Here are some pax that I suspect won't fly BA again!

[crewmeal]

What price loyalty BA?

Pregnant woman is told to give up seat so Gordon Brown can fly in BA Club Class | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370343/Pregnant-woman-told-seat-Gordon-Brown-fly-BA-Club-Class.html)

Being downgraded for someone who bankrupt the UK is one thing, but all his followers is something else.

[Atcham Tower]

They should have gone in the hold - preferably unpressurised ...

[bravoromeosierra]

All from the gospel Daily Mail.. you couldn't make it up.

[MUFC_fan]

This happened with Top Gear star James May a couple of months ago.

It will happen very often - it's only the famous faces that the media are interested in. It's how 99% of airlines in this world work (that have premium classes anyway). You have a passenger who has travelled with BA for a significant number of years, will no doubt have a BA Gold card (he may have even held the 'non-existent' Black card while in office - he is BA high priority. Just like any other businessman/woman who uses BA dozens of times a year, certainly in a premium capacity.

Had it been the CEO of a major MNC which no one would have recognised then the problem wouldn't have even made the reporters desk. Somewhere in the world this will happen dozens of times a day...


The pregnant woman was backed up in the row by the doctor, who was returning to the UK after working for the Red Cross in Oman.


That's the major point in this story!

[racedo]

Airline makes the decision NOT the passenger yet seemingly media wish to blame the passenger who bought the ticket.

[Skipness One Echo]

Airline makes the decision NOT the passenger yet seemingly media wish to blame the passenger who bought the ticket.

Did the thrifty, clever, handsome and intelligent former PM buy the ticket? Perhaps it was Sue....

[Aksai Oiler]

Maybe somebody should consider to take legal action against the idiot (brown) for screwing up the economy. In the old days he would have been hung drawn and quartered

[Invicta DC4]

it's amazing how quickly people and the Tory rags conveniently forget that it was the greedy banks that screwed up the economy!

[Gulfstreamaviator]

after all, if I remember correctly, it was a MP / BA perk, and he should have been in 1st.

or perhaps they only bought Y class, and demanded the upgrade...using the "dont you know who I am" line.

Lastly 75 stg compensation....wtf.

glf

[Capetonian]

or perhaps they only bought Y class, and demanded the upgrade...using the "dont you know who I am" line

To which the best answer is : "I certainly do know who you are, and that's why you're staying in cattle class."

[kazzie]

Jeez,

The country would go off their rockers if ANY member of parliament used a Private jet for Travel.. At least they are using airlines.

Have any of you stopped to think that the downgraded passenger may not hold a full fair ticket and was just upgraded? In this case maybe upgraded Because she was pregnant?.

I'm sorry, I think this has been taken out of hand just because it was Gordon Brown. Who by the way is retired.. So I'm guessing he purchased his ticket.

And also, Reported in the Daily fail sorry mail? Well all I can say/ do is :ugh:

[racedo]

Did the thrifty, clever, handsome and intelligent former PM buy the ticket? Perhaps it was Sue....

Don't really matter as Airline decides who travels not a politician.

[Poltergeist]

having been bounced off BA in the past so they could position crew and having been on a full fair ticket, I am strongly in the camp of make the CEO stand up and explain. In my case, it was the 'oh well' attitude of BA that got my goat. Stuck at an airport, a business meeting to attend and the crew laughing abut passengers being bumped not knowing I was there. Customer services were a joke and just kept quoting operational reasons. It is clear that pain english is not understood, what does confirmed mean? I know other carriers do it but the attitude makes me look elsewhere before BA. Finally, they told me to find my own hotel and claim it back. Cowboy outfit comes to mind

[radeng]

I suppose the EU rules don't apply for being downgraded? If the difference in fare between the class they ended up in and the class they paid for exceeded £75, then the the small claims court is the answer.

[HXdave]

Radeng,

Actually, EU261/2004 does cover downgrading. Article 10 (downgrading) states that by being downgraded, she should be given a % age refund on the cost of her ticket if downgraded. For flights in excess of 3500 Km, this is 75% of the ticket cost.

HXDave

[Nicholas49]

Well, Mr Brown was happy to take a seat in Economy on a BMI flight on Sunday. I was sitting next to him.

But if it's in the Mail, it must be true.

[fincastle84]

Well, Mr Brown was happy to take a seat in Economy on a BMI flight on Sunday. I was sitting next to him.

Phew, he must have had to pay for that one himself, I bet it broke his heart!

[Duffus]

The banks may have made a total hash of things but their failure brought to light the £700 billion + pounds that old Gordon had been borrowing in his years at the healm of the countries financies. Even if the banks had not crashed we would still have to be paying of this huge debt.

[Frognal]

This story makes no sense to me.

I very much doubt that Mr Brown's event was arranged at the last minute and very much doubt anyone was downgraded for his party.

Seems that the airline flew the first sector with empty seats, having adjusted the numbers in the cabin and then these filled up before the aircraft left for the second sector.

So unlikely Mr Brown's party took anyone's seats, the airline just oversold the cabin.

In my opinion, when this happens, the airline should have to refund the fare paid and then provide the same class of travel on the next connection to the pasengers end stop, regardless of whether the flight is with their company or not.

It can't be right that the airline knowlingly oversells a cabin because of 'no shows' and then punishes the innocent, who turn up for their flight.

[Capot]

the airline knowlingly oversells a cabin because of 'no shows' and then punishes the innocent, who turn up for their flight.

Yes, well, on a point of order, it was standard practice when I first sat in on Reservations, with a big carousel used by 6 people with a card for each flight in our sector for the next 3 months, and a telex to receive and respond to bookings.

Our process was computerised in 1973 or so, and the Supervisor Code allowed an overide to overbook usually by 5% or so, that being about 1/4 of the no-show rate. But in those days people could simply rebook a missed flight, and did.

Even with specific flight validity, high rebooking costs etc, there are still no shows and so there is still overbooking, probably - I guess - without human intervention.

[WHBM]

"VVIP" parties are only too commonly the cause of overbooking issues, when the elite commercial team/Chairman's office staff responsible for liaising with them just trump the normal overbooking calculations that load management have devised, and pass any issues down the line to get sorted out. And yes, it is also common for such groups to chop and change their arrangements almost hourly - or even just turn up at the airport in parallel with the station manager receiving a message from HQ. Some of you will have experience of this.

Overbooking as such is a straightforward event, and load management generally know what is appropriate - even to the extent of beng 50 over a few days beforehand on a 747 from Heathrow (to India, in particular), and ending up going out with no empty seats and nobody turned away :). Any airline with a hub operation will know, for example, that they get many more no shows on the outbound legs (due to misconnects) than on the inbound; there are a wide range of other parameters. For example, if you sell single tickets more expensively than round trips, what else do you expect but that people going one way will buy a return and throw the second leg away. Those no shows are entirely due to your fares policy, just like the misconnects can be due to quoting legal but unrealistic and not always achieved minimum connecting times at the hub to get people onto your flights rather than the competition.

At least we are not in the USA, where excessive overbooking is a daily event. Not that this shows in any dneied boarding/downgrading figures, for the carriers just buy this out from "volunteers" at the gate. Not commonly done like this in Europe/Asia though.