BA gone to pot
 

So what is happening at Heathrow? 25 flights cancelled on Monday and many more delayed, passengers left in the dark and on the ground. Rumors abound that staff are going sick now before it counts against their £1000 bonus.

I saw it on the bbc website, because of CSA shortage at LHR they had to cancel lots of flights.

They are recruiting 60 new staff, but as they only offer a temporary (with absolutely NO chance of it being extended) 6 month contract, what kind of incentive is that?

Staff Travel equates to nothing, as the SBY's and ID's are done on length of service; so all they get is hotlines which are not that much cheaper tahn published fares anyway.

Shortage of staff and 3 long haul flights cancelled due to technical problems are blamed for yesterdays problems. Another 10 flights cancelled today. What a way to treat their customers as nobody was telling them what the problems were.

This company is going from bad to worse. Why should anyone book with a company with so many problems and have a management who do not have a clue about what is going on.

These let down passengers will not travel BA again and a lot of them will have been transfering to long haul where the money is made.

Not "The World's Favourite" anymore I fear, especially after the strike threat and now this. Bad press everywhere.

I had business customers come down from Newcastle to Heathrow twice to see me in the last few weeks (August 4 and 13) and on both days their 1800 return to Newcastle was cancelled and they ended up getting stuck in London overnight. We've changed the way we do the project now, no more of this nonsense.

This morning there is a patronisingly-worded statement on ba.com saying "Due to a number of contributory factors there have been a small number of cancellations on 24 August" - followed by a list of no less than 21 flights. Now I don't know who at Waterside thinks that to cancel 21 flights (and god knows how many more as the day progresses) is only a "small number", but they are clearly detached from reality.

Can someone in the know tell me... How long (in days / weeks) is the BA check-in (PRS) training course?

This from the press:

Several thousand British Airways passengers faced delays and cancellations at Heathrow Airport because of staff shortages and technical problems, it emerged today.

The problems began after the airline cancelled three long-haul flights to the United States yesterday afternoon over technical problems with the aircraft.

The disruption worsened BA's current staff shortages and led to the cancellation of another 22 flights - most of which were short-haul - and others being delayed.

Up to 5,000 passengers are thought to have been affected by the disruption which comes at one of the busiest times of the year for the airline industry.

Some were accommodated on later flights, some were provided with overnight hotel accommodation and seats on flights today while others simply had to rebook.

A BA spokeswoman said there could be a knock-on effect to services today.

"We apologise sincerely to those customers affected by the disruption to flights at Heathrow Airport yesterday," she said.

"Due to a number of operational reasons we have cancelled 25 flights and some services have been delayed.

"August is the busiest period of the year for British Airways and services at Heathrow are stretched.

"We have also had some technical problems with our aircraft and these combined has resulted in the cancellations.

"Our staff are working extremely hard to ensure operations return to normal."

The US-bound flights cancelled due to technical problems were those to Philadelphia, Chicago and New York.

Among the short-haul flights that were cancelled were those to Edinburgh, Munich and Aberdeen.

British Airways is currently recruiting more staff.

Only last weekend, a planned strike by BA workers for the August Bank Holiday weekend was called off.

The strike had threatened to cause travel chaos to tens of thousands of holidaymakers.

However, unions representing baggage handlers and check-in staff at airports, including Heathrow and Gatwick, agreed a pay deal with managers to head off the 24 hour walkout.

BA has agreed an 8.5% pay increase over three years as well as £1,000 payable in three lump sum payments between now and September 2006.

New?
 

This certainly can't be good news for anybody.

BA unfortunately hasn't been very reliable since they got rid of the Stratocruisers....downhill ever since.
Missed opportunities by the bucketful.
In a sorry state and not likely to change anytime soon.:sad: :uhoh:

The three long haul cancellations yesterday.........anything to do with EWS perhaps ???........ ( official version of " technical problems " ) seems like the CAA would not give any more dispensations to not fix ADDs.

Surprised that this discussion hasn't appeared earlier as BA have been cancelling lots of flights for weeks , down to a combination of lack of staff and lack of serviceable aircraft..........

Anyone want to buy a computer system that costs over 200 Million pounds and still doesn't work ??? :yuk: :yuk: :yuk:

Night surcharges??
Several BA domestic & shorthaul flights departed & arrived LHR way after 0001z today, numerous A319 & B757 left rather EARLY !

what's going on?
 

What is going on at BA? A huge % of the workforce are dissatisfied with pay and conditions, literally thousands of lost bags, staff shortages and "technical" (or poor maintenance?) probs causing cancellations and delays left right and centre and a notable increase in 777s and 747s in significant emergencies (LHR-HRE, LHR-YYZ, MIA-LHR, LHR-MIA, PHX-LHR.....)
What next?

OJS,

I used to be a CSA for BA.

The course was just over 5 weeks long, and it certainly wasnt all about PRS!

The pass rates are very high, and bearing in mind I have passed succesfully many crew courses, the CSA course was the hardest, most pressurized and demoralizing course I have ever done.


5 people were either told to leave or couldnt take it anymore.

Apparently they were and still are trialling a new training course.

Be prepared for a lot of tears. I made some great friends though.


Oh and also you have to learn EVERY airport code, and these are tested every day!

I have no connection with BA and no particular liking for them, but this constant raising of the baggage problems is misleading.
The problem arose because of freak weather conditions at their main base and was not to do with any ongoing inefficiencies in their baggae dept. With the high percentage of transfer passengers that they carry there was always going to be problems getting bags back with the passengers.
Re-uniting pax with their bags is not straight forward and anyone who thinks it is should spend a day with the baggage facilities dept and see the fun and games they have when this sort of disruption happens.
Sure BA has plenty of other problems at the moment which are a result of poor management and unrealistic unions, but the severe baggage problem was a one off.

Serious problems seem to continue and get worse. No sign of Eddington fronting up for the company on press and TV on this or the strike threat and in the TV pictures of the terminals theres no sign of the management walking the floor. BA is the best payer and has the best general terms and conditions in the UK industry. The problems show its not really all about money,- its about people management and its not complex stuff. Its about getting out of offices and meetings and onto the floor and ramp and wherever people work and just talking to them. "Laptop management" simply wont do and nor will suited state visits, in-touch days where once in a decade some managers meet actual staff and customers. These things are just patronising. What is important,- and any manager worth their position should instinctively know, and enjoy, -is constant day to day contract with the real world. BA has become entangled by its own processes and proceedures,- talks a lot about people issues, political correctness etc etc but seems to lack both people skills in actually relating to staff and customers ,and competitive and business instincts when dealing with the market.

Skylion,

Amen to all that!

PHX

411A,
Have to take exception there.
In the eighties, under the management of King & Marshall, BA enormously improved their passenger appeal. Working for a Persian Gulf airline, I listened to our passenger comment about BA and it was almost invariably complimentary.
Subsequently, Ayling tried some interesting ideas with mixed results. Losing the brand with 'ethnic' fins was not one of his successes.
Under Eddington they seem to have drifted a bit.
The comment by Street this morning that they are short of check in staff demonstrates a remarkable lack of basic forward planning although his partial excuse of difficulties with ID cards is believable in the present imbroglio.

Skylion,
Yes, recollect a fairly prestigious crew hotel in Scotland where the general manager (not just the duty manager) walked the floor and spoke to staff and guests alike.
Gave one a nice warm feeling, esp when he paid for the drinks as well :ok:

Ask NATS why...
 

WHY they had 19 of 26 Purchasing staff request redundancy when they implemented SAP R3... the same software that is currently causing chaos in EWS - backlogs, shortages, delays, etc etc. The system DIDN'T work for NATS, who I understand manfully soldiered on until the next release (R4?) was available; Singapore Airlines dumped it, and what did BA do?? Spend MEGA amounts on a system that plainly is NOT the be-all-and-end-all that SAP Marketing claim it to be! I believe it's only a matter of time before we see fatalities - and I don't mean a SAP-user committing suicide! SAP is NOT the software for EWS. Ask Stores. See the heaps of components/tyres etc. awaiting repair. WHY has CAA not grounded BA yet?

Looks like the London Evening Standard hacks read Pprune.

Just had the early editions delivered to the dealing room and the front page splash is 'Flights chaos at Heathrow'. A lot of the story seems somewhat similar to what has appeared on this thread....

Link here.

Surely not:

Let me give you an example of a current stupidity that caused me to have my baggage lost for 2 days for the first time ever for me.

BA have scheduled their St Petersburg flight out of T1 this summer at 06.55. They have a procedure that all visas on flights to Russia need to be checked by supervisors at the check-in desks. But the supervisors do not come on duty until 06.00. So checking in before this time (which of course most do) causes puzzlement over what to do. And my bags were "red tagged", which I was told meant they were put to one side until my visa was checked, again at the gate. And of course you can guess what happened can't you ..... And at St Petersburg there were a whole lot of pax with missing bags, and no English-speaking staff on duty in the baggage hall.

And this is nothing to do with a one-off weather problem and everything to do with basic mismanagement of the staff.

Not only ground staff shortage. Subsid Citiexpress is running on goodwill of cabin crew and flight crew working overtime. Cancellations rife over past 3 or 4 weekends. The balloon will burst soon.

According to Evening Standard, BA spokesperson allegedly commented that today's cancellation of 21 flights "wasn't that much" as there are 500 flights a day in and out of LHR.
So that's the sort of response these PR professionals are paid for - I shudder to think if she'll adopt the same approach if just one of those 500 had an accident?
Wouldn't a humble apology to the thousands whose holidays/businesses/lives have been disrupted be a bit more appropriate? Still, I expect we'll get the usual blurb in BA News this weekend about how the staff performed wonders rather than the heads that should roll...

SAP = Stop All Payments

and I believe there are more meanings as well.

This is what happens when a plc makes cutbacks, cutbacks, cutbacks - not just in the aviation business but in all businesses.

THE BUBBLE HAS TO BURST

Employees can only take on so much extra work, after that point incentives, bonuses and overtime are irelevant.

The bosses at BA make me very angry!

PS. I fly on BA on a regular basis, my employer insists on it...

As someone else said, I am suprised too about how long it took for this thread to start... our service was going downhill fast before, now it's a nosedive!

Part of the problem in BA is that no one dares to say when anything is bad, it's seen as being negative. Everyone's so afraid of losing their job they just toe the line.

I got told off the other day for saying that the terminal management and most of Inflight Services management were incomepetent bean counters. Apparently the suggestion that when people make a mistake they should be held accountable was "not what we need to be thinking about in the current climate" What can you say to that?

I'm afraid the heydays at BA are over. They have to trim the workforce to be competitive against the Locos and in doing so they are going to make mistakes.

10 years ago the airline was able to charge £600 for a return trip to Milan because of a lack of competition and make profits of hundreds of millions of pounds despite being hugely cost inefficient.

Those days are gone and the airline is left with a legacy of high costs and a heavily unionised workforce in what is a very competitive environment. I feel for Rod Eddington. He is on a hiding to nothing trying to make the airline efficient and correcting the mistakes of his incompetant predecessor.

Regards Orion Man

Maybe the BA management should have a read here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/3593872.stm

They might realise just how much damage is occuring to the airline's reputation.

The rather low public visibility by Rod Eddington highlighted by Skylion just about sums it up.

If senior management has appears to have lost interest, why should those on six-month contracts at the coalface give a dam?

As BA’s recent adverts stated “…….more staff would be nice”, was that at Waterside or T4?

If you aspire to being a full service airline, and charge accordingly you’d best deliver, and the current evidence does not look promising, even if some events where initiated by weather conditions

When the low cost model is used as the basis of future competition on long-haul routes, which is just a case of natural progression, life will start to get really difficult for BA, and I feel this is but a couple of years away.

Time for a radical re-invention?

78 flights now cancelled
 

This from the Evening Standard:

THOUSANDS of holidaymakers face chaos at Heathrow today after British Airways cancelled 78 flights. More delays and cancellations are expected and BA is facing its busiest period over the Bank Holiday weekend.

The cancellations, which caused 'pure pandemonium,' were being blamed on shortages of check-in and other ground staff. There were also reports of shortages among cabin crews.

The airline said more than 5,000 travellers had been affected so far. Passengers facing long delays today reacted angrily. South African tourist Terry Allan, 34, said: 'An airline as big as British Airways must surely know how many staff it needs to operate its routes.'

The trouble began yesterday when 10 short-haul flights were cancelled because BA could not open check-in desks due to a lack of staff. Passengers flying into the airport had long waits on the tarmac.

Massive queues built up as passengers showed up for their flights only to learn they had been cancelled.

Chaos ensued as baggage halls were swamped with a backlog of flights and passengers on incoming flights were kept waiting on runways for more than two hours after planes had touched down.

The chaos followed a total of 47 flights being cancelled last night and 31 more today. The total included three US-bound flights which were cancelled after technical faults.

BA, which only last weekend averted a strike planned for this Friday by ground staff, blamed today's disruption on crew and aircraft being out of place following last night's cancellations.

At Terminal 1 today the queue of frustrated passengers attempting to re-book after having flights cancelled stretched over 60 yards long and up to four people deep. Many of them were returning to try to arrange travel for a second day after falling victim to yesterday's disruption.

Spanish tourist Eduardo Tilve, 39, had been due to catch a flight home to Barcelona at 7.10pm yesterday but found at 10pm that it had been cancelled.

He said: 'There were no staff around to tell me what to do so in the end I just had to take myself to a hotel near the airport to wait until today so that I could try and get home.

"I thought they would have got their act together today but things are even worse. I was trying for ages to get through to their helplines and when I did finally get an answer they told me the earliest I could possibly get a flight would be tomorrow morning and that I should just occupy myself in London while I was waiting.

'They have all my luggage so I have nothing but what I am standing in. How am I supposed to occupy myself?

'They then put me on hold and while I was waiting they cut me off. The call cost me £8 and now I don't have any credit left on my mobile so I have no choice but to queue. The whole company is a mess. I don't know how they stay in business.'

Factory worker Terrence Delgaty, 48, and his 15-year-old daughter Nikita, from Basildon, Essex, had been due to fly with BA to Dusseldorf to visit relatives at 3.10pm yesterday.

Their first flight was cancelled and they were re-booked on to another at 6.15pm. But, after being told that flight was subjected to repeated delays, it too was cancelled.

They then had to get up at 6am and start queuing in the hope they might be able to get to Germany some time today.

'It was utter chaos here yesterday evening and is still a mess today,' said Mr Delgaty.

'Towards the end of yesterday people were getting so angry that armed policemen were having to stand next to what few British Airways managers there were to make sure things didn't get out of control.

'There is nothing we can do except queue and hope the airline finally gets it act together.'

Steve Allum, 47, an insurance broker who had been due to fly to Switzerland, said: 'We made a point of checking to see if there were any delays before we came and there was no disruption reported but we turn up here and the flight is just cancelled.'

Robert Banks, a 39-year-old businessman from Basingstoke, Hants, said: 'British Airways clearly have problems and in a way I am not surprised they are having difficulty getting staff in.

'Morale has got to be very low if they are threatening strikes but I don't think this sort of cancellation nightmare for travellers will improve their situation.'

Many travellers stranded in the Heathrow lounges said they could not find anyone from BA to tell them what was going on. This is a repeat of the criticism made against the company during last year's wildcat walk-out by BA check-in staff.

A BA spokeswoman apologised for the cancellations today but insisted that out of a total of 500 flights in and out of Heathrow every day 'it was not that much'.

She added: 'There is a bit of a backlog but we are working our way through it.'

BA said it expected that today would be the last day of difficulty and that flights will be fine for the Bank Holiday weekend.

Talking about appearing up front. The BA Operations Director appeared on lunchtime television news to say that the crisis was now passed and everything was back to normal.

Strange that Heathrow arrivals board is showing 10 BA cancellations at the present time. Perhaps that is what he regards as "normal."

Perhaps he meant “Normal” in the context of his increasing regular appearances to say sorry.

It’s just such a shame that all of the poorly paid customer facing guys and girls have to take all of the real flak from passengers, and all senior well paid management is required to do is go on television and say “Sorry”.

Or where we treated to Mike Street speaking to staff and passengers at a terminal, that would be something special.

WHBM, I wasn't referring to 'normal' lost baggage, but the harping back to the chaos that the recent storms caused as if it was normal for BA to lose tens of thousands of bags a day. There isn't an airline in the world that doesn't lose bags , and the larger the airline the bigger the numbers lost even if the percentage per 1000 pax stays the same. Very few bags remain lost forever and most are found and delivered within 3 days.

The example you post seems to be a bit cack handed and shooting themselves in the foot. No doubt an accountant somewhere has calculated the number of passengers likely to require the service and decided the number is too small to justify a Supervisor starting early. That said, they have a system in place which should work if people communicate. Sorry getting reactionary again....... people communicate.......it'll never happen.

Sack Mike Street, an incompetent, patronising and arrogant fool.

Listening to him spout his rubbish was depressing. Those comments are for inside a meeting room, grovelling apologies and a commitment to customers is what was needed today.

I've reached the point now where I feel like telling someone I do live experiments on furry animals rather than tell them I work for BA, I'd feel less of an outcast

They spend their whole time bleating on about costs of this and that and savings and they're killing the company.

Andwhat's that muppet we've just recruited as a chairman up to?

Skippy had better pull his finger out as well, they're all fiddling while Rome burns and it's like watching the story of the emperor' new clothes round here.



p.s. Employ accountant to count money not decide company policy.

Skippy
 

Hate to have to drag up old news, but just have a look at what Skippy left behind him when he joined BA... looks like he is trying to complete the set... the guy is a complete tw@t... :)

As a.matter of interest, is RE in the country as present as the absence from public view in recent crises has been conspicuous? MS is not a great front-man - the performance after Radio 4's 15 minutes of the most appalling passenger experience interviews on the PM programme this evening was a touch haughty and unconvincing, I'm afraid. Much like the computer generated standard letters that will no doubt be sent out to those affected in 3 months' time (with 3 bottles of cheap wine,of course).
On a different tack, was there not a more imaginative and less traumatic solution when passengers are in the terminal, crewed and serviceable aircraft plus loaders are at the gate (especially on low baggage short haul?) I'm sure that in Japan tearful directors would fall on swords, but here..well BA was the top performing FTSE 100 stock today, so who needs happy customers!

At last someone has the courage to mention what a f8888g idiot mke street really is and just recently he awarded himself the OBE.
He was a cabin crew manager many years ago and was terrified of the platelayers union.He still cowtows to them whilst making the pilots eat sh..t,so the pilot workforce would like to see thecretin disappear up his own arse. As for EWS,try the 400 trip the other day with no apu sitting in the dark groung power tripping off line,cant start 2 engines on stand because some idiot put the aircraft on a cul de sac stand and you cant start 2 before pushback there.Of course the apu had been stuffed for at least 10 days.Talk about billy smarts circus.

Over Bearing Eedjit?

Senior Managers at BA and the unions spent months, weeks, days trying to prevent a strike.

"Please don't go on strike said the management! You'll wreck the company, and that's our job not yours." :E

(I know they didn't, it just feels like it)

It's interesting that only a few days ago it was going to be "the strike" that was going to cause terrible damage. With that issue resolved for the time being, it seems that there are some serious mismanagement problems coming home to roost that are destroying the company. I expect the directors are disappointed that they can't now blame the check-in and handling staff for wrecking BA's reputation. It seems that clueless management is rife in the UK now; it's just that most of these imbeciles don't perform in such a public arena.

As a BA engineer for many years I can only apologise to my colleagues who have to fly the lumps of junk we now call aeroplanes.

We told our managers that the EWS system would cause unacceptable problems and having browsed through a couple of tech logs today I am frankly shocked at the levels of ADDs now outstanding.

3rd world charter outfits operate like this, not European aviation leaders.:mad:

He's going to have a long wait!!

I find Hovis' comments rather disturbing! :uhoh:

I work for BA as cabin crew, and have seen how demoralised the whole workforce has become over the last couple of years. Yet front line staff still give 100% when they go to work.
Each time there is a debacle, Mike (I am so great) Street, is pushed out on his box somewhere near the airport, to spout of about, staff shortages, staff sickness, technical problems, weather problems!
They blame everyone and everything else but themselves. Whilst they sit in their ivory towers at waterside, awarding themselves big payrises, and thinking up more ways to cut more frontline staff, and save more money.
They have seemed to have lost the idea, that we are an airline, in a very competitive market. Filling HQ with MORE managers, that just sit and stare out of windows, is not going to check in passengers.
It is a well known fact, that we are the most top heavy airline in the world. Costs have been cut, but in all the wrong areas, ie front line staff.
The only ones to suffer are passengers. I dont blame anyone for voting with their feet. If I had a choice, I would not buy a ticket with BA at this present time either.
It is such a shame, that this once great company is slowly but surely going down the pan.