BRITISH AIRWAYS usually relishes the spring bank-holiday weekend, as families take advantage of the extended break to jet off somewhere pleasant. This year’s won’t end soon enough for the airline. A catastrophic computer failure on May 27th grounded over a thousand flights and caused chaos for flyers.
The incident, which was reportedly related to a power failure rather than a cyber attack, will raise questions about the company’s IT system. But for those caught up in the turmoil, it will simply confirm how the service standards of this national airline have deteriorated. Indeed in some respects it showed a chilling disregard for customers.
Your correspondent’s own experience at Heathrow was far from the worst. Many passengers were stuck overnight thanks to missed connections. We arrived at Terminal 5 at 8.30am on Sunday for a 10.55am flight to Berlin. By then police were only letting some passengers in to avoid overcrowding. Inside there was a huge queue that snaked across the terminal. This turned out not to be for check-in but for Saturday passengers who wanted to rebook. But we had to find that out for ourselves; no one from BA or Heathrow was directing the flow.
We made it through security without incident and our flight was supposedly only 45 minutes late. So we went to a restaurant for breakfast. We ended up staying at our table for more than eight hours.
Every time our flight departure came close, it was further delayed. This happened nine times. The people at the BA information desk knew nothing; nor did the staff at Heathrow. Their only response was to hand out food vouchers and a leaflet on our rights. Crucially this did not mention the compensation due when a flight is delayed more than three hours. The airline might be saddled with a £100m ($129m) compensation bill once the dust settles.
To add to the frustration, later flights to Berlin were scheduled to take off before our own. Eventually our flight made it to the top of the departure board—the worst delayed of the day. At 5.45pm we were sent to a gate for a 6.35pm flight. Pilots even arrived.
But further hold-ups followed. The gate clerk announced we were waiting for one crew member. An hour later, another flight to Berlin was promoted ahead of us. “Shame on BA!” shouted one passenger and others rounded on the gate clerks; why couldn’t a crew member be switched to our flight as we had waited so long?
It wasn’t until 8pm that a full crew arrived along with the police who pulled aside a man in the queue to whom we had been chatting. He, it turned out, was the man who shouted “shame”—BA staff had reported this as threatening behaviour. It was an Orwellian moment. He told me later his name had been noted down so it would be on BA records the next time he flew.
On the flight, all food (including water) had to be paid for. In this respect, BA has become a budget airline like Ryanair or easyJet. We also had to pay to reserve seats (so the family could sit together) and to check luggage.
By the time we landed, it was past 11 at night so the flight was diverted from Tegel airport which has a night-flight ban. We ended up queueing past midnight for an expensive taxi ride into the city. No one from BA was there to help and guide us.
The whole experience was alarming. The BA staff clearly were as poorly informed as the passengers; no one in management had taken control. No one was prioritising those passengers who had waited longest. No one was checking that planes were on their way before changing flight times. BA has a dominant position, in terms of takeoff slots, at Heathrow, Europe’s busiest hub. On the basis of this weekend’s performance, it does not deserve it.
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