T4
I flew low cost in Central Europe before coming to BMED and I have to say the biggest culture shock has been life on the ground at LHR T4. This is supposed to be the premium sector of "UK Aviation"; certainly people pay a bit and sometimes a lot of a premium to fly here and I have to agree with my colleagues on here who say that it is simply unacceptable ... even the Italians do better !
Late last year after an 11h duty I sat, with my captain and 6 crew, passing the time in the cabin and trying to keep a slightly distressed disabled lady and her family informed and entertained as we waited..and waited..and waited more than 40 mins for a hi-lift which I had clearly asked for (and had acknowledged) 10 mins prior to top of descent (and repeatedly once on the ground). I was told there are only 2 units available. I used to fly to little Dortmund (a little gem of an airport, worked like clockwork for us even during the world cup) and even they had 2 hi-lifts ! The resources (or resource pairs, driver+machine) just aren't there.
That same day a BA jumbo called airport centre to say that he'd been waiting an hour for someone to come and turn on the ground power!
I could go on and on. The Red Caps and most of the staff are, for the most part, doing their best and are very pleasant and helpful, but the "system" as a whole within BA handling just isn't working well enough at T4, for BMED at least. They request things, and nothing happens. Ops put in the same request, and we call on the radio too .. the support just isn't there when needed.
Plus there always seems to be some simmering industrial relations issue, and sometimes the discontent manifests itself as '70s style pig-headedness! Throughout Nov/Dec it was the loaders (pity all our connecting pax whose luggage didn't connect to their destination, because it was still sat on the BA or BMED service they arrived on) and their "new working pocedures", which were clearly anything but.
After a long shift back from somewhere like Addis or Almaty it is also unreasonable for the crew to wait another 45mins for our bags to come out of the hold, but my main concern is that the combination of poor management, big-company-itis, and a few militants will simply drive our passengers to connect in Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Paris. Whatever issues people have there are other ways of addressing them .. for all our sakes we need to be professional, to give the customer a pleasant and seamless experience .. anything else is a shot in the foot!
So I'm simply hoping that this aspect of our daily lives will improve under bmi. Something deep inside me makes me proud to fly the union flag, but mostly these days like most of my colleagues I am just ashamed. I think I speak for the crews when I say we care about delivering a premium product, and we're getting tired of having to make a fuss, and still having to apologise to our customers. It is such a shame.
Last edited by George Foreman; 6th Feb 2007 at 11:43.
Reason: removed prefix "old" from "militants". Quite often they are younger, and quite often they have long hair and a beard!