Hand Solo

BA had to pay £14M to BAA to install a door close to the Concorde Room so first class passengers could bypass the shops. I'm sure we all have our own ideas of how much of that £14M went on building the door and how much was compensation for lost revenue in the shops.

Sunfish

I've enjoyed BA service on the Atlantic routes and never had anything especially good or bad happen to me at LHR, I always felt that the presence of the shops at the airport rather negated half the purpose of visiting London anyway since a lot of the "signature' British stuff is available at LHR.

However, I've now decided that I will avoid LHR in future, probably by going to Zurich and then train or car onwards.

overstress

That typifies the BA experience at LHR, sadly. I'm usually the one on the PA apologising and promising that we are 'chasing it up'

Bus429

Strange, isn't it? I use many airlines and put BA (and Quaintarse) among the best for cabin service. Shame that the same sort of professionalism isn't exhibited by BA's management.

PAXboy

Slightly off topic but an amusing indication that the world of the Top Table continues unabated:

Channel 4 doubles chief executive's salary, despite posting losses

By Ciar Byrne, Arts and Media Correspondent
Thursday, 24 April 2008

Channel 4's chief executive, Andy Duncan, saw his pay double in 2007 to £1.2m, even though the channel is pleading for a £150m public subsidy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/me...es-814755.html

Wingswinger

There you have it. That's the problem. It's not just BA, Open Skies and T5. They are simply signs of a much deeper malaise. It's the "stuff yer gullet" culture of the so-called executives everywhere. Bonuses, bonuses, bonuses bigger than their salaries.

The banks have all been caught by their own folly and now expect us to pay through the nose to refill their coffers. Never again will I listen to a bank manager lecturing me about financial probity.

It really is time to blow the whistle on the lot of them and make them hand back the bonuses to the share-holders and tax-payers. I'm no socialist but this sort of stuff really does raise the hackles.

two green one prayer

I'm lucky in that I am not a business traveller and have a wider choice of what airport I use. BAA's idea of herding everyone through their absurd shopping mall shows a fundamental contempt for the users of T5. This contempt is seperate from from the operational cock up in that it was planned at an early stage and is therefore deliberate.

When I want to go shopping I go to Tesco. If I ever want a £1,000 handbag I'll go to Harrods. I don't mind flying with BA but not if I am required to jump through BAA's hoops to get to them. A lot of PPRuNe posters have said that they are avoiding LHR as they avoid the plague and this must be having an impact on BA's profits. If BA cannot sort this out they are going to be taken down by other hungrier airlines. Until then it's a case of "sorry you don't sell want I want to buy".

SWBKCB

Not that bothered by the shops - if I don't want to buy I don't have to. However, airlines are meant to get people from A to B and hopefully the good ones treat their passengers with a bit of repect.

Last night the BA1338 from LHR to NCL due out at 20.50 was delayed until 22.30. Pax were told regularly that the reason was the late arrival of BA363 from Lyon, and once this arrived it would do the outbound BA1338.

BA363 arrived at a21.25 and at about 22.00 BA1338 popped up on the BA website as canx - at this time pax in the lounges had not been told.

I know a number of Gold/Silver cards for which this is the last straw and who will never set foot on a BA aircraft again - more gains for KLM/AF and National Express East Coast.

13Alpha

Agree.

In a way it would be a blessed relief if BA abandoned its domestic operations entirely and stopped pretending it was interested in regional pax.

The service it provides on the ground at regional airports is no better than its competitors now that they share the same ground handling companies, they continue to lose people's bags (even putting the T5 problems to one side), and their flights are routinely late or cancelled when some other part of the BA operation has a problem.

I was at a travel fair earlier in the week including many major airlines. There were a lot of very grumpy customers surrounding the BA stand, to the extent that I felt quite sorry for the staff who had to stand there all day and defend the company. They looked absolutely shattered. Meanwhile the people on the AF/KLM stand, and the Star Alliance one, looked positively buoyant.

The lady on the BA stand I spoke to was very sympathetic about how BA is treating its regional pax, but I'm afraid sympathy doesn't cut it any more.

I'm a silver card holder but I'm afraid some free drinks and a comfortable seat in a lounge doesn't compensate for routinely late or cancelled flights and lost luggage.

13Alpha

Full_Service_SLF

I am based in Manchester and travel with one of the three alliances on a weekly basis at least. I am writing this because as I got T5'ed last night after several incident free (but at times comedy) trips through BAA's new greenhouse. I got stuck in an automated check-in nightmare and missed the last flight. It was a pain but BA put me on a BMI alternative without any drama. I was in Paris recently and my flight went tech. Air France found another plane and we got in 90 minutes late - a great performance.

I have a list of delays, cancellations and nightmares (Moscow once took 24 hours with KLM via AMS and CDG) for all the carriers. My conclusion - living in a region sucks and this will get worse as MAN goes loco.

BAMANAGER

This thread is about the quality of BA management, lets stay on thread. Certainly with the rash of BA pilots hitting the front pages of the nationals this weekend I think the airline has lost the plot. BA management have lost the respect of one of the most important staff groups, the pilots. I think it's time BA face up to the incompetence, big change ahead at the worlds worst airline!

Max Tow

I note that "BAManager" has submitted a total of 23 posts, all knocking BA & its management and not one on any other subject. He also misidentified the BA pilot referred to in another thread. Readers beware as I suspect that the moderators' warning that writers may not be who they claim rings bells in this case.

Full_Service_SLF

I believe that I was sticking to the sentiment of the thread. As far as I am concerned BA's service is no better or worse than the other carriers where you had to make a connection. On board, on long haul at least, it is generally better but that is very much a matter of personal taste. From my perspective the mistake that BA management have made is retrenching from the regions as that makes BA much the same as AF, LH, KLM... (maybe I just don't get the OpenSkies thing)

When they do get T5 working with very short connections they may have something that differentiates them. My God, is that the plan after all? Personally I would be so much happier if they replaced the MAN to LHR bit with a 2 hour train service. Now that would be differentiation but I am going off topic again.

BEagle

Some scathing words from Michael Winner in today's Sunday Times:

"The most stupid statement I ever heard came from Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways. A day before Heathrow’s fiasco opened he stood there on TV and announced terminal 5 would be up and running smoothly from day one and no British Airways customers would ever have more than two people in front of them at the check-in desk.

We know Wee Willie is small, but his brain is obviously diminutive even in relation to his body. What a ridiculous statement to make. Any new venture may well go wrong – although Willie provided magnified meaning to the word “wrong”. And there’s no need to fantasise about how few people will be in front of you at the check-in desk.

The rest is history. Confusion beyond belief. Tens of thousands of lost bags sent to Italy and America for sorting out. Hundreds of BA planes cancelled. Enraged customers. A total catastrophe. Whereupon Wee Willie aka Silly Willie aka Willie Wonka (I misspelt that last word) says, “I’m sorry. The buck stops with me. I take full responsibility.” Then he sacks two of his key executives. So the buck stopped not with Silly Willie, but somewhere down the line.

Polls in The Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard showed a large majority of readers wanted him to resign, as did the British Airline Pilots’ Association and any sensible person on the planet. But Willie stays on. Why should he give up a highly salaried job just because he’s inept?

Compare that to the chairman of HM Revenue & Customs, Paul Gray, who resigned because a twit employee in Tyne & Wear sent out discs containing people’s personal information. Paul’s a man of honour. Willie stays because, in my view, honour is not his strong card.

As for the nonsense, “No BA passenger will ever have more than two people in front of them at the check-in desk”, I went down last Saturday, 25 days after terminal 5 opened. There were many desks with more than two people in the queue. I’m photographed, at 2.30pm on a quiet day for travellers, standing behind 11 BA customers queuing at check-in B7. You can’t see them all, but, I promise you, there were 11.

When Willie Wonka became BA’s chief executive on October 1, 2005, the company’s shares stood at £3. Last Friday they’d sunk to £2.21. That he remains in the job is beyond belief."

Captain Correlli

Great post BEagle. I used T5 as SLF a week ago. three canx flights and no bags at the end of it. Three days later, returned with new bags and new contents. Only one flight canx, second flight three hours late. No bags.

Incredible. I shall move heaven and earth never to have anything to do with BA or LHR again unless it is prohibitively costly.

beerdrinker

I don't often agree with Winner but on this occasion he is spot on.

BUNGLE123

I dont think we can blame Kirkwood, he was instructed to read from a statement and not to answer and questions he just did what he was told, he wanted to face the questions but was instructed from higher (ww) not to.
WW had to point the finger at someone and he has done it with two of his top guys, how sad and what a waste of so many years experience between them. It NOT just two people fault but a whole team of them so why should they take the blame? its a cowards way out for WW, he should have stood up for his team and said "fire me and not Kirkwood and Noyes"...but he didnt. tut tut.
Kirkwood does not deserve to be victimised in this way...i wish him good luck for the future.

The Little Prince

Hmm, but Kirkwood has been totally involved in all of the BA strategic decision making, including T5. Ergo he is complicit. In any case, I am quite sure he would not be going so quietly unless his payoff had been agreed at the usual SIT rates. I wonder how much longer Willie W@nka has got?

(SIT = Snout in Trough)

WHBM

Came through T5 this morning and have to advise Willie that he is grossly misinformed, there are no check-in desks at all.

There's Fast Bag Drop (haha), there's Visa Check, there's Assistance, there's Customer Service (which everyone else would call ticketing) but not one check-in desk.

There are lots of check-in machines. These take as identity locator reference, machine-readable passport or credit card. They don't of course read Russian passports, they don't of course read read Russian credit cards. The locator code is buried down in the text of BA tickets issues in Russia (if I didn't know the format I would have been screwed too). My Russian fellow traveller would have been sunk without me there. There is no Russian language option, despite 4 flights a day to Russia.

Spoke to the agent on duty at the machines (had to approach her as she viewed our confusion from a distance) and was told "probably" customer service could help. This despite the fact we are standing in front of the machine holding a ticket with the locator printed on it.

On to Fast Bag Drop. This should be a 10-second operation, surely ? One desk was into a phone call, another was scrutinising passports for something, a third was reallocating seats, presumably after a machine had not allocated the desired ones ! Excuse me, but this is nothing to do with dropping bags, fast or not.

Does nobody at BA have a CLUE about how to go about systems design anywhere in the organisation.

hunterboy

Nope....welcome to BA.....Sadly, the Board seem more intent sorting out free confirmed First Class travel for themselves and their families than sorting out the companies problems. easier to sit tight and hope it all turns out ok in the end.