I have worked as a ground handler and staff constantly watch for flights coming in early and attend that flight normally by waiting at the stand for the aircraft to approach, ready with all equipment needed. So I dont think by being early you get ignored ? What if you are late, lets not bother with them, it's their fault they are late ? Problems I could envisage are staff shortage, steps needing handrails to be cleaned before being used etc, so not BA fault. It's also not unheard of for Edinburgh to hold aircraft because a stand is not available ?(although that should not be a problem currently). I have seen long haul aircraft wait for ages to get a stand, shocking after passenger have already been on the aircraft for 8-9 hours

Just to second Anson's and Locked Door's comments upthread - you think this was "poor" because of?

Did you have access to the TAF the captain had available at the time the fuel decision was made?

How would you rate the crisps?

Very mediocre Litebulbs but in view of the volatile nature of the internet I think that would be a whinge too far. Sea salt apparently if you are interested. I made a schoolboy error in that I did not realise that by gate A6 @ T5 there is wait for it a ‘Spoons. The majority of travellers in T5 were obviously in the know and the cognoscenti were tucking into lashings of everything by the time I got there. If I had known I would have pitched up earlier for several large Merlot’s which would hopefully have made me more sanguine about subsequent events. Instead I had consumed a sandwich from Pret A Manger which tasted of cardboard. I really will stop contributing here but in view of your enquiry Litebulbs and with the intent of lightening the mood I have succumbed again. Anyway traveller top tip Wetherspoons is by A6 and is amazingly open until the fun police close it I suppose. Cheers.

Taxiing in on any BA flight..........’........welcome to xxx airport we are 3 minutes early! ‘
10 minutes later and still taxiing I look at my watch and chuckle to see we are now ‘7 minutes late’. 25 minutes later the cabin doors are finally opened.
Top tip......can we let the customers decide if we are early or late? Smacks of desperation and frankly who is sick of being preached at about how we are supposed to feel? After a mediocre flight with Cabin Crew who resent the passengers?
BA are finished. London Airways RIP.

BA is a joke and covid-19 is just an excuse for the sake of the excuse. Blaming service providers for inadequate support is a lame way of running away from the real problem. Thankfully there's other choices around - unfortunately at this point in time, sometimes BA is the only one (hence why we still fly with them!).

Most likely you had those chilly crisps. Fake, fake, fake. I feel sorry for the staff!

EDIT: I realize you had the sea salt ones - less fake!. Easyjet has orange chocolate bars limited edition on sale right now! You pay for it - at it's almost as sh@t as the BA crisps, but at least the ticket is about 1/5th of the price (not that I pay myself - but just for info!).

But you did enjoy them? What stood out that made you enjoy a mediocre experience?

Personally I have no interest in how much a train costs . . . my time is far more valuable . . . if you want to see a service far worse than the worst ****show that aviation can stoop to, take the train . . .

And relevantly . . . how the *uck to I get to Helsinki on a train genius ? . . .

Fd

Ahhh

kilimax the old EasyJet is far cheaper than BA myth.

a quick look says I can fly from GLA to LHR on the 19th of this month, for example, for £36 with BA, it’s £33 to LTN with EasyJet so hardly 1/5th of the cost...

which just shows that aviation is a race to the bottom and in order to compete the once decent airlines have to cut costs and that means outsourcing - but hey the paying public get what they want, cheap tickets, but are unwilling to accept that sometimes that comes at a cost.

What should the price be then?

Inhabitants of the planet “ Tharg “ perhaps ?

To be fair, as a comparison,short haul flights to LHR with other so called legacy carriers offer a better travel experience than BA .

I have used Lufthansa , Swiss, KLM, SAS, Finnair even Alitalia all are mere shadows of their former selves all are low cost ( not officially of course). All were consistently more pleasant

Perhaps a private jet might be more appropriate for you? 🤔

Spot on. Really is nothing to add to this comment.

:ok:, though I guess it can mean what people define as "far"....

In the spirit of the thread I have just done a comparison from our local airport...from which BA serve LHR and Easyjet serve LGW.....same day, about a month from now.

BA tickets available from €66
Easyjet €42.50

The BA station manager and station staff fired several years ago in the spirit of cost cutting.

The BA S/H pilots just won’t shut up and fully backed by the cabin crew but I won’t bang on about their PA’s
35 minute flight from Jersey to LHR
Welcome from the Captain
After take off PA
Mid flight PA
Before Landing PA
After landing PA
Goodbye at the door.
Ridiculous in the extreme.

Alex Cruz is stepping down.

Stepping down as Chief Executive, but remains as non executive Chairman for a “transition period.”

You just can’t get these people’s snouts out of the trough!

Replaced by Aer Lingus’ (and ex-BA’s) Sean Doyle.

Non of which will be good news for the long suffering staff.

Way back around 1998, IIRC, I was on a domestic flight from Newcastle to LHR. Plane arrived on time, pulled up at airbridge and we waited about an hour for someone at LHR to open the door to let us off. There was apparently nobody available and "rules" made it difficult for the crew to open the door and use on-board steps to let passengers off (in any event with nobody to unlock terminal doors, we wouldn't have been able to get into the terminal anyway). Wait on plane was longer than the flight itself, followed by further wait (yup, even after an hour on board) for luggage to appear. Also have a few other experiences of waiting for a gate to become available after the plane has touched down, again usually on or around scheduled arrival time - all incidents at LHR. Never come across this phenomenon at any other airport.

It's not BA's fault but someone else's, trouble is as has been suggested that even if you do contact the airport or airline to complain, everyone passes the buck and you never get an apology or explanation, let alone compensation.
Customer service in the UK died decades ago; get over it, OP, it's unfortunately to be expected that every so often there will be an avoidable delay that you get caught up in, for which nobody will ever take responsibility as "it's just one of those things that happens from time to time". And I doubt that the crew were boasting when they announced arrival ahead of schedule, probably just informing passengers in a "pat on the back" kind-of-way.

Also I seem to recall that back in the 1980's/1990's when BA operated the shuttles to Edinburgh, the flight time was one hour (same flight time to Glasgow), and 1 1/2 hours to Aberdeen. Now it appears that the flight time to EDI is 90 minutes. I wonder why.... increased taxiing time at both ends, ATC delays now being normal or ???

And, earlier than that: LHR-EDI Vanguard 80 mins, Comet 70 mins (southbound times 5 minutes less).

I understand from sources Alex Cruz was dismissed for gross misconduct because there were no steps available for an arrival at Edinburgh on Friday night

I can remember years ago arriving on KLM at AMS one morning and taxying up to the gate. After about 10 minutes waiting and not a soul to be seen we were told to get back in our seats and then proceeded to taxi across from D26 to E26..... a mistake anyone could have made..........

In Vanguard/Comet days, aircraft handler was viewed as a responsible and reasonably well-paid job. These days it’s min-wage, fire-at -will. There’ll be no spare steps if anything goes wrong. Or spare staff to position them. Or spare anything else. Back then of course an air ticket cost massively more than today in real terms. You can’t have it all ways!

But not immediately due to a lack of steps

First of all, I’m flightcrew and I have been for nearly 20 years. This period has and will continue to be very difficult for all of us, and as a workforce, I have a lot of respect and empathy for all of my peers and what they’ve had to deal with, regardless of carrier, at this time.

That said, with my work hat off and full fare-paying passenger hat on, BA’s service level is appalling nowadays. Several recent flights as a fare-paying passenger have left me less than impressed every single time. In my opinion nothing distinguishes them from other (average at best) low cost airlines - they’ve lost their USP entirely and they do know it - that’s why they no longer refer to themselves as ‘The World’s Favourite’ - it’s because they’re not. I used to willingly pay more for a BA service because of the better service level than the low cost brigade, as tempting as they’re fares were, but they have now aligned their product (and attitude) with that of said low cost carriers, yet still have the cheek to charge (in many cases), a much higher fare - I imagine they think some will still just pay for the name (and those awful M&S sandwiches), despite no real ‘substance’ any more. This is not the fault of the crew at all and I sympathise with them because they’ve lost the tools (and quality training it seems) to be able to do their jobs as well as in years gone by. But as someone said above, an experienced crew member would hesitate to ‘tempt fate‘ and shout from the rooftops about an early arrival before actually arriving (not overhead, not landing - at the gate with parking brake set and engines shut down).

I’ve had some awful diversions with hefty ground delays (on arrival) with both Aer Lingus and Easyjet before, where ground staff/company staff/crew could have done something (anything!) to help the situation, but did absolutely nothing - it happens unfortunately, it shouldn’t happen, but is not unique to BA. It’s not the end of the world, but the frustrating part is that whichever the carrier, what they all have in common nowadays is that the cost-cutting, bonus-hungry ‘management’ just don’t seem to care one jot about customer experience and inconvenience whatsoever: cue the copied and pasted insincere standard responses of ‘it was out of
our control’, ‘our customer’s opinion means a lot to us’, ‘we’re really sorry we didn’t impress you on this occasion’, blah blah blah - whatever. I don’t bother complaining any more.

As an aside - pilot hat back on - why is it I’ve found, increasingly in recent years, that only the BA flightcrews stare at you like you’re from another planet when you say ‘good morning’ walking through the terminal? Is it the impersonal BA management culture filtering down from above? If so, what a shame. Everyone used to be so friendly, even at 5 o’clock in the morning!

Have a good day all.

I've noticed that too, all the other crew you meet are fairly friendly, but I hadn't considered it to be a morale problem, more an issue of class as highlighted by John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett.

In my experience, as soon as the aircraft arrives at the gate, nearly everybody jumps up, grabs their bags and queues to get out. Getting them to sit down again is not the easiest of jobs...

That was before everything was privatised and funding pubic services became akin to communism. Everything is now fragmented into subcontractors and sub, sub contractors all shaving the costs with the inevitable drop in quality.

Edinburgh is an appalling airport anyway and I am thankful I no longer have to use it. Grumpy staff and arrive there after 2200 and access to the terminal from the apron may be via busses to a distant ground evel entrance. I have waitied an hour on the a/c and another hour to get past the 2 people on passports, processing 3 or 4 a/c loads of pax. Make a polite observation about poor service and you get barked at.

If we were to venture off aviation then volumes like War & Peace are easily possible on the degeneration of this country.

Are you sure you meant shaving costs 😬

Totally agree, even living closer to Edinburgh I try to avoid it if possible and use Glasgow, they seem to be far happier to see customers and Loganair were also fantastic, could not fault the crew/pilots, great service.

​​​​​​
​​​​​​That does like daily fail customers who refuse to fly X airline again until the next wave of £9.99 flights lol

i cant believe this thread is at 5 pages... in the middle of one of the worlds biggest crises...

Due to the crisis you mention, many air crew have been sat on their behinds for the past 7 months... PPRuNe provides the vent we would usually reserve for cruise chatter! You did just find time out of your crisis-ridden day to trawl through the 5 pages yourself, did you not?! ;)

I take it all back. A late set of steps at Edinburgh proved to be the downfall of Alex Cruz!

I thought it would have been the Unions...

After takeoff, before landing and after landing will be made by all operators (or a variation of) because they're mandated. Although I'm not sure why, nobody seems to be able to follow the instructions anyway.

An excellent response!

Haven't I read somewhere in the many pages elsewhere here that "BA Short-Haul is 'EasyJet where the pilots wear caps'!"?

About once a fortnight, during the time of my life when I was responsible for the ground handling of our airline as well as others we handled at a busy Middle East airport, I would go into a quiet room somewhere and pray to God (in all her various forms) to spare us from gung-ho Captains who just loved to be able to say the their admiring passengers; ".....and we are going to land 35 minutes ahead of schedule!" as though this was some kind of achievement. Early arrivals are often unavoidable, I know, but there's no point to striving for them. It disrupts everyone, including passengers, and frequently simply means sitting on a patch of tarmac, engines running, while a gate is cleared and passengers launch into their social media to complain about inefficiency. Handling equipment, and the staff to work it, are not an infinite resource.

It's a shame more people don't realise this.

6 pages! have not read all so I may be wrong - has anybody mentioned the necessity for TWO sets of steps to ensure optimum social distancing. I recently flew LGW-INV-LGW with LCC and found the cabin s-d procedures to be not fit for purpose - full loads each sector. I won't go into details but in these times two sets of steps should be mandatory, together with other COVID rules including maximum loading (middle seat free?) plus cabin rules which are currently guidance only in UK. A reasonable additional ticket cost should be accepted while train fares are typically double the average flight cost for domestic and European destinations.

As a former airline employee for several decades I flew frequently - both on and off duty. Since retirement my wife and I would normally fly several times a year for leisure, however following this experience we will not be flying again anytime soon.

Airlines need to accept that this 'new normal' is for many reasons indefinite. If they wish to keep customers they should be striving to keep them feeling safe from infection, otherwise, like us, they will find other ways to travel or stay at home.

You should have a look at the BA Executive Club forum on Flyertalk, there is a 95 page thread about lounges being closed.....