Praise for BA0108, Dxb-LHR, 17th Jan

[MrSoft]

If you were crew on this flight, this passenger just wants to say well done and thank you.
Diverted to STN as we lacked sufficient fuel to hold following "the incident".
Cabin crew kept pax informed superbly. Even when there was nothing to say, the announcements kept coming, just to say, "no news". Only BA, in my experience, communicates like this. Where others trot out a script, BA actually talk to you as one human being to another.
Flightdeck were out of hours but captain elected to continue on at discretion :D
Once in to LHR, nothing but mayhem; no gate, no approach guidance switched on, no buses, delay delay delay. 2 hrs from touchdown to disembark. Captain did a walk through and chatted to pax. I got the feeling the crew actually relished the challenge, and their ability to overcome it. They created an amiable, positive mood where other carriers would have retreated, and left a riot to brew.
11 out of 10 for the pointy end people! HOWEVER I am waiting for a good explanation from BA Management, as to why they just threw in the towel and cancelled all domestic and Euro flights. Why am I watching Aer Lingus taxi past every hour on the hour, yet I can't get home on my own flag carrier, on their own home ground?

[PAXboy]

as to why they just threw in the towel and cancelled all domestic and Euro flights. Why am I watching Aer Lingus taxi past every hour on the hour, yet I can't get home on my own flag carrier, on their own home ground?The answer has been given on previous occasions when LHR/EGLL loses a runway (for whatever reason).
BA have hundreds of flights a day through their main base.
EI have very few.
When a runway is closed, the airport mgmt have to cut down on the number of flights - there is no choice.
All carriers will lose a percentage of their slots.
BA has the most slots and will, therefore, lose the most slots.
Of their flights to cancel: They have long haul that are inbound and already mid-Atlantic and they have another that is on it's way from DXB. One of these can easily be diverted to another airport.
Any carrier that has a mix of long and short haul will off-load the short haul in an emergency. Since EGLL has not had enough runway space to cope with demand for more than 25 years, when one of them is closed this will happen. It happens for fog and prangs.It may well be that LHR is the most convenient airport to where you live and/or work. But it has severe limitations. Yesterday you discovered them at first hand. You can choose to blame:-
BA
BAA
Successive UK govts for not grasping the nettle
The Great British Public who do not want LHR to grow any moreIt looks to me as if everyone did their very best yesterday. Let's face it - you got delayed by a few hours but you are alive and have not been through a crash. It sounds like you had a good day.

[MrSoft]

It sounds like you had a good day Under the circumstances, absolutely. My question was purely about BA's crisis strategy, which you answered rather helpfully. It was evident that all carriers had slot limitations, for instance, BMI (who actually got most BA domestic pax home for them) were juggling flights left right and centre. If what you're saying is that BA's slot allocation was consumed just taking care of their inbound flights, then fair enough.

My point is, that in implementing such an extreme strategy some kind of passenger communication is to be expected, and there was none. With hindsight, I would have rather cut my losses and stroll over to the Hilton in T4 than scrap for the next 6 hours in Flight Connections/T1. I just think, you should be honest with the passengers as quickly as possible and this didn't happen. Notwithstanding this the performance of all staff encountered was superb and reason to be proud including BAA.

[PAXboy]

OK, I see your point now. Sorry MrSoft if I was too snappy in the last part of my reply.

Yes, I agree about the communication problem. Sounds like BMI and BA have a deal in place for these eventualities. I can see that BA staff know that they always ditch the short haul and just swing into that process - without telling the pax why the s/h get binned.

I suspect that the Hilton would have been a scene of carnage too. All rooms taken and the bar full.

[MrSoft]

No problem Paxboy, in fact I quite agree with your last sentiment and looking around me, everyone felt the same; certainly not the day to be feeling sorry for oneself.

BA didn't re-book onto BMI. I understand from talking to fellow travellers that BA were offering coaches home, which did not impress pax to Aberdeen etc.! Hearing this, was the point I abandoned queueing for the BA ticket desk (which stretched back to BMI check-in, if you can imagine that) as I fancied neither a coach home nor an overnight stop as my reward for 3-4 hours queueing. BAA had staff handing out free water to the queue :D, but a BA staffer walking up and down to set expectations was what was needed.

Well, without that, pax just worked it out amongst themselves. Everyone I spoke to in the BMI ticket queue, was an abandoned BA business pax coughing up the full rack rate for a one way trip home. A very good day for BMI on the ground and in the air. A very good day for BA in the air.