[Anonymous]

[fatbear]

I recently flew First Class on BA from St Lucia to Gatwick and waited 55 minutes to be checked-in at the Airport. I was wondering if anyone has ever experienced a longer delay for a check-in whilst travelling First ?

On this occasion, when I arrived at the check-in desk for First I was told the computer system was down and so I could not be checked-in. I informed the lady at the desk that I had already checked in on-line, had no baggage to check-in, and all I needed was the boarding pass. Apparently it was not possible to provide a boarding pass.

So I waited and waited. BA’s agents at St Lucia did not seem to be overly concerned by the problem and were more interested in laughing, flirting and joking amongst themselves rather than dealing with the passengers.

As they knew I was flying in First I was expecting that one of the agents could have provide a manual boarding pass so I could clear security and go to the lounge, and perhaps arrange to provide computerised boarding passed later. Unfortunately, this did not seem to be a possibility and I had to wait until the system eventually came back-up

I can’t say that BA’s premium passengers appear to be particularly valued by BA’s ground staff in St Lucia. Unfortunately, this rather spoilt my view of BA’s first class product as I thought everything else about the flight and service was rather good.

I have subsequently contacted BA via BA.com about this experience and received an underwhelming response. All of which gives me the impression of complacency and a lack of interest in caring about the experiences of those travelling in First.

As many of the contributors to this forum regularly fly in F, I was wondering if anyone has had a longer wait to check-in for the premier cabin or have even worse stories to tell ?

[TominScotland]

I guess part of the problem at St Lucia (as at most outstations) is that the staff on duty were not actually BA staff and probably had limited loyalty to the airline or its customers.

[LuganoPirate]

Funnily I had a similar problem two months ago in JNB. The machine got jammed and they had to wait for a techie to fix it. Rather than have me wait or push in front of the Y & C travellers, I was taken to the lounge (as usual with Swiss) and my boarding passes were bought to me an hour or so later.

I’m surprised however they did not print your pass from one of the other desks used by Y or C check in!

[Andrew66]

Hi Brusselsregular , I haven’t flown back in F from UVF but have twice in CW , we never had to wait long , we were actually first in the queue as we had travelled back by helicopter and arrived quite a bit earlier than the other passengers , the checkin service we received was fine , no problems at all but I do think the service you received was poor and not acceptable .
I’ve only travelled in F a couple of times , just last week we departed from Muscat and arrived at the airport in good time , we made our way to the desks and were greeted by a member of staff who was in a blue suit and I’m sure he had a BA name badge , he noticed us and apologised that in front of us they were checking in a group booking with a lot of luggage and then just a couple of seconds later he asked which cabin we were travelling in , we replied First and he just ” jumped up ” quickly and walked us to another available agent next to the BA desk and we were checked in and the group were still being processed . I was very pleased with the service and recognition and thanked him .

I’m glad the rest of the service was good for you , the crew we have had on the UVF flights were both friendly and good humoured , very enjoyable flights , only spoiled by the luggage wait at both ends , only this issue has been my disappointment on the flights with BA

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