well further to my last post, checked the prices of club out of LHR->NYC. And you can get that for £750. So the market has collapsed, and my question might not apply.

And more interesting, well to me at least, is that the NYC-LHR is running at over £3k, that's night flights whereas LHR-NYC is daytime.

So does that suggest people are flying out in WT during the day, but paying £2.5k more for a flat seat to kip in on the way back??? Expensive hotel room if they are.

@ scumbag ... where did you get that £750 fare? Was that just one half of a round trip?

I'e just checked and ba.com is saying
ONE-WAY LHR>JFK £3122 and LCY>JFK £3411.
RETURN LHR>JFK>LHR is showing £1490 [£745 per sector].

One-way trips always cost silly money, and you can't quote the price for half a return ticket - although that could make for a cheaper option [just tear up the return half!!]

Ready to be corrected, of course ;)

Meanwhile, I have read other posts suggesting the WT out, Flat-bed home philosophy; pay for the upgrade on the return flight. Makes for sound economics, especially for those LUCKY people who are expected to work on the day they get back to UK [I had a friend who lived that life all the time, doing the JFK run at least twice a month].

Just for a bit of balance, I have in the last few months started to fly twice a month with Lufthansa in business via FRA. I am also a Gold BA Exec Club holder and have flown in Business/First with them regularly for years.

Experience of Lufthansa:
- 9 times out of 10 both the plane out and in to FRA goes to a remote stand. Business class are put in the same bus as everyone else.
- I don't get a limo at either end.
- the service and seat on board isnot as good as NCW.
- FRA makes LHR T5 seem an absolute dream. FRA is a shambles.
- Tickets are extraordinarily expensive, but I have little alternative options.

I also have regular experience of BMI and Emirates in business. BA may not be perfect, but they are not the shambles regularly made out on here (as anyone who has tried to log in to Diamond Club recently will testify).

Try Cyprusair. Flew last summer, I and the one other Biz pax were put in a bus of our own while the 150 or so down the back were all jammed together in the only other bus. Then we all met up again 200 meters away at the reclaim.

Depends on the airline of course, but for BA, yes that is a fair point which I had overlooked. Suppose serves me right for trying to make sense of airline charging policies :)

The issue with buses at T5 is primarily due to the BAA not building the terminal on time or to the required specification. T5C is still not ready and T5B was cut back to save money when it was sold to the spanish. That is why the end jetty of T5A is the longest in the world.

BA have, as a result, to coach over 20% of their operation at their home base and in the newest terminal in Europe!!

Add to this the mess that is LHR generally. 94% of all aircraft movements take place between the two runways and these are planned to be used at almost their maximum allowed rate for most of the day.

Then add ludicrous 1950/60 noise regulations limiting use of runways and preventing sensible dual use all day long.

Throw in a bit of bad weather....it does not matter what type, snow rain wind, sunshine and the landing rate will plunge from 48/hr to often less than 40. Indeed on most days of the year some form of regulation is applied to the landing rate, which in turn impacts on turn rounds and therefore on departures and therfore on stand use and planning.

For good measure add BAA incompetance. They train to create queues at this they are the best in the world. But security screening is woeful.

Upshot is BA get clobbered time and time again.

I like BA, fly BA and will knock them when required, but bottom line here is they operate at the worst major airport in Europe if not gloablly and which should be bulldozed and relocated as soon as possible and then run by and airport company and not a retail consortium.

binman62

Thank you! At last someone has actually said it!

At last? It's probably been said a hundred times already on this forum in the past year alone. :)

Air Travel Experience
 

The problem of frustrations through airports, regardless of whether you are travelling AA,BA,CA,VS etc is the root cause of dissatisfaction even before you get on board.

The flight, Y,C,J,W or F, is the relaxing part before you take on the rigors of customs and immigration at your destination.

Perhaps the start and end of the trip should be the focus of passengers' angst.

IIRC the OP's complaint was about the end of his journey. And BA not seeing the need, or being too cheap, to treat the guys who paid the equivalent of 10 Y fares, or more, a little better.

BA zinged me this week BEFORE my trip. Got an e-mail and an SMS telling me around 11PM that my flight to IAD was cancelled (apparently they had a bit of snow). Gave me a phone number to call - "Thank you for calling British Airways, our opening hours are 8AM to 6PM Monday to Friday. {click}. Club class to IAD, although the cheapest out of Switzerland, wasn't that cheap. From their website I found a number in the UK that I called (at my expense). While I understand they aren't going to have an office open here - but why not give me a number I can get somebody 24/7.

Bloody Awful? No Bloody Cheap!

Edited to comment = I am NOT complaining about the cancellation, I sorta expected it given the reported conditions.

ExXB's experience demonstrates BA's lack of enthusiasm for customer service. Several years ago my father was taken ill in Cyprus. I was told late on a Saturday evening. A call to BA's UK booking line was automatically rerouted from their closed UK call centre to their US centre who were able to help me make the required booking. I was a very impressed and satisfied punter. Nowadays I appreciate that I could have done this on ba.com. But...the point is that they have withdrawn the excellent service which enabled customers to call 24/7. Not very customer centric, I suggest.

Totally agree, in fact I have made similar comments in here before. Most of the following I have already posted on other threads, but it is germane to this one, so I will repeat it.

BA's problem (as this thread is BA centric) is that they are players in the dissatisfaction and do not seem to realise that it impacts their reputation.

If I pay several thousand € for a business class ticket, I do expect priority treatment (accepting that first class should receive even higher priority.)

As other posters have lucidly described, being forced to play sardines on a bus or getting 'slow track' security or just generally being p*ssed around (e.g. online check in info says no need for visa check, queue at 'fast track' :mad: security entrance point for 5 mins, then sent back for visa check) is not providing value for money.

That is why I tend to avoid BA, where my experience is that the air part of the journey is good or better, but the ground part is unreliable and sometimes shambolic.

I don't care whether BA is based at a poor airport, I do expect VFM and will usually find it by flying other airlines.

e.g. my last trip to the middle east was with BD, no fast track security, great *Alliance lounge, departure from a jetty and a good flight. It was a little irritating not to have fast track security on a J ticket, but then again the airfare was £700 less than BA and the total time in security was probably about the same for my average fast track experience at T5 (i.e. about 10-12 minutes.)

Coming back from the middle east, last year on BA, the menus in club were incorrect.

I ordered breakfast, to be informed that unfortunately that meal was not available, as the meals loaded were different. I was offered a beef bacon sandwich and anyone who knows the middle east will recognise that this is rather unhealthy, in fact it is the stuff that hardened arteries are made of.

The same thing happened for lunch, although the crew did preempt the situation by informing us of the fact beforehand and reading out the available options.

As I did not really like the sound of the options on the lunch menu (once again high fat/high calorie), I decided to hang on to eat at the arrivals lounge as the CC serving me told me that they did food there until one hour after our STA. I also had an hour to kill before checking into my Heathrow hotel.

When I got to the arrivals lounge (flight being on time), there was a couple of slices of ham, a piece of lettuce and some distressed bread.

I was informed that they were 'winding down to close' and that the chef has gone home, so that was all that was available; this later proved to be not quite correct, as the chef came out and offered to cook me some eggs on toast, which was a nice offer.

However, by this time I was rather fed up of the whole performance and somewhat hungry (eggs on toast didnt really inspire me), so I left my silver card with the duty manager, with instructions to explain to the Exec Club that I wouldn't be needing it anymore and went to M&S Only Food, where I bought a delicious sandwich and a nice green salad.

The extra £6 was not really much under the circumstances, but as I had paid 3,000€ for the ticket, it was disappointing that I had to for out for my own lunch.

I have not booked another long haul ticket with BA since and have no intention of doing so unless the schedule mandates it.

Someone at BA needs to get their act together, as the ground side lets down the air experience.

First started flying as pax 40 yrs ago. Since I live in the North of England, there were far more options than BA, although I used them regularly, since it was company policy for one company I worked for.
I recently reviewed my airmiles tally, and realised that I was about to lose them if I didn't use them fairly soon, because I don't often travel with BA these days. Booked a seat in CW MAN-LHR-MRU.
The outbound transfer at LHR was fine (my first experience of T5), airbridges used for both flights. Boarded the LHR-MRU flight and settled down - or tried to. I discovered I was surrounded by six very drunk Finns, (it's not just we Brits you know!) who had obviously put their legendary drinking skills to good use since checking in at Helsinki.
After about 90 minutes of their disruption the CSD told them that there would be no more alcohol, and apologised to me very loudly, following which they went quieter and eventually slept.
On the return, I was allocated the upper deck (I wasn't about to spend £60 to get the seat of my choice), only to find myself surrounded by a family of four with two young children, who spent the entire 12 hours running up and down the aisle, with their parents making feeble efforts to control them.
Both the long-haul flights were completely full (or so I was told), so there was no option to change seats.
I don't do IFE - I started flying long before it was even thought of, and I've lost the film halfway through too many times to even bother switching it on these days - you can't beat a good book and a pair of (bought) earplugs!
On arrival at T5, I found the signage and staff so poor that I ended up clearing immigration with everyone else (appaprently there is a transfer system, but it's poorly signposted and the BA staff don't seem know how it works). Airbridges used for both return flights. Lounge OK, but it doesn't hold a candle to the VS one.
KLM is now my preferred carrier and my platinum-for-life card is useful for accruing points, and I've been upgraded on both long and short haul flights more times than I can remember, with none of the problems mentioned above. KLM aren't perfect - I've had my baggage mislaid loads of times, but they are always contrite and top up my mileage total witout being asked. BA once lost my baggage for three months(!) and I had a hell of a job trying to claim for missing contents of the half-empty suitcase which was eventually returned to me. I imagine the contents were probably on display at the clothes market in Tehran.
Up here we have such a good choice of airlines, albeit with a change involved on some long-haul flights, (but we northerners are used to adversity :)) and I shall continue to avoid BA whenever possible.

To be quite honest, any airline that loses your luggage "loads of times" is far from perfect and I wouldn't fly with them no matter how good the inflight service is.

Losing luggage is probably the single most stressful thing that can happen on a flight. Only one airline has ever mislaid my bags, and I have never flown with them again. (It was SAS, and it turned out to have been a deliberate decision not to transfer bags from a late feeder flight at CPH in order to maintain the onward schedule).

As a percentage of the the times I have flown with them, it would be in single figures. I'm not one of those people who gets stressed about mislaid baggage. If you explain the circumstances, they'll invariably come up with some cash to buy things to put you over, and/or an amenity pack as appropriate. I'd far rather arrive safely with an airline I can trust (and I've been obliged to fly with some I couldn't).

As another trivial millimetre in the downward slide, they've now removed the bacon from the breakfasts on the internal morning flight to ABZ (at least they did today:()

As a trivial observation, when bigger issues are at stake, the last 2 occasions I have had the much-vaunted "Bacon Roll" [in the air and in a Club lounge] it was bordering on inedible. In future I shall bring my own rations to ensure my well-being, because BA Club simply doesn't deliver.

From the Cabin Crew Thread ...

At which point we may see some clarity about what the future holds for the pax as well as the CC. ;)

Above all else, what has put me off travelling Club World is BA's attitude towards service recovery.

In he past the Miles credited to me when things went wrong left me feeling positive towards the airline. Now complaints are treated differently.

By the way, I, too, think the bacon rolls onboard are truly awful. I was offered one at breakfast a couple of months ago and it was inedible. Add to that the fact that my flight from the West Coast arrived after the Arrivals Lounge had closed and I was peeved.

Does BA care? I don't think so.

High Court ... Judge rules in favour of British Airways over crewing dispute.

Business Trip ABZ-LHR. £550.40 return. Packet of seeds as some kind of "snack". One hour 15 min flying time to LHR. One hour 20 min to deliver bags at T5. Tatty and dirty aircraft. How the mighty have fallen .... except the price.

I'm adding the following pebble to the information mountain in the vain hope that there is a member of BA management that has some influence to point out that it is too late.

Chatting with a family today who had to make a short notice trip from CPT to the UK for a funeral. After chatting about South Africa, I asked which carrier they were on for this trip: "Normally, BA business direct from CPT to LHR but, with this important trip, we came SAA Business. I don't really like their Airbus' but we could not take the risk of using BA. That said, BA Club is not what it was."

Probably time to close this thread, otherwise we're just all going to keep adding sorry stories to it.

And the truly scary aspect, if you read the CC forum, is that a lot of BA cabin crew seem to think that they are providing service levels that are world beating.

I've never experienced 'bad' service on a BA flight, it is usually acceptable to good, but that is a very different thing to world leading.

From personal experience over the past few years, I have experienced superior service on Emirates, Swiss, Iberia (unbelievable, but true, long haul MAD -GRU) and Air Malta.

And BA ground service is often awful.

[QUOTE]Business Trip ABZ-LHR. £550.40 return. Packet of seeds as some kind of "snack". One hour 15 min flying time to LHR. One hour 20 min to deliver bags at T5. Tatty and dirty aircraft. How the mighty have fallen .... except the price./QUOTE]

Can I ask why you paid so much ? You must have had other options?!

F3G

Good service on IBERIA? Lucky you, you have my total envy.

I was reading through this post and thought: welcome to the real world! That treatment sounds like daily OPS for the rest of the world...

Hunter58

I have to admit that I only took 2 Iberia flights, there and back, but the service both ways was excellent, with lovely food (they actually brought a trolley around with hot dishes on proper plates and the roast suckling pig was excellent.)

The staff were friendly, too.

But when you read of other people's experiences, I accept that I must have been very lucky!

@ PAXboy ... I really feel it is useful to retain this focal point for those in BA Management who might read PPRuNe. We may be adding pebbles, as you so nicely expressed it, but I also live in hope that those responsible might take note of our overall feelings once the current 'problem' is resolved/clarified.

Referring to Final 3 Greens' post, I had an interesting experience on a BA flight from Houston last month.

My company always fly us either First or Business, with one exception - to and from Houston (because so many of us fly backwards and forwards from Houston).

Going out, BA lost my luggage, which eventually turned up two days later (yes, I was given $250.00 compensation which was appreciated).

HOWEVER, on the return flight, I was assigned seat 40A. As I got on the flight, a male cabin member was all over me and took me directly to seat 4A (First Class). Stupidly, I thought that since I was a Gold Card member, I had been bumped because of the inconvenience on the outward journey. But five minutes later the same member of the cabin staff looked at my Boarding pass as he went past my seat and all hell broke loose! He demanded that I get out of First and get back to my proper seat. I even had difficulties getting my jacket, which was in the wardrobe, because of his haste and bad manners.

As soon as we were airborne, I demanded to see the cabin Services Director. He listened sympathetically and said he would 'sort it out'. However as the aircraft was virtually full, he couldn't move me. I accepted that, but was still furious about the other cabin member.

When we landed, the CSD came back and gave me a bottle of very good wine 'for my inconvenience'. Well done!

However, because of the attitude of the first cabin member, it has cost BA a large amount of money. Because I have had to go to Singapore three times since the episode and guess what? I've travelled Singapore Airlines!:=

I once got upgraded at the door in exactly that way, no new boarding pass, just lead to a new seat.

Fortunately, I didn't get thrown out later :eek:

Hey..Final 3 Greens,

Good on ya!
That sort of thing probably happens multiple times, can't quite work out if it's to solve a CG problem or just because the opportunity is there and you happen to be the lucky one!

Anyway, when I flew, (not in BA), those sorts of thoughts go through my mind when the CG is slightly amiss (from the weight sheet setting), at rotate!

Cheers...FD...:bored:

Changed times
 

Not wishing to say 'when I was a lad', but I will. My first flight with BOAC/Cunard was a long time ago - economy service was similar to somewhere between business and first today (there was no business class in those days of course). Recently on a flight from Antigua - about eight hours or so, after at least one night stop for the crew, pax were asked to be quiet at the rear of the cabin as the cabin crew were trying to sleep. I like BA but am sad that so many are hell bent on their own destruction - a bird in the hand and all that.

BJH123,

I'm sure that this has been mentioned more than once, but your latest post prompts me to reply.

I have noticed a lot in the last 3 or 4 years, that on long haul, regardless of the time of day, the priorities of cabin crew are:

1. Feed the animals as quickly as possible,
2. Close all of the window blinds (morning and afternoon),
3. Encourage the animals to sleep.

Thus, for most of the flight, these self satisfied crews have little or nothing to do, except sleep themselves.:suspect:

Not sure you can blame the crew for that. Back in the good olde days (when tickets were absolutely ridiculously expensive and you had less choice of carrier than today and going to places like New York was the 'holiday of a lifetime') they would have all sorts of goodies to hand out. Nowadays it must be even more boring for them than it is for us lot with our in flight entertainment (which is far far far superior than it was).

scumbag o'reilly

If then the crews are so bored that they have nothing else top do on an eight hour flight than sleep, why all of the angst about reduction in the number of crew who are there to be bored

Well I never said that they had nothing to do but sleep. What I said was that they no longer have the goodies to hand out to the passengers so they have less reason to be seen in the main cabin. My assupltion is that makes it more boring for them, though I could be wrong of course, don't do that job.

The angst you mention is because..........

Ah another thread.

One does remember the 'good olde days' of the MAN-LHR shuttle when you would be served a drink, three course meal, coffee, drink, liqueur, and sweeties. And sometimes they even got the trolleys in place and were in their seats before we landed.

Cost a small fortune of course but they certainly worked their butts off.

And edited as I forgot the hot towels lol

I know I keep getting demands in broad daylight to shut out the light. I thought there was an eyemask in the pack if you are THAT keen on an afternoon nap. It comes as across as for YOUR benefit, not mine. Give em wine and see 'em off to sleep I'm afraid is the impression.

Tighslot, the issue I have with the blinds down policy is that it is not always implemented by crews politely. Last but one trip I made the crew just came along and shut the blinds - no comment of any kind - just down (and done with a tray to extend his reach). So I opened mine up and asked the crew member who did it that next time would he please have the courtesy to ask. I'm not saying it happens every time and it certainly happens on more airlines than just BA but if I'm sitting next to a window I like to be able to look out of it. These days I'm made to feel like a pariah for doing so even when the crew have "asked".