Heathrow - Terminal One!!!

[crewmeal]

Last night I arrived back from Istanbul and here is an account of what happened:

1905 - landed on schedule 27R and taxied to stand 174 (2mins from runway) only to discover no guidance system switched on

1910 - Guidance system switched on aircraft on stand. No serviceable airbridge. Capt kept us informed.

1920 - Stairs positioned to rear of the 757 - no buses

1935 - Buses arrive and passengers slowly disembark

1945 - Arrive at immigration

1955 - First bags arrive on carousel

This is the second time I have had to use this 'method' of boarding and disembarking a flight in a month at terminal one

I really feel sorry for BA as its not their fault, but what bothers me is that they are transfering 20% of the longhaul services to this hell hole of a terminal from 28th March - God help them!!!!

Will the BAA ever get their act together??

[Bluejay]

Will the BAA ever get their act together??

I doubt it!!

[PAXboy]

No - they will not. If they have Gatwick removed from their clutches - their shareholders might get the idea. No single commercial company should have a monopoly of the capitals airports.

BUT, they might be sh1te at the job of servicing customers but their are brilliant at servicing their shareholders with dosh. End of story.

[Fuzzy112]

The BAA are a money grabbing monopoly and as such really do not have to worry about the passengers who pass through their terminals. The best thing you can do is try to stay clear of anything which pays money to the BAA. So, don't spend any money in any airport shops for example and if you can, fly from an airport which has no links to the BAA, for example EMA. We need to petition to have this monopoly broken. Just like BT, eventually it will be.

[BLK 33]

Crewmeal - quite unpalatable!

Out of interest, what is it that you reckon BAA has done wrongly in this incident.........

1) Stands in Terminal 1 are allocated by BA staff.

2) Stand 174 is normally a domestic flights only stand, so if you came in on an Istanbul flight you wouldn't have been allowed off through the airbridge but would have had to have been coached anyway.

3) Coaching is arranged by BA.

4) The Stand Entry Guidance should be switched on by a BA dispatcher.

5) Stairs for the aircraft are also supplied and operated by BA.

6) Baggage handling is done by BA.

No doubt BAA/HAL can get things wrong but this doesn't seem on the face of your facts to have been caused by them. I don't know anything about the arrival but it seems possible that there was a shortage of stands to park your flight and BA did the best they could rather than keep you hanging around somewhere on the airfield till one came free.