I would confirm that a letter to Willie Walsh would NOT be screened out of the way! Unlike some of his British Airways predecessors, he does not hide from customers or staff alike and prefers to tackle adversity head on!
It is true that he has a Personal Assistant who reads his mail and handles any straightforward complaints directly, but I believe WW is kept informed in case he bumps into the complainant at a business lunch somewhere. (.....and, the bosses' PA is a senior figure in BA anyway, with as much clout as the "Great Man" himself!)
In the OP scenario, I do not believe we deliberately oversold the First cabin. BA does not, as a general rule, oversell First or Club World unless a particular route (eg Lagos, Accra) has a high Premium Cabin No Show record. The downgrade is most likely to have been caused by an administrative error where we have inadvertently oversold the cabin or an operational problem such as an aircraft change or broken seats, but the real reason obviously hasn't been communicated properly to you. As the injured party, you definitely had a right to know why we had to bump you, and I trust we looked after your properly when it came to managing your wishes for rebooking and compensating you. With BA only having its own staff these days at LHR and LGW, it is a sad down side of using handling agents that they don't really have much interest in our customers "feel-good factor" when things go wrong!
My sincere apologies for your inconvenience, please do go ahead and write to Willie Walsh. You have nothing to lose and you will find out what really was behind your downgrade!
Last edited by bealine; 7th Oct 2006 at 08:15.