250? Or will I receive the full compensation as itemised in my claim? The latter includes two nights of accommodation and meals which is almost double the EU allowance.
– BA have already agreed to refund my LHR – GVA portion (didn’t tell me how much) but will they pay for my flight on the other airline?
– Will my Silver membership be extended two years from now? Or when my current membership ends (i.e. nearly one year from now)?

Thanks all

[SimonS1]

You should get the full claim including expenses. I would claim for €600 as your journey from LAS to GVA was disrupted.

The fact that is was 2nights is irrelevant – EC261 does not set out amounts or times- only that it’s the airline’s problem. If you can evidence that the first chance you had to get to GVA was 2 days later they will pay. Otherwise just submit MCOL.

I doubt BA will pay for flights on another airline. When you took matters into your own hands instead of allowing BA to rebook you that became your cost. Better to claim on your insurance.

Yes your silver should be extended 2 years.

[capetonianm]

You are entitled to €600 compensation under EU261/2004, as your journey was >3500 km, it works on the end to end journey, not point to point, assuming that your journey was covered by one ticket. If you purchased two separate tickets then you are only covered for the segment on which the delay occurred as each ticket is a separate contract.

There has been some discussion as to whether they will refund the cost of transportation which you purchased of your own accord. I don’t know the answer to that one. I suspect they will pay the hotac and meals etc, as long as they deem them to be ‘reasonable’. What is reasonable? How long is a piece of string?

Good luck.

[Tom Otley]

BA orders inquiry into bank holiday computer fiasco

From The Times (subscription required).

“British Airways has ordered an independent inquiry into the computer chaos that stranded tens of thousands of passengers over the bank holiday weekend and could cost the airline £150 million.

Willie Walsh, chief executive of IAG, BA’s parent company, said that he had commissioned a study to look into the shutdown of a data centre that knocked out IT systems and left 75,000 travellers with no or delayed flights. It is believed that the mistakes of an engineer may have caused a “power surge” which brought down the airline’s networks….”

[MartynSinclair]

Sky News reported this morning that WW had confirmed the power outage was caused by an Engineer inadvertently pulling a “plug”. Now the written word includes ‘may have’

http://news.sky.com/story/ba-orders-independent-investigation-over-shutdown-10905527

[Author]

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