[FaroFlyer]

A truly awful experience, and the safety aspect of pushing back with you, and child, still standing is disgraceful.

You ask if there is anything that could have been done to avoid this situation, and the only thing that you could have done would be to regularly check your booking. If seats have been changed, although previously pre-assigned, the booking appears in red in manage your bookings. I am BA Gold and always used to book front row economy at time of booking. I have noticed that seats often changed as more seats, or less seats, were sold in Club. Club demand can change quite frequently, either up, or down.

BA seem to have tried to address this issue and, for the last 6 months or so, I have noticed that the first 6-8 rows of economy are not available for assignment, and it is only from about rows 13 > 16 that you can pre-assign, even as a Gold card. It is normally now only in the last week before departure that you can pre-assign seats at the front of economy. No help to your situation, but this advice may help others.

[JonathanCohen09]

Chris – I am very sorry to hear about the awful experience that you had with BA and you should indeed follow the advice of my fellow posters with regards to BA and the CAA and getting ‘Watchdog’ involved will certainly get the attention of BA.

The only advice that I would give you is do not fly BA again if you have the choice, I posted previously that people should vote with their feet but it was pointed out to me that not everyone has a choice but if you do take your business elsewhere.

I made that decision some time ago and now easyJet gets my business if they fly to a destination that I need to get to and so far I have not had a single experience like yours and i have also saved myself a lot of money.

There are however many alternatives to BA many of which will offer better value and better service.

Please let us know how how things turn out with BA?

[canucklad]

Hi Chris
If the doors had been closed (obviously since pushback had started) I wonder what happened to the obligatory head count and subsequent reconciliation on those on board with bags underneath?
I presume the cabin crew advised the flight deck that the appropriate number of souls were on board?

Completely unacceptable and totally unprofessional from check-in to take-off —–BA should be ashamed of themselves !!!

[openfly]

@canucklad There are no headcounts on BA flights, not for many years. There is no confirmation of souls on board from the cabin crew to the Capt.

[CathayLoyalist2]

Openfly, I am curious. How does BA reconcile passengers checked in and thus expected to board with those who have actually boarded?. I occasionally hear cabin or flight deck say “we are just waiting for 2 or 3 more passengers and we are on our way”. or “a passenger has not shown up at the gate so we have to off load their bag/s. Those are headcounts surely?

[Edski777]

Nowadays headcount is done based on the number of scans of boarding passes. It generates a detailed list of those who boarded and those still missing.
The manual headcount is only done by a few airlines or at airports where the latest facilities are not available. Probably the reason why it still happens with a lot of low cost flights to second and third tier airports.

[FDOS_UK]

Nowadays headcount is done based on the number of scans of boarding passes. It generates a detailed list of those who boarded and those still missing.
The manual headcount is only done by a few airlines or at airports where the latest facilities are not available. Probably the reason why it still happens with a lot of low cost flights to second and third tier airports.

This is right – howvever, it does rely on the system/humans working properly, as can be seen from this recent thread on BT

Boarded the wrong flight

[openfly]

@Cathayloyalist2….. Headcounts were abandoned as they waste time. As the other folks say the boarding pass count at the gate is has proven reliability. In these days of bothersome hand baggage being loaded into the lockers there just isn’t time to do an unnecessary headcount where a human frequently got it wrong and had to be done several times!
Mind you, the count was done with everyone seated and got over the problem of an impatient Capt starting the pushback with passengers still standing!!!

[openfly]

@Chris….please can u let us know the date of your incident? Several BA managers read BT and would effect an internal investigation.

[Chris]

Hi everyone – thank you for your kind, helpful and reassuring comments.

Openfly – me insisting to get off was on my mind but when Im with the family I tend to be in this ‘just be calm for the kids’ kind of mindset. They were already upset enough especially my 7 year old daughter who had already figured that if Daddy and baby brother were not on the flight then the holiday was over (not quite old enough to understand the numerous connections through Madrid!).

As expected, customer relations failed to call me at the time I asked them and Ive received a pretty half-hearted response through twitter stating that ‘when we have to offload passengers we aim to not affect families travelling with children, we are sorry this wasnt the case’.

As suggested, Ive now raised the matter with Alex Cruz’s office and the ball is in their court. When I get back I will log the pushback issue with the CAA.

Having slept on it, BA fill in the gaps of their business schedule by slotting in these numerous weekend holiday rotations on otherwise unused shorthaul aircraft. They are clearly not equipped (with the right personnel or systems) to cope with the chaos of first day of school holidays, coupled with many staff presumably on firm tickets. If they cant stand the heat they need to get out of the kitchen on this one, and let other carriers do this leisure stuff.

Im off to the pool!

[mkcol74]

@Chris-29 Shame I can’t find your tweet to RT & raise the awareness 🙁

[canucklad]

I must admit, the one certain thing I took from the headcount was that cabin crew weren’t versed in the art of subtraction : )
I’ve never understood, that why on an aircraft that has 200 seats, someone would count/click 191 skulls rather than 9 empty seats, but hey-ho that’s one of the reasons I assumed it was a regulatory procedure.
Thanks for the clarification openfly.

Enjoy your holiday Chris, and no doubt you’ll need another one by the time you get back : )

[capetonianm]

BA fill in the gaps of their business schedule by slotting in these numerous weekend holiday rotations on otherwise unused shorthaul aircraft. They are clearly not equipped (with the right personnel or systems) to cope with the chaos of first day of school holidays, coupled with many staff presumably on firm tickets. If they cant stand the heat they need to get out of the kitchen on this one, and let other carriers do this leisure stuff.

They’ve been around for long enough to be able to deal with it, it’s hardly an unprecedented or unforeseen situation.
As for your last sentence, you are absolutely correct, but BA are trying to be all things to all people, and failing miserably.

[ThomasCox]

Hi Chris. Sounds like a truly dreadful experience and as a regular short and long-haul traveller with a 3-year old you have my sympathies. Key thing here is the safety issue. If they pushed back knowingly before securing the cabin for take-off (which involves you being in your seat and a visual inspection having been made by cabin crew) then they in breach of both their own SOP’s and CAA regulations. CAA reporting and other media outlets the way to proceed on this one. Hopefully you have the captain’s name along with the senior flight crew member on board.

With regards to it being just a generally pi*s-poor performance on BA’s part and a genuinely miserable, stressful customer experience on yours, you’re options about how to proceed here, or how to avoid it in the future, are limited. My personal opinion is that for BA, as an occasional customer with no status, your business is essentially of very limited value. As Edski777 says, BA will always fall back on the fact that they ‘have gotten you and your children, at least in their view, from A to B in relative safety and comfort’.

Sadly, you’ll need to either pay for Club Europe or achieve (at least) Silver status for your booking preferences to be a priority in the future.

Vote with your credit card and go EasyJet in future. And pay for EasyJet plus membership with allocated seating and no issue about the flight being a codeshare with Iberia, or the confusion of economy vs business class.

Again – very sorry to hear of your experiences. May I also recommend somewhere nice in the New Forest next time as well 🙂 and spend the money you save on a decent meal at The Pig (where they’re lovely with kids)

[FDOS_UK]

Sadly, you’ll need to either pay for Club Europe or achieve (at least) Silver status for your booking preferences to be a priority in the future.

That will make no difference, speaking as a Gold Card holder.

We are dealing with an organisation that has been deliberately made to care about costs first and customer service is a distant second/third (or whatever).

That a family can pay for seats, so they can sit together and are then split across the aircraft is lousy.

[Author]

Posts