Bumped from BA First in Beijing
 

Sitting in Beijing lounge about to return to Europe via BKK and get home only half a day late ! better than the extra day offered in Beijing, when I was looking forward to a weekend at home with family before hitting the road again on Monday.

One presumes that part of the premium high priced offering in First Class, is that once you have paid for the seat it is guaranteed. Arriving at check in 1.5 hrs before departure to be told that First is overbooked and I have been bumped does not generate confidence in BA as an organisation.

Overbooking in First is surely kicking the ar*e out of it BA. And then leaving one, only one BA ground staff rep on duty to run around and solve your premium pax problem in between solving the other 100 normal problems she has on a departure. Poor girl !!

Totally unacceptable :=

BA management continues its policy of alienating its premium pax :}

If it makes you feel any better, its happened to me on two other air-lines. One of which I held Gold and a guarantee of a seat being made available in whatever class I booked at 24 hours notice...

I've been bumped from Business Class a couple of times around Europe with various airlines, which is not quite the same I know, but I think it happens more often than you would think:suspect: . Its not happened longhaul yet, but you can guarentee I would be creating a stink if it did..:mad:

Regards, SD..

Personally , I would find that in First Class , given the fares , overbooking is not acceptable , no arguments , no excuses . I guess BA has lost another customer , that sort of service is not of quality . Simple .

How can they ever get away with calling themselves 'The World's Favourite Airline'?

Just like managers who say -" no that's not true " when discussing with those who work at the sharp end . Where will it all end ? Certainly the 'managers' all seem to survive !

Back home now, after a bit of a short cut, via BKK and ZRH. Thanks BA for giving me a good look at Swissair First, great bed, great service, shame they only have a few routes.

Well
Didnt realise tll now that BA first class NEVER hd NO SHOWS!

"A NO SHOW is my privilege! Lossses to the airline due to my NO SHOW is not my headache!"

RSO man, I expect that the price in First factors in the odd no-show for most airlines. Wouldn't have minded so much if there was more than one flight a day from PEK, but there is not.

Surely a no-show has already paid for their seat anyway? Especially in First!!!? Or do you mean cancellation?
There is absolutely no excuse for overbooking First. Period.

Goshdarnit

Flexible tickets (e.g. F and J, even Y) can and do no show with impunity.

Some companies block book seats in anticipation of travel needs and then no show them.

Of course airlines will overbook F, based on predicitve modelling of yields, but but it is customer relations disaster when they bump a passenger.

Were I RMAC, I would be absolutely furious and would be seeking major compensation as well as the re-routing.

Gosh Phileas....when was the last time you heard BA refer to themselves as the worlds favourite??? Im sure it was at least 12 years or so now since they used that as their slogan!!!!
Things have changed, its no longer about good customer service, its about profits and if you think its just BA then you are very niave! Im sure most of you in here are business people moreso than 1950's aviation romantics so you will be familiar with the concept of stretching revenue to maintain profits. Although we may not like the way certain companies/industries go about it its something we have to live with. It may happen to you on BA now hence you will switch your loyalty to say..Air France, but it will only be a matter of time before Air France do it to you too, then you will move elsewhere, same will happen until it has gone full circle!
Its not the over booking that should make you decide whether to ditch that particular airline but how its dealt with and what compensation you get in the end!!!

Sorry PaddyUK . The bottom line is service . The more you pay - L450 in economy or L5000 in First makes the difference , that's BUSINESS . There is no excuse for overbooking in First - that's part of what one pays for . The bottom line maybe shareholder profits but it's the customer who makes the profit - especially the First Class one , he should not be let down by shortsighted managers who only think of the bonus or promotion . If BA continues to carry on with this policy then I would think that the BA managers are not seriously thinking about BA's (and their) future .

Let us make all first class tickets non refundable and then guarantee a no -overbooking policy. Any takers???

By the way when I started off in this industry more than a decade back, the first case I came accross of bumping in first was on---- BA!

So hardly mind boggling news this one !!!! I would say they woke up much earlier than others!

And ofcourse - the choice is always there - you can always risk having half empty first class cabins and end up by having first removed altogether - as many airlines have done!!!

It is not that I dont sympathise with rmac, but being on the other side of the fence, I also understand that sometimes there have to be ruthless economic decisions as well! Just like Ryan Air or Easy Jet has become "My (employer's) favourite airline", it all comes to this one word "Profit".

Overbooking , even on first has become more or less standard pratice nowadays. Mostly as F3G said , the predictive modelling works,- when it does not - then it becomes news!


Cheers

RSOman,

I am not sure that I catch your logic. Full fare Y class, which is flexible, is considerably more expensive than than the non-refundable type. If they sold F tickets, non-refundable at the same percentage discount as they operate in Y class, I would say "hell yes !, give me more". As it is, with fares as they stand, my 90kg carcass is equivalent in average fare to 450kg's down the back, as well as 30kg of baggage vs. 110kg down the back. I would also imagine that the real estate takes up a little less space too, but real estate doesn't use 5x more fuel, check in time, baggage handlers, ticketing agents etc etc.

777 from Beijing has 12 seats in first, maybe +/-60 in business and probably 250+ in economy. Overbooking by 1 seat in First has an 8.33% chance of an upset, if I asked you to go for an operation in hospital which had an 8.33% chance of dying, would you be keen to try the odds? The same percentage conservatively applied to business and economy would have the airline looking to re-book 5 business pax and 21 economy pax alternative flights on every 777 service.

I would think that smart policy would be as follows;

1. Overbook economy by 5-10 seats, from the 250+ there are bound to be tourists or similar who would enjoy an extra night at destination.

2. Overbook business by 2-3 seats, on the offchance that everyone turns up see point 3.

3. Underbook first by 2 seats, then if everyone turns up for business, and one first passenger (8.33% of the load) fails to show, you can upgrade 3 long term gold card pax as a goodwill gesture (rather than downgrading or offloading 3 business pax to try another airlines comparative service). As a 7 year LH Senator and 5 year SQ Solitaire I can confirm that I have been on the receipt of numerous upgrades for that very reason, indeed LH issues Senators an upgrade voucher per 50,000 miles flown, which can, as one option, be used at the gate if space is available. If on the offchance, the forecasts are perfect, then a little exclusivity with some empty seats in First does not go amiss in generating that vote winning ambience that keeps customers coming back. Except on BA of course when they will be quickly filled with staff travel, captains wife, cabin crews boy/girlfriends etc.


Once again, Beijing, one service a day, few other options, especially on a Friday, taking an 8.33% chance of a serious upset of a premium passenger is a bit reckless imho :(

Another quick question RSOman, when you say "other side of the fence" are you representative of management from an airline ? as your brief says "travel consultant" which traditionally would see you representing the passenger as your customer, not the airline as a service provider :confused:

And PaddyinUK, your brief indicates cabin crew. I would have thought it very unusual that an airline gives sight of its P+L management decisions to those delivering the service. I am in a service industry, at fairly senior level (as you might guess from the F class travel), and I am certainly not familiar with "stretching revenue" , a phrase on its own, which hardly conveys an impression of integrity. At the end of the day, those making such business decisions are playing with your jobs !

Hey Rmac
Thanks for reminding. Been a while since I posted last. Have modified my profile suitably!

How about the dedicated cabin crew, the superior food (with all the attendant wastages) ,cost of maintaining a lounge (even if shared) for one or two flights , and all those other "first" perks! Not exactly cheap aren't they? Plus the dedicated cabins which sometimes go half empty!

I guess in reality the overbooking would more or less have been twice or thrice the figure you mentioned for first (have you already gone into shock?).
May not be for all routes but certain routes certainly will qualify for the high overbooking!


Think about how many times you had to change that first class reservation 2 or 3 days before the intended travel date and then think how easy it is for the airline to fill up that high price seat you have let go at short notice? Will people travelling first class on BA take an airport chance if the flight is booked out 10 days back? No - ofcourse you will go to LX or AF or elsewhere for a "guaranteed seat.

Get real - nowadays every penny in revenue counts! Loyalty - well.. recent events have shown that that is a word which has lost its meaning !

If I were you I would still enjoy the first class when it is still available , overbooking or not! Dont expect it to last too much longer!

rsoman, I rarely eat on board, normally either watch movies, read or sleep (mostly), my needs are guaranteed availability, not to have anyone else climbing over me, or trying to converse while I am trying to relax, and getting to my destination in a good frame of mind to either do good business (outbound) or be a good father to my kids (inbound).

My most valuable commodity is time, and the best use of it. The protection of my time is what I pay for more than any bottle of Dom Perignon.

I rarely cancel a flight at the last minute, if I cannot plan at least a week in advance I am not running my business very well from a strategic view.

Having said all that, I generally find that two class airlines try to make their business service a little special and if F goes it goes, but until then, maybe they should try harder !

Write to BA and tell them what you think of the cr@p service you recieved. Being bumped in First is nothing but cr@p.

I am absolutely astonished considering how few seats there are in First, and how much the tickets cost that BA would dream of overbooking.

Just make sure BA are absolutely clear on your views of their cr@p service.

Sounds like you've been pretty polite about all this, I'm not sure I would.

You guys have it easy

Flying Kras Air TU-154's internally in Russia (in a previous life) I often boarded the a/c to find.... shock horror... NO BUSINESS CLASS!!

Even though I had a Business class Ticket (3 times the price of Economy).

The Russians however can be truly f*****d up, and it only invoked mild surprise on my part. Of course, ask for a refund and they'd laugh in your face.

Just for the record, as Easyjet was mentioned in an earlier posting with reference to commercial based decisions, easyjet and Ryanair do not overbook seats.

flash8

Certain airlines (BMI regional?) do this frequently within Europe. Though they do hang a piece of cloth in the aisle to help ensure you know which of the identical seats are in the 'business' cabin.

Just a thought. HMG Dignitaries at a certain level of (self?) importance tend to be accomodated at virtually no notice at all, and there are quite a few of those on the Beijing route.

flash8, had the opposite happen to me in China domestic. I wanted to buy business, but was told there wasn't any business. On boarding, lo and behold, a large empty business class cabin. I pointed this out to the chief cabin crew and she apologised and invited me to take a seat in business.

I do work in both China and Russia, and it appears to me that the Chinese seem to be in front in their conversion from communism to free market.

10 second you are so right !

manintheback You may have something there. I spoke this morning with BA customer service supervisor in Bremen. He told me that BA does not overbook First, he has checked the loading and appears, on the face of it, to be mystified. I will keep you posted.

Keep us posted mac.

flash8I recall a trip with a colleague from New York to Dallas with Delta. My colleague from our Paris office had a business class ticket, but of course there was only first and coach on the plane!

An hour of haggling followed. They would not let him sit in first (I had a first ticket), finally my mate said 'Okay I'll pay the differnce myself and recalim it. How much'

It was 26 bucks! An hour's grief for 26 bucks. We could have been on the lash!

RMAC...You may want to listen to this too because yes, I am actually BA cabin crew!!!

As I said, BA Management are trying to stretch revenues as much as possible. Much of the management come from other industries and are not familiar with "good" customer service and feel they can make decisions as there will always be others who clean up the mess...e.g...the crew and the ground staff!!! These managers think their policies which have a detremental effect on the customer are acceptable when they are clearly not. So yes, BA is being let down by short sighted managers and both the passengers and the crew/ground staff are left to suffer. This has been going on for many years and is still only the tip of the iceberg. You may moan that its the Willie effect but I assure you that its been going on a lot longer then that.

Now I may only be a lonesome cabin crew member but I am doing a business degree, have a strong management head on me and also a lot of common sense so I feel confident enough to understand the rational of BA management but also to disagree and criticise it.

Sadly, the bottom line is no longer service but infact profit earning and empire building at BA!

HOWEVER.... I would recommend that if you are not happy with BA and decide to move away from the airline (please dont, I need my job to pay of uni) please send a letter explaining exactly why you are leaving. I do know that there are some people in the airline capable of listening still and can bring about change!!! Or maybe its just be being niave!!!

rmac
******
rarely cancel a flight at the last minute, if I cannot plan at least a week in advance I am not running my business very well from a strategic view.
***

I used to cheer people like you (as mentioned I was an erstwhile travel agent) but the sad fact is that there are lot of others (especially in upper class- who mostly seemed to travel on expense accounts) who were the exact opposite. Wants to hold on to duplicate bookings in every possible airline for three days before and after their eventual travel, never bothered to inform if they decide not to travel , etc etc. Imagine the havoc such people create on airline revenues and inventory control? Airlines pay a fortune in GDS (reservation system) costs and an unacceptably high percentage of that comes from fictitious/duplicate bookings. This was also a contributory factor in airlines adopting practices which I would agree are not exactly desirable.

But as I have mentioned many times, like you are keen to ensure that your business does well, the airline managers also have to make sure they run their business equally well - they are also answerable to their shareholders.

Final3Greens mentioned in an earlier post

****
Flexible tickets (e.g. F and J, even Y) can and do no show with impunity.

Some companies block book seats in anticipation of travel needs and then no show them.
****

This is 100% true and as long these continue to remain at unacceptable levels you always have situations like the unfortunate one you experienced.

Blame your fellow pax, dont blame the airline! And be a little understanding next time you face a similar situation instead of joining the growing tribe here who blame airline managers for each and every evil in the industry conveniently forgetting the fact that in many cases it was the action of those ranting the loudest who made the situation bad in the first place!

There is another thread in the same forum about "Emirates Marketing Madness" where in there was a a similar rant about Frequent Flyer "victimisation" until someone who could understand what was going on (Globaliser) put things in perspective.

apaddyinuk
****
Sadly, the bottom line is no longer service but infact profit earning and empire building at BA!
*****


I dont know about empire building, but the former atleast is among the factors helping you retain your job !


Cheers

paddyinuk, good post, and yes you are right the management induces a negative reaction from both service deliverers and customers. This may temporarily spike profits, but can never pay in the medium to long term.

rsoman, you haven't indicated what you are currently employed as since you noted that you are an ex-travel consultant. I am beginning to think you work in BA management. I disagree wholeheartedly with your approach summed up by inviting me to blame my fellow pax/airline customers, and affecting a very imperious tone when you instruct us all to "show a little understanding" to the poor old airline management. I would also ask you to re-read the posts in this thread, as far as I can see, it is an ocean of reasonableness, punctuated only by provocative rants by none other than you. Have you been taking lessons from the CEO of Ryanair ?

When one of my management starts blaming the customers as an excuse for not delivering the right service or not obtaining decent results, its time for me to put a P45 in the post to him.

For how long? Until the service has been cut so much that the customers will flock elsewhere where their custom brings value and the company begins to downsize all at the price of maximising profits in the short term instead of building a sustainable valued product for the long term?

Have you been taking lessons from the CEO of Ryanair ?
*****

What if I do? If it makes my company's balance sheet looks good, I dont care. ! And this particular one doesnt look like going down in the long term either unlike what Paddy predicts!

Paddy - Airline managers may make unpalatable decisions for the good of the company. You as a cabin crew/others in customer service are employed to make them palatable for the customers! The managers do their job, you do yours!

Passeger Loyalty - May be the word had some meaning earlier - not now!
Airlines can only be run well by managers from within the industry- another long obsolete theory!

Please remember that an airline is not a charity to help you run your business at its expense!

rsoman quoted me and then said...

This is 100% true and as long these continue to remain at unacceptable levels you always have situations like the unfortunate one you experienced.

I would like to distance myself from this quote and say that a core competence of airline management is costing in the no shows and not p&ssing off premium pax like rmac by witholding a service that they have paid for.

People who travel in F are people whose time is literally money (the same often applies to J pax too) and they pay a considerable premium for the service levels, with an implied understanding that they will be received the highest standards of service, in every respect.

The cost of missing a meeting could be many, many times the cost of the F ticket.

Bumping pax from F is crass.

Of course, the aircraft could have had a defective seat, but I would have expected a better solution than just bumping the pax off.

You cost in the no shows - then your cost per seat goes up and then your "loyal" FIRST customer goes off elsewhere!
BA as I understand made a proft for the first time after TEN years in their FIRST product and I guess some of it is due to policies that threw idealism out of the window and looked at making money instead!

RSOman

"The airline may is not a charity".

Now lets examine that comment. For GBP5000, I could buy a decent second hand small car or sports motorbike, or have a week in a five star hotel somewhere rather nice. Or I could buy 2x 10 hours in a half decent flat seat in which I can sleep, though I would get a much bigger bed in a railway carriage or cross channel ferry for a tenth of the price.

Stop the press !, my oath ! you are so right the airline is not a charity :ugh:

Now as a GA light twin driver, who uses his aircraft for business trips around Central Europe, let me alert you to who is being subsidised. I pay almost twice as much per litre of fuel as the airlines do, given they are exempt from all fuel taxes on their AOC. I use my aircraft for private transport I pay the lot ! I also use the services of Eurocontrol, and the ATC system while on an IFR plan. With my lovely mode S transponder they are able to, and do, rack up significant service charges on every flight. These are much higher than they used to be, and you can compare with the US where they are free to light GA. Eurocontrol and national air traffic organisations have been under constant pressure from the airlines to bring charges against light aviation, which are way out of proportion to the service used compared to airlines.
Question here is, who is being subsidised :confused:

rsoman

I guess some of it is also due to the lowering of the airline's cost base.

BTW, it does not take any great skill to produce a short term profit - a tough policy of driving down cost is all that is required. Of course, in the longer term it is a diferent matter and the average lifespan of Fortune 500 companies over the years tells its own story.

"Customer Loyalty", an oxymoron were there ever one, is based on the whole experience, not just the price and people talk about it.

I bet rmac has told lots of people of his experience and there is plenty of research to show that satisfied customers tell a few people about their good experience, whilst dissatisfied tell many.

What about us cheapskates in the back? Our time is money too. Why would I give significant chunks of extra money to an airline for very little of value in return when I can put it in the bank so I can retire earlier?

Ah Slim

Why would I give significant chunks of extra money to an airline for very little of value in return when I can put it in the bank so I can retire earlier?

Them what travel F rarely pay for it personally :} I certainly don't and neither do you when you travel J or F either :ok:

But to extend your way of thinking, what is the point of spending all the extra dosh on F if you get turfed off?

apaddyinukAs I say (probably too often) this is just what EVERY biz does. I know that we are discussing one particular airline in a forum for airlines but many folks give the impression that they have never met this kind of corporate behaviour before. I see it in almost every company that I use. Last Saturday dear old Hilton Hotels failed the test. The BA special promotion ground to a halt upon arrival at 20:30 and the room ordered was not available. Fortunately, I had printed confirmation from their web site and a compromise was reached. Now to write the letter.

rsomanIs that because of the way in which they have sliced up the costs and revenue? Have they done one of those projects to work out what percentage of the cost of the flight supports First/Biz/WTP/WT and then diced up the revenue? If so, then I have seen that game played for 20 years and the results can be so satisfying - to the accountants! :rolleyes: I recently stopped giving time and money to a charity because they had done that and so were able to 'state' that some volunteers could donate even more money. I chose not to have my donation doubled and they lost :p

F3GYes, indeed! BA is now past it's apogee and it is important for everyone to correctly anticipate the trajectory of it's decline. I do not say this in any malicious way (and do not hold shares in ANY airline) it is simply the way that human beings work.

Is that really what you believe??? You must be one of those BA managers then. You clearly dont know your product OR your employees. You also dont know my job well either, you just care about your own progression.

If a BA customer is unhappy about something its not my job to make them eat it, its my job to discuss it with them, find out how we could make it better and to follow through by advising them what they should do next....hence those bloody comment cards which I know never get read. This is what we are trained to do and therefore its a rule set down by a fellow manager. So get that right for starters and you may do well.

Your job as a BA manager (again assuming that you are as you seem so defensive on the matter) should be to find out why our customers are flocking to other airlines and losing us revenue and to find a way to stop it. Not come up with a new buzz word like "Service WOW" and get a hefty bonus for it while somewhere passengers are less then wowed when their luggage goes missing for the umpteenth time, planes departing late through no fault of the ground staff or crew but because the transport buses dont have enough drivers because "we need to be ready for T5 TWO YEARS EARLY", crap food onboard and premium customers being refused boarding on a shabby looking plane because its over booked!!! Its not our job to clean up your poor management decisions.

But I have every belief that willie is gunning for your type because I know he is looking at these sort of inefficient decisions from his management.

P.S...Apols for the spelling, my spell check is knackered!

Oh, and Paxboy....I could not agree with you more! :D

APaddy

You are right to feel the way you do.

Last year your company messed me about with catering in C for several months and then the ground agents at Brussels were totally unhelpful when my case was damaged in transit and would not do anything to help, other than to offer to give me a phone number in Paris, knowing that it would take 5 days to replace the case on a 2 day trip. (I had paid GBP447 for the C class ticket.)

As a result, I have flown 74 segments so far this year and only 6 with BA, when there was no other option.

I booked 4 x F class long haul segments this morning, could have been with BA, but were not.

This despite the fact that you and your colleagues are usually very good in the air.

Sadly the total experience, including the farcical UK security restrictions on hand luggage, means that BA and the UK are a port of last resort, which is a shame as I am an expat Brit.

One passenger does not an airline sink, but I wonder how many others think like me these days?