LHR T1 Arrivals Hall late last night 27.06.07, BA Customer Service

[2infinity]

Background

As regular on the ABZ/LHR route (always with BA) I have had my fair share of delays over time. So patience and forbearance was to the fore once again yesterday, after the understandable snarl-up caused by the Hatton Cross gas leak. But these things happen and I wouldn’t dream of blaming BA for something beyond their control.

That was however, until our belated arrival at LHR (BA1317) at 2345 +/- where, although there was a stand supposedly ready, we had to endure the (not infrequent these days) farce of another delay due to there being no BA person airside to move the Jetway into position. Finally resolved by the Captain making a PA explaining he was “calling the office from his mobile” and eventually we disembarked.

Things then deteriorated further.

To cut a long story short, we had to endure another 2 hours plus wait until 0200 for our bags to turn up. Arrivals hall was jammed full with 2 x EDI flights and 1 x each of NCL, ABZ and GLA respectively, all waiting for baggage. (Interesting to note that there were only BA flights waiting, all the BMI flights been and gone)

Question

Please can anyone shed some light on why the baggage handlers and customer-facing BA people were so understaffed last night at T1? It was a really poor show and had there been more BA faces around to get stuck in and work the problem then, IMHO, the whole shambles could probably have been mitigated, or possibly avoided. It’s such a waste of passenger goodwill.

(NB Sincere thanks to an off duty BA Cabin Crew who was travelling down for a morning flight (on duty) onward to MIA. I wish I had the chap’s name (blue t-shirt IIRC) but he was the only BA representative who managed to grip the situation and tell us PAX anything. By about 0115 two other BA staff appeared and started making PA’s and getting bags up...but by then the damage had been done)

[spanishflea]

You either clearly don't fly that route very frequently or you have been very very lucky in your previous flights.

This has been par for the course for some time now. It doesn't even make the tabloids anymore :rolleyes:

[2infinity]

Spanishflea

I only fly it monthly, but factor in two family members, one who has done it weekly since 1983 and one other, like me monthly and we are talking the best part of 80 return trips a year betwixt three of us…

There are good days and bad days on this route….but yesterday was exceptional in its awfulness which has prompted my first post on Pprune.

Thanks anyway for your post.

[chrism20]

Experience has told me that BMI are now far better on any domestic route into LHR than BA, although they have their moments (and yes less flights, however less flights mean less staff!) they are far superior.

Has the training began for T5 yet? if not the situation is only going to get worse until then.

I would have expected BA to have additional staff/arrangements in place though given yesterdays disruption.

[NWT]

Basically the answer is simple; BA do not have enough staff to operate as they should. Over time they have reduced staff numbers in anticipation of T5 where supposedly they will need less staff. The staff that are left have been treated like s--t so have no interest in the job. They just don't have enough to cover all the work. When things run late/delayed etc as there is no good will the staff just say stuff it I'm off home at the end of my shift etc etc.....BA will always blame it on something else though like broken baggage belts etc....

[SXB]

I transited LHR yesterday and received a firm reminder as to why I normally avoid it like the plague.

I arrived from Tbilisi on BA (actually Bmed) and the flight was actually 5 minutes early, leaving me well in excess of 2 hours to make my connection to FRA. It then transpired our parking spot was occupied so we sat on the apron for 25 minutes. Once we'd parked the Captain came on the PA and said there were no steps or bus waiting for us so we waited another 20 minutes. Then he came on again and said the steps had arrived but no bus. Another 10 mins. When the bus finally arrived the Captain said " due to LHR ground operations we are now 1 hour late. Profuse apologies for this but it seems it's easier to put a man on the moon than organise aircraft arrivals at London LHR' You could hear the exasperation in his voice so it's not just the pax who suffer when using LHR.

The fun and games continued as I attempted to transit to T1, it seems T1 can only handle bus arrivals one at a time so there was a huge queue of buses waiting to drop off passengers. Once in T1 I had to wait in some sort of holding area for nearly an hour before being allowed to proceed to security. The point of this seemed to be an attempt to control passenger numbers in the security hall. I now know how cattle feel. Those of us with business class tickets were not allowed to proceed directly to the fast track in security and once in the security hall fast track was no quicker than the normal queues. So, no advantage in having a €2.5k ticket, everybody is treated as being equally worthless.

After finally getting through my flight to FRA should have been long gone but, surprise surprise, it was running late so I was able to board. I wasn't entirely surprised to find that my luggage hadn't made it to FRA.

The outward leg, LHR-TBS was also late, when we boarded the captain apologised for the delay saying 'the baggage handlers didn't turn up for 90 minutes to unload the aircraft after arrival from it's previous destination' Not sure who's fault that was. The plane then sat on the stand for more than two hours because of bad weather (this was 22/6 from 14.30 onwards) Net result being arrival in Tbilisi at 01.00 instead of 22.00.

To conclude, LHR should be treated like the bubonic plague, keep away at all costs. The quality of the management which run the place can only be compared to some I've come across running airports in western Africa and provincial Russia. If these clowns had any serious competition they'd be out of business within weeks.

LHR should renamed Jurassic Park, maybe the airport code SHT would also be appropriate.

[WHBM]

We have a new government transport minister now. Will one of her first steps be to get Willie Walsh in and tell him to get the whole BA operation at Heathrow sorted out, and that coming in within budget is not to be the sole, overriding concern of his management, nor the "stuff the passengers" attitude of them ?

In passing CAA figures reflect on-time departures and landings, but not waiting for a stand or final delivery of baggage. It's about time the CAA (perhaps booted up the a**e by said minister) started recording all this as well (eg time of last bag on belt, or percentage of baggage interconnect failures on transfers within MCT). Then I feel there would be some improvement.

[spanishflea]

2infinity,

I only fly it monthly, but factor in two family members, one who has done it weekly since 1983 and one other, like me monthly and we are talking the best part of 80 return trips a year betwixt three of us…

OK understood. Some definitions of "frequently" vary wildly depending on who you speak to. A family doing it 4 times a year would see that as a regular trip, whereas the chap commuting back and forth 3 or 4 times a week might see things a bit differently!

The last few weeks in particular have been very very bad.

My advice simply is:

Don't check bags

Fly to LGW if you have any alternative

Don't transit terminals in the peak times (0700-0900 and 1400-1500ish)

If you feel you can't abide by this advice, then you really should be looking at alternative airlines and airports.

[slim_slag]

BAA (or its owner) are suggesting they aren't going to spend the money to do up T1 and T2 unless the CAA let's them charge their customers more money.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article2003065.ece


Just out of interest, to show how they think. In the article they claim that most passengers, if asked when queuing at security, would be willing to pay an extra £3 to get through to the departure lounge in only three minutesIgnoring the inconvenient fact that all passengers have already paid for security clearance, what does this mean in money terms.

BAA claim Heathrow processes 67.7 million passengers per annum. Assuming half are departing, that's c. 34 million people and they want to charge £3 each. That's an extra 100 million quid they are positioning for. Wonder how much it would actually cost to provide a 3 minute screening service? LHR needs totally deregulating, if that means airlines and airport operators go to the wall then tough.

[manintheback]

SpanishFlea - your advice about go via Gatwick if poss instead. Gatwick South is worse than any terminal of Heathrow in my opinion. I'm currently pursuing BAA for refund on a lounge due to the well in excess of an hours queue at Security, allied to 2 hour check in open time they now dictate meaning we couldnt use said lounge (and therefore no-body else can - bit of a con really)

BAA are an utter disgrace. The only way of resolving this mess is for the Government to step in and order a big reduction in the number of passengers allowed through the 3 BAA airports - and yes that means less flights, until BAA have demonstrated they have the infrastructure avail to process the numbers. I note that the Financial Times recently carried an article with some senior business dudes slating what occurs at LHR.

As for BA and arrivals/departures problems, there is a recent thread (or 2?) by the pros blasting BA ground handling ops or lack of.

[Final 3 Greens]

maybe the airport code SHT would also be appropriate

And CRP for Gatwick and PSS for Stansted.

[Avman]

Same as the ATC world I live in, it all comes down to seriously incompetent management with seriously flawed ideas of what equates to cost effective operations. They are so intensely focused on reducing costs at the expense of staff numbers and staff motivation that they fail to recognise that in the longer term they will no longer provide an acceptable level of service to the customer. What is happening to aviation today is the culmination of several years of atrociously bad management in many spectres of the industry. Of course they churn out pathetic spin to cover their monumental failings (you can't expect managers to admit they're crap at their job can you), and the circus just goes on and on. I'd like to think that all will be fine when I retire and no longer have to work for these buffoons, but it wont: I will still have to endure the fruits of their incompetence for many more years as a customer ! :mad:

[amanoffewwords]

Forget where I saw it (BBC London news perhaps) but some senior City gent was being interviewed re the Crossrail project: as an aside he said that the general consensus in the City is that pax are being treated as a nuisance and if you factor in the Qs, security issues, lack of space, capacity, the general layout of the place etc then you have potential investors & financial institutions thinking twice about locating in or around London. The bottom line was "if you want to be a world class airport you have to provide the appropriate level of service".

I very much doubt that Ruthie will be able to help in any sense - her track record isn't exactly spectacular.:=

[manintheback]

How it should be done.

I left a friends apartment in Central Amsterdam at 8:30am this morning. Tram followed by Train To Schiphol. On the plane which departed at 10:15am - 15 mins late. Arrived Gatwick (North) and in Long term Car park at 11:25 CET.

[Dan Air 87]

For my pennyworth; I fly LGW-ABZ but have to use LHR T3/ T4 for long haul flights. LHR T1 is a disgrace and if I am transitting through there I prefer to take cabin baggage.

Its also a nightmare going from T1 to T4 to connect with a long haul flight which reminds me of another airport where this chaos occurs daily- that airport is Mumbai. Where does the fault lie? Its between BA and BAA. yet other airlines-such as bmi manage to get by.

Another post here has mentioned how bad LGW South is these days and I can vouch for that. I passed by yesterday on my way to the North Terminal and the security queue was snaking back beyond Easyjet's area. Having said that and felt smug for a few seconds, my face dropped when I saw the queue at the North terminal and this was just as bad. Then I had my flight with BA to round off a bad day... I'll have to take the risk and switch to bmi into LHR. Happy days.

[SXB]

Just an update on my LHR experience yesterday.

I received my luggage about an hour ago. My very expensive Rimowa aluminum case arrived in a black bag and had, very clearly, been run over by a fairly heavy vehicle. Obviously, the very nice bottle of Georgian red wine I'd purchased and carefully packed, not being able to carry it in the cabin of course, didn't survive. Nor did my mouthwash, toothpaste, shaving gel, aftershave etc. In fact, all these liquids have now nicely soaked themselves into a weeks worth of clothing, giving off a rather unique bouquet. Very kindly, BA had the foresight to include a claim form in my decapitated luggage; nice chaps....

[2infinity]

Thanks for all your various replies, suggestions and insight.

LGW is indeed an option I should investigate more thoroughly, although part of my thinking behind picking the last service of the day to LHR was that there was less likely to be a foul-up at that time of the night, notwithstanding surprise dramas such as Hatton Cross.

While things were compounded this week by the gas leak, this is not the first time I have experienced the “no jetway, no bags scenario” on the last flight of the evening. I once had this whilst one of a total of only eleven pax on an A320: A peculiar experience to say the least!

Perhaps I will give BMI another chance. I flirted with them briefly a year or so ago until, on their last flight of the day from ABZ, we arrived early…only for a 1.5 hour wait for bags due to a hold door problem. Again, speaking for myself it would have been forgiven, if only we hadn’t had to wait for an hour before the problem was explained…

In summary: it’s a lottery and I suspect travelling without checked in luggage as Spanlishflea suggests is sound advice.

NWT and Avman I think you also have both hit the nail on the head and couldn’t agree more.

When will airlines realise that [some] passengers will forgive many a cock-up, drama, unforeseen event or shambles on the ground if there is a reasonably competent person in the departure lounge/arrivals hall who will speak up and tell us what on earth is going on? This means, no matter how late the flight, someone has to be on hand to take responsibility.

Let’s hope that T5 is all that it is cracked up to be…or it’s back to the night sleeper for me, God forbid! :bored:

[PAXboy]

Avman Same as the ATC world I live in, it all comes down to seriously incompetent management with seriously flawed ideas of what equates to cost effective operations. They are so intensely focused on reducing costs at the expense of staff numbers and staff motivation that they fail to recognise that in the longer term they will no longer provide an acceptable level of service to the customer. What is happening to aviation today is the culmination of several years of atrociously bad management in many spectres of the industry.
Firstly Avman, I really like your slip of the keyboard with 'spectres' when you probably meant 'sectors'? :ok:

I have seen this kind of behaviour in several other commercial 'spectres' and you are right about the focus on costs, which is driven by the fact their the manager's personal fortune is judged by cost saving and NOT happy customers. That is because you can measure cost more easily than happy customers ...

The other dark figure in this management mess is: Outsourcing. On paper this always looks good but the results are a fragmentation of your service and a loss of control. You cannot fix a problem if you cannot reach out and grab the throat of the miscreant and threaten them with demotion/the sack/loss of bonus/whatever.

You cannot fix the customer baggage problem that is happening NOW, if you have to send a carefully worded letter to the outsourced company complaining that they failed to meet section 58.4 of the agreement. Lastly, you cannot treat staff badly for ten years and expect them to love your customers. As the Post Office has just discovered.

As I have said in these forums before, I saw outsourcing start in the USA in 1988 and nothing in the following 19 years has made me like it.

As I have said in these forums before, the reduction of head count in customer service - and it's replacement by automation - is one of the stupidest things any company can do. When it's job is dealing with the general public when they are in a strange and (sometimes) frightning environment, it is ... Nope, words fail me.

[SXB]

The other dark figure in this management mess is: Outsourcing. On paper this always looks good but the results are a fragmentation of your service and a loss of control. You cannot fix a problem if you cannot reach out and grab the throat of the miscreant and threaten them with demotion/the sack/loss of bonus/whatever.I only agree partly with that comment. My own experiences tell me that outsourcing certain services can work, a lot depends on the environment in which you are operating. I work for an organisation where employee practices are extremely restrictive, maybe similar to certain aviation companies. There is nothing I can do about these practices, employees recruited on permanent contracts are untouchable and if they decide to be inflexable there is nothing I can do about it. Yes, it's the fault of my organisation but it's the world in which I live.

So, I outsource certain activities in order to improve the quality of the services I'm providing. That said I'm very careful about what I outsource. As a general rule of thumb I won't outsource anything I consider to be a 'value added' service, if there is human contact then it stays 'in house' Anything relating to providing customer service is a definate no for outsourcing. I'm only doing this on a fairly small scale, and it's worth pointing out that I'm not using companies which provide similar services in the same place to multiple companies (like in an airport) nor are they geographically distant from me.

Sure, there are some other fairly serious evils associated with outsourcing which cause all sorts of problems, individuals provided by outsourcing are earning considerably less than my own employees but are often doing a similar job and, sometimes, side by side. It's never a problem to begin with but often becomes one.

I would prefer not to use outsourcing but, like everyone else I'm not in complete control of everything that happens in my organisation and I'm often using outsourcing because of our own restrictive practices. Again, I think a lot of aviation companies may be in the same boat.

[chrism20]

LHR T1 is a lottery at anytime of the day and you stand as much chance if not more of a delay on the last service of the day as you do the first as they are trying to catch up with the delayed services. If you are on the last service of the day you may well end up on a remote stand as the a/c may not be the first one back out in the morning.

My own personal opinion as to why BMI are better on the baggage front is that they have a lot less transit bags as unlike the BA website BMI will not allow you to make crazy connections.

[slim_slag]

BAA Accounts make interesting reading( PDF http://www.baa.com/annualreview07/our_performance/BAA_accounts_final.pdf). Not an accountant, but what I think are pertinent facts about Heathrow.

LHR 'Aeronautical' charge per customer £8.67, up 8.9% y/y. Yes, they are allowed to raise their charges by RPI + 6.5%. Good business to be in. These charges are up for review, and will be set between RPI + 4% and RPI +8%. BAA complaining it's not enough. They make another £4-5 per passenger on their retail side.

LHR Revenue, 9 months to 31/12/06 £869m. Operating profit £330m - that's 38%. Plenty of companies would die for that.

Hard to get figures on money spent on security, figures mostly in press releases so likely to be spin. They currently spend well less than £3 per passenger on security, so saying they want another £3 to do a proper job is taking the mickey, IMO. One suspects they want to make security a profit centre, which really isn't what security should be.

If BAA are threatening to not develop T1 and T2 then perhaps they should be forced to sell them and let somebody else run them. They must be worth a fiver, maybe ten quid? That would get competition on the airfield itself. I'm not sure how it would work in practice but I am sure smarter people than me do.

[Avman]

Firstly Avman, I really like your slip of the keyboard with 'spectres' when you probably meant 'sectors'?

Oops :\, actually I meant to type "spectra" and got distracted. But "sectors" will do fine too. I won't edit it now as this would then invalidate the opening paragraph in your last post. And, yes, it's a widespread desease affecting many industries.

[PAXboy]

SXB Fair comment which I accept 100%. My main work has been in telecommunications and so got taken for the Outsourcing ride early on. Many folks think that IT is not customer facing but when the IT equipment of customer facing people fails ...

[Can't resist] When that happens, another spectre looms, with a ;) to Avman!