I have just returned from the UK after a 10 day trip.
Booked using the BA website. Upon arrival at the airport. No tickets had to spend 20 mins at the desk sorting all that out and taking payment again. The first plane left 45 mins late with only an hour for our connecting flight. Had a long wait at security, very long. Only to look up on the board saying our flight had been delayed. Went to the gate where we waited for 40 mins with nothing happening, only to find that our flight was at another gate. We make it to the new gate only to be told of a further delay
Next collecting our luggage minus 1 baby seat which BA had lost. Took them 4 days to find it and bring to the house.
Upon leaving the UK there was no boarding pass for the baby which took another 20 minutes to sort out.
I have always flown BA, I hope this was just one of those times it was bad luck
Other than that, Family had a wonderful time. My parents loved the Grandchild
sorry to hear about all the problems. Hope you had a better visit. I their defence I would say the security wait, was not of BA's making, neither was the fact they changed the gate. They have no control of those problems or delays due to air traffic control. Poor communication you can lay at their feet. At least you did not fnd yourself sitting next to a dead person as some poor sod did a week or so back. have travelled other airlines, had some problems with BA but still think they are better than the rest of them at the moment. Wish virgin flew from DFW.
have a beer and all will be ok wink
I don't think I've heard anyone say anything good about BA ever. I've only flown by them a few times and I've not had any complaints so far.
Never flown on BA, came over with Virgin once, that was really good- bulkhead seat at the back but it still reclined - nice flight attendants. Flown aer lingus a few times out of Dublin or Shannon, once your up its ok - cheap and cheerful and you realise why they call it coach after about an hour. Although on one occasion flying back to the UK they realised that there were only a few people on one of the flights so to free up another aircraft they stopped at shannon and bundled everybody from both flights onto one plane and sent us of to london an hour later than planned, chilled to the bone and decidedly grumpy.-
We flew United in october out of Chicago and they kicked my guitar around a bit and damaged the flight case, coming back was nice they put fragile stickers on it and hand loaded it onto the plane. I think its down to the day you fly and phases of the moon whether or not things go swimmingly. Sorry you had such a bad time, flying can be pretty nerve roll racking at the best of times and it would be nice to be treated like the paying customer you are but that happens all too infrequently..
Not sticking up for BA as you know i used to work for them,BUT imo anything to do with airline travel will NEVER be what it was years ago .
we can only hope by being visualant we can prevent it from getting any worse ..
other then that i agree with the previous poster its "catch as you catch can' when flying the day , time , crew , flight ,weather , security etc .
We fly northwest as frequently as we can never had any problems with them plane always on time etc but ive heard of passengers who will never fly with them again .
the gate the plane docks at , security , customs etc are things the airline has little or no control over ...
[quote="Goose3 @ Thu 22 Mar, 2007". At least you did not fnd yourself sitting next to a dead person as some poor sod did a week or so back. [/quote]
referance the above .. and you think you had a BAD experiance ...
http//www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/03/19/airline_passenger_awakens_beside_corpse/
It is actually my 2nd bad experience with BA. I have flown with them over 20 times back and forth from the UK. The other time they canceled my flight 5 times trying to fly out over the Christmas holiday. I eventually flew with United Airlines, who also messed up my surprise by delaying my flight 5 hours at Chicago. I had to call my wife who thought I was in work.
I had problems with the BA website also. I ended up with a double booking and of course the agent blamed me - swear to above I only hit the enter key once. Next time i'll only reserve by phone. From my experience they are one of the best when flying with children. The air hostesses were always nice and very helpful when I flew alone with my daughter. They even offered to hold my baby so I could eat my meal. Got to admit though the food is terrible (and i usually like airplane food).
The last time we went as a family, nearly 20 years ago, we started out from the Blackdown hills at 400AM, to allow more time than they requested. we got there, ditched the car and got the shuttle bus. They hadn't allowed nearly enough time, the line to go through security turned and went all the way to one end and turned back almost to the other end. It crossed the lines for the check-in. We checked in and got in the line for security. It was soon clear that we would, in no way, get to our plane. Then they announced that our plane was delayed. Soon after that, a BA guy came down the line to find people on our flight and take us up to the front of the security line, I didn't tell him of the announcement until we were through security. He checked and said it was a small technical difficulty. We didn't hear anything for an hour or two so some of us checked and they told us the plane was fixed, but the crew didn't have enough hours left to make the flight. They gave us vouchers for lunch. Around tea time, they said the crew had rested and they were checking out the plane again. The plane had another technical difficulty. They gave us dinner vouchers. We finally got a plane in the evening and got in a little before midnight, which was 400AM, back in the UK.
Of course, calling home to the friends who were to pick us up at Philadelphia airport, with the changed ETAs wasn't easy. A planeload wanting to call home at the same time, tied up the public phones.
these flight *dificulties8 are going to be increasing as the vacation season gets under way and the security gets forever tighter and more restictions are set in place .
* see recent anouncement regarding travellers entering canada *
Next is the attitude of some passengers themselves , as we saw by the recent act of One * gaurdian of our morals * who complained to the airline about fellow passengers who had the audacity to pray to a moslim god before boarding a flight .
give it a short time before the old chestnut * can you or can you not recline your seat ?* comes up again .