BA - this flight must have cost them! Thanks!
Supercalifragilistic
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Join Date: Sep 2001
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BA - this flight must have cost them! Thanks!
Last Monday I was doing LCY-EDI-LCY.
The outbound flight was delayed 2 hours. The inbound form Geneva had a tech problem. So £10 breakfast vouchers all round. All the other flights to EDI for the next few hours were full so no chance to transfer.
I tried to change the return onto a later flight but ScotAir was the only option. BA would not transfer me, apparently they are in dispute with ScotAir over endorsing tickets and ScotAir are not in IATA. The only option was to take a return to LGW. I took it so that I had time to do my meeting, but asked for BA to supply a transfer from LGW back to LCY.
The flight up was on a wet leased Flightline ( http://www.flightline.ltd.uk/ ) - good flight, crew etc.
On the way back I was paged as we arrived at Gatwick, met at the door and once they had helped the wheelchair pax off, taken to meet the driver booked to drive me to LCY.
Although the delay and the knock on effects made this a much longer day than planned, providing a back up aircraft, switching my ticket and getting me back to my car stopped me from having to cancel the day's meetings. I doubt passengers would have got that sort of back up on a Low Cost. Ticket price? £6 more than I would have paid for the EasyJet flight I had looked at.
Well done BA!
Oh and London City were great too, I called to tell them I was going to be back after they closed - I had Valet Parked (It's free!). They put the car keys with security and told me where to collect them. Then when I picked the keys up I was told they had included a parking pass to let me out for free! I can only assume as they knew I had had a day of disrupted travel - very thoughtful and good service.
The outbound flight was delayed 2 hours. The inbound form Geneva had a tech problem. So £10 breakfast vouchers all round. All the other flights to EDI for the next few hours were full so no chance to transfer.
I tried to change the return onto a later flight but ScotAir was the only option. BA would not transfer me, apparently they are in dispute with ScotAir over endorsing tickets and ScotAir are not in IATA. The only option was to take a return to LGW. I took it so that I had time to do my meeting, but asked for BA to supply a transfer from LGW back to LCY.
The flight up was on a wet leased Flightline ( http://www.flightline.ltd.uk/ ) - good flight, crew etc.
On the way back I was paged as we arrived at Gatwick, met at the door and once they had helped the wheelchair pax off, taken to meet the driver booked to drive me to LCY.
Although the delay and the knock on effects made this a much longer day than planned, providing a back up aircraft, switching my ticket and getting me back to my car stopped me from having to cancel the day's meetings. I doubt passengers would have got that sort of back up on a Low Cost. Ticket price? £6 more than I would have paid for the EasyJet flight I had looked at.
Well done BA!
Oh and London City were great too, I called to tell them I was going to be back after they closed - I had Valet Parked (It's free!). They put the car keys with security and told me where to collect them. Then when I picked the keys up I was told they had included a parking pass to let me out for free! I can only assume as they knew I had had a day of disrupted travel - very thoughtful and good service.
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Memetic wrote : "I doubt passengers would have got that sort of back up on a Low Cost. Ticket price? £6 more than I would have paid for the EasyJet flight I had looked at."
I fully agree. That is exactly what makes the difference between FS- and LC Carriers. An EZ flight to ZRH was impaired last winter by bad wheater to start from England. It stood on the ticket: in such cases, no refund, no rebooking. And nobody in sight to ask for help. In others words: Bad luck? Get lost... All other companies were already fully booked. I resorted to take the Eurostar to Paris and the TGV to Zurich! A nice but long ride that left a big hole in my wallet. On the next occasion, I flew with a FSC...
By the way: a Swiss airline based in ZRH has introduced a kind of half FS-half LC concept, Helvetic.com. Any destination (in Europe), regardless the time of the booking over internet, cost 99 euros one way without taxes. And one can change his/her booking until a few hours before start. It's not as cheap as a LCC, but cheaper as a FSC (although one has to pay for food and drinks on board), and gives enough flexibility to revise travel plans on short notice. Tickets are also transferable to another person for 25 euros.
I fully agree. That is exactly what makes the difference between FS- and LC Carriers. An EZ flight to ZRH was impaired last winter by bad wheater to start from England. It stood on the ticket: in such cases, no refund, no rebooking. And nobody in sight to ask for help. In others words: Bad luck? Get lost... All other companies were already fully booked. I resorted to take the Eurostar to Paris and the TGV to Zurich! A nice but long ride that left a big hole in my wallet. On the next occasion, I flew with a FSC...
By the way: a Swiss airline based in ZRH has introduced a kind of half FS-half LC concept, Helvetic.com. Any destination (in Europe), regardless the time of the booking over internet, cost 99 euros one way without taxes. And one can change his/her booking until a few hours before start. It's not as cheap as a LCC, but cheaper as a FSC (although one has to pay for food and drinks on board), and gives enough flexibility to revise travel plans on short notice. Tickets are also transferable to another person for 25 euros.
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Thanks again Memetic, it is a breath of fresh air to hear some positive feedback about BA for a change. I am away for a while but I am sure that bealine will feed this back to our guys.
Memetic:
Glad you found London City (my local airport) great too. I always feel London City must be an embarrassment to other UK airports because it shows what is actually possible in customer relationship, training of staff, etc - all the things that other airports would love to say are "not possible".
The security staff are an excellent example. Not only are they pleasant, polite, and completely free of the "attitude" often found elsewhere, but are good at the job too - last November 6th evening they found a packet of childrens' sparklers in my colleague's briefcase on the way home that had been missed on his outward trip that morning. All this has to be down to the calibre of management. LCY seem to have it. Other airports just don't.
Glad you found London City (my local airport) great too. I always feel London City must be an embarrassment to other UK airports because it shows what is actually possible in customer relationship, training of staff, etc - all the things that other airports would love to say are "not possible".
The security staff are an excellent example. Not only are they pleasant, polite, and completely free of the "attitude" often found elsewhere, but are good at the job too - last November 6th evening they found a packet of childrens' sparklers in my colleague's briefcase on the way home that had been missed on his outward trip that morning. All this has to be down to the calibre of management. LCY seem to have it. Other airports just don't.
