Originally Posted by
chrisbl
On Friday I had the bizarre experience of a BA captain standing at the front addressing the passengers over the PA system and said,
"I have been told we have four containers of luggage loaded but I cannot assure you that it is your luggage.
I saw the apology given by the director of operations on television and I thought it was both insincere and insubstantial."
At which point I thought what a pillock and who is he trying to impress. If that is typical of aircrew these days then I will not be travelling with BA again.
Personally the bloke should be sacked - it's the most unprofessional thing I think I have seen. He needs to stick to driving the bus, that's what he is paid to do. He may have an axe to grind with the company but it should not be done in front of the customers.
That was my brother - I'll be sure to tell him that you did not appreciate his honesty!
If you'd rather he hadn't warned you that your bags might not make it then that's your choice - my understanding of the situation is that not only were only half the bags on board but no-one could tell them which half were missing. Far better to warn people in advance than have a nasty surprise waiting at (I believe) EDI - a fact appreciated by the majority of the passengers. He may not have made any friends amongst the managers, but he tells me that a large number of the passengers thanked him for his honesty.
Would you'd rather he'd stood there and told you that everything was fine, only to find out 90 minutes later that it wasn't? Would you'd rather have had some "party-line" towing company gob****e giving you a load of bull? He could also have sat behind a locked flightdeck door to make the announcement but chose to come out front and face the fare-paying passengers when he broke the bad news. I suppose having the decency to look your customers in the eye is unprofessional, too?
In my career in aviation I have always believed that the only way to earn the respect of passengers and colleagues is honesty - and the "apology" by the company was indeed insincere and inadequate. BA screwed up by not having enough people on the ground on day one - a decision made at the highest level - yet it's the people on the shop floor taking the flak.
I can assure you that he has absolutely NO axe to grind with BA having been with then for a decade and a half - in fact he loves working there. A great deal of anger has been directed at BA personnel by passengers - see Naomi Campbell and Calvin Harris (and he should have been smart enough to make TWO copies of his album) - explaining the facts to his passengers was a way of protecting his crew. If you think that honesty and concern for colleagues/passengers are unprofessional traits, well, Ryanair have tickets available for you!
The bit that you've missed out from your quote was that he informed the passengers about the luggage problem so that they could make an informed choice as to whether or not to travel - although he did suggest that the best bet was probably to continue to destination as there was at least a 50% chance of the bags getting there.