Originally Posted by
WHBM
Colleague is at Athens for the 2000 BA633 departure to LHR today. The outbound was progressively getting put back an hour every hour, when it finally got to 3.5 hours late it was cancelled. Being the end of school holidays, pretty much everything is fully booked.
The "service recovery" is apparently to send a larger (777 instead of 767) aircraft on the same departure tomorrow evening, and rebook everyone 24 hours later. That is the fourth (and last) BA departure of the day from Athens.
I'm sure it accords with the Alex Cruz approach of "every day I think of ways to save money" he recently espoused to the world. Minimal additional cost. Passenger convenience comes last.
The assigned 767 BNWA had apparently not flown since 31 August, so presumably had been on a check at Heathrow. Difficult to see how you can come out of a major check and yet only be first discovered unserviceable 3 hours after your intended departure time.
Unfortunately things like this happen in the airline industry, just also an unfortunate event of life.
As for getting passengers back on the earlier scheduled flights, you kind of answered yourself in your post. The earlier flights are most obviously alrealdy booked full. It's standard not to inconvenience further passengers on non-disrupted flights by any airline. If there does happen to be any available seats on the earlier services to accommodate disrupted passengers, it will usually be on a first come basis and then usually prioritised on exec status / onward connecting flight availabilty etc.
I'm sure BA would rather this had not happened. Chartering in an aircraft can be easier said than done. Also organising a suitable spare standby aircraft at short notice with sufficient crewing which wouldn't further disrupt tomorrows schedules is not always possible either.
Atleast your friend and their fellow passengers have been informed of BA's plan for them and have not totally been left stranded.