[Anonymous]

[DavidGordon10]

I have moaned before about the habit of BA clogging up my email with masses of useless mails about any booking. When I have suggested they curb their unneccesary mails, voices here have told me in lordly tones that it is all fine.

Well, it is not. Here is another example. I am tonight at a remote corner of Europe, and I need my BA boarding pass on my mobile. To get it, I need to download the BA app for my phone.

Why should I have the BA app. I can download a mobile phone boarding pass from the other airlines I use without their app – in recent weeks, SAS, Czech Airlines, KLM, Air France, and more. Why is BA the only airline that needs this. Why can they not make things simple rather than making them more complicated. Why are there so many more steps in the BA online check in than in, say, SAS.

Lastly. why are there no question marks in all this text. Because I am writing on a Czech keyboard and cannot find the question mark….

[MartynSinclair]

Hard week David???????????????????????????

🙂 🙂

[DavidGordon10]

Thanks Martyn! No, not a bad week at all, and always a delight to be in the Czech Republic, even if the hotel’s wifi is as reliable as a chocolate teapot.

I just really do not understand BA taking this approach to the smartphone boarding pass, when every other airine chooses a more simple method. It is the same mindset as the voluminous emails that follow a BA booking, compared with the restraint of, say, SAS.

Less is more, as Mies van der Rohe (and Robert Brownng) put it.

PS – I think I have found the question mark?

[MartynSinclair]

I think the gimmick is that BA have far much more to offer than just a boarding pass. I agree with your gripe about excess paper as I do run a paper less office, but the BA app, gives me street cred with my son to the extend that I have more than 5 apps on my apple gizmo…

Delighted you have found the ?. At least you wont be chastised for bad grammar.

[Bath_VIP]

You can download the boarding pass as a PDF instead to your phone. I have done this before (not sure if I have with BA) and the scanner has been able to read the bar code of the PDF.

I agree that requiring you to download an app is very irritating. I tried it and failed and gave up.

[DavidGordon10]

Martyn/Bath – One problem is that I usually need one of the boys to help me download an app…. but I managed myself. So this new-found donloading ability will give me street credibility with them.

Bath_VIP – if you need help downloading, I can lend you an excellent teenager. Every household should have at least one technically-able teenager!

[TominScotland]

DavidGordon10

“I am tonight at a remote corner of Europe” – I take it that you live in the UK. If you take a look at the map, maybe London becomes far more “a remote corner of Europe” than the very central Czech Republic……

[UrbaneGent]

It’s so funny how everything is so relative – when you mentioned “remote corner in Europe”, I pictured you in the outskirts of Baku with no Wi-fi having to download the BA app.

With me, I just check-in on-line and then use the option to pick up my BP at aeroport. You can always download the app and then just delete it after you’ve used it.

The no question mark is classic – try finding one on a Greek keyboard. Quotes are also tough, in Greek they are enclosed with > instead of “these”

Travel safe –

OT – the “remote part” of your comment brought back a memory of being in the middle of the Serengeti (literally in tents) and an Englishman yelling at a Masai warrior “There’s no wi-fi!!”

[DavidGordon10]

I absolutely agree, remoteness is relative. I was assuming that the place from which I was writing would feel remote the most BT readers. I was in Hradec Králové, one of those magical Czech cities that see very few tourists or other visitors – not remote for me, I am there at least once each year.

Where, indeed, is the centre of Europe? I tell my students that, if you take the traditional Eastern border of Europe as being at the Urals, then the centre is probably somewhere near Krakow. In the work that I do I have to use the World Health Organization definition of Europe, and WHO-Europe includes the entire former Soviet Union. So when I am in Kazakhstan, I am not far from “the middle”.

And is Kazakhstan European? Well, my friends there all say that they feel more European than Asian – they look to London, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, and not to Beijing, Tokyo or Shanghai.

Back to the topic, I wonder how BA could be persuaded to keep it simple? I wanted a boarding pass on the mobile to get into the lounge 3 hours before departure (as I have done), I had no access to a printer, and the BA check in at PRG only opens 2 hours before departure.

[DavidGordon10]

PS – the “lost” question mark. I am actually quite used to a Czech keyboard, and I have one on this computer. The problem was that I was using a hotel keyboard that had been re-formatted from the regular Czech keyboard! Despair!

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