BA - Lesson 1:01: How To Seriously Upset A Group Of Premium Customers
 

Offer "World Class" service to First and Club passengers with promise of exceptional experience.

Outward:

- Having called passengers to the "Gate", cram them on a bus for a tour of the T5 area following slow moving baggage carts and other ancillary airport vehicles. Then, disgorge them onto a rain and windswept apron where they can fight amongst themselves to get onboard.

- In case of First passengers, escort to seat and ignore.

- After take-off, apologise for lack of welcome due to "operational difficulties" with newspapers, food and drink service.

- Offer menu with reduced selection of food and drink

Return.....

- Place senior BA manager in seat 1A and spend considerable crew time visiting and chatting etc.

- Before arrival at Heathrow, make "apologetic" announcement about requirement to bus from aircraft to "gate" but reassure everyone that this is a "slick operation".

- On arrival at the stand, senior BA manager has dispensation to jump out of seat before aircraft "comes to a complete stop" and bustle past fellow First and forward Club passengers to door 2.

- Despite having at least twelve hours notice of aircraft's arrival, make "apologetic" announcement that the previously mentioned busses are inexplicably delayed.

- Having opened door briefly to let senior executive manager deplane into a waiting BA van, make another vague announcement that busses "are on the way".

- Give frosty response to irritated passenger (American) who complains, reasonably, that perhaps the operation needs looking in to.

- After 15 minute wait, make upbeat announcement (inferring personal negotiating success) that busses are now here and everyone can happily make their way onto them. Force as many people into bus as possible, encouraged by shouts and orders from driver and various ramp staff.

- repeat outward bus journey through traffic lights, slow moving traffic etc.

Charge from £3500 to £9600 for the experience.

Apart from the occupant of Seat 1A, that sounds just like the last few times I've flown with them. A deeply disappointing experience. You either failed to mention the inadequately chilled white wine - or perhaps you were lucky. ;)

this is the norm !!

Strake

All you can do is vote with your feet.

I have been working in London this week and need to go to the middle east tomorrow.

I am taking BD.

Too much stress flying BA (if they are not on strike.)

And some folk sneered and sniggered at Lufthansa's First Class terminals when they were first announced....

I fail to see why so very many pax continue to use BA.

Company policy
 

Company policy is why I'm flying BA to Washington in a week. They are the cheapest Business Class from here. I tried to get on the non-stop UA flight (not that their Business Class is that great, but it is non-stop) and they were quite a bit more.

Any chance of naming dates, route or flight numbers?

Any chance of naming dates, route or flight numbers?

.... or the senior BA manager in seat 1A, who should be very, very ashamed, both of his behaviour and his company's failures.

All you can do is vote with your feet

No, it's not - complain loudly, bitterly, and directly to WW, who I fervently hope sees this thread and acts upon it.

Jack

I agree :ok:

No, he's too busy to bother about premium passengers, he's still trying to erode terms and conditions of staff.

So nothing has changed since the 60's when BOAC were bussing to and from terminal 3. The only difference was passengers didn't have so far to climb on a 707/VC10.

When BA get their A380, I wonder how many buses they will need then????

So as it's not the passengers fault then, why should they suffer?

I did, for two years.

Never got a reply, only a standard response from customer services.

Nothing got better, only worse, e.g. removal of hot towels from CE, cutbacks in CW.

Thus my comment.

9 times out of 10 the Newark flights will park at a remote stand. Getting a bus in is a greater social leveller....

I'm like F3G there, going to the Middle East with Swiss in Feb, not BA.

I'm all for customer choice, and the power of the customer. As a frontline BA employee, I am one of the "apologists" that you hear when the buses don't turn up or the BAA jetty doesn't work, or the deicing rigs arent allowed on a stand to de-ice because the BAA H&S police have forbidden it.
If BA goes under, who/what do you think will replace them? Do you think the new incumbent will fare better given LHR's creaking infrastructure?
Are you willing to pay more to expand and upgrade Heathrow Airport?
Sadly, for UK plc, most of us aren't willing to pay. Thankfully, for the residents of Sibson, we have procedures to follow before peoples' houses can be bulldozed to make away for improvements.
Anybody that has transited through DXB or PVG can see the advantages of a totalitarian state with their brand new state of the art terminals.
I'm afraid , that thanks to planning constraints, buses are necessary for the life of T5 and T3.
It would be nice if BA could get its own way at its home base like AF do at CDG or LH at FRA. However, that wouldn't sit well with the British way of fighting with one arm tied behind your back.

Hunterboy

OK, yes, it's all very unfair. But much of what goes wrong for BA at LHR and elsewhere cannot be blamed on the British way, except to the extent that BA staff operate in the British way.

Hmmm......I was under the impression that T5 is supposed to be exactly that.

Most of the complaints in this thread stem from incompetence and/or simple lack of any sense of urgency to do things as well as they can be done instead of just adequately.

Failure to meet an aircraft on a remote stand with the steps and transport, at the instant the brakes go on, is INEXCUSABLE. Failure to organise the right catering at the right time ditto. Other airlines and handlers at LHR get it right; why can't BA?

The problem with the senior manager is one that BA has failed to put right for the 40 years I have known the company, worked for it, and handled it at several long haul route airports. As a contracted handling agent, I once had to forcefully request a senior BA manager to give up a first class seat for an overbooked full fare passenger, and go, heaven forbid, into economy. My report about his attitude and behaviour arrived simultaneously with his about my lack of respect for his position and status. I still treasure the formal complaint from BA about my action; "The correct procedure would have been to ask the passenger to downgrade with a refund in the form of MCOs and if he refused to offload him and rebook on the next available flight, with accommodation at BA expense".

Ancient customs die hard in BA, and that is its main problem.

When I had problems with BA a few years ago, and wanted to try to to find solutions rather than voting with my feet - as I subsequently did - I tried getting someone higher up the pile to listen. Complete waste of time, just standard cut and paste responses from minions to whom the letters are passed back. Persistence was ultimately rewarded by letters that weren't standard cut and paste but simply obfuscated or avoiding answering my concerns, and 'after reviewing this we have decided to close our file on this matter'.

That's not totally true, after one of my letters in which I said I would strenuously avoid flying BA in the future (never say 'never') I was sent a £100 voucher for - you guessed it - duty free shopping on board a BA flight.

This is the contempt with which they treat passengers, and the level is irrelevant, thus it's no wonder this morning's news states that they are heading for a £1 billion loss British Airways heading for a £1bn loss - Times Online. Whilst I have every sympathy for the majority of their staff, decent hard-working devoted people, I hope they will be able to weed out the trouble makers and ensure management changes. The rot starts at the top.

Hi there,
I'm a die hard BA fan (well my Company switched their business travel to BA a couple of years ago) and so we have little choice. But when the service has gone wrong and I've moaned and moaned I have got a result out of them. You need to escalate your complaint and hit them with as many facts of the case as possible. I found it also helps to cc my letter to BA's Chief Executive.

I still rate BA and their crews are just about the best in the business but SIA, EK and CX run them very close.

Keep trying and don't give up on BA.

Strange, I could have sworn that LHR (& all that is therein)belonged to BAA as part of Ferrovial & BA paid rent for the second rate shopping centre with adjacent aircraft parking slots called T5. I might be wrong, but that suggests to me that BA are only tenants of T5, & its the owner really has the final say.

Then again, I suppose that if BA actually owned their own "home base" there would be more emphasis on getting passengers onto and off aircraft in a timely and stress free manner, rather than hassling passengers through aggravatingly claustrophobic transit security before soaking their wallets for spurious, expensive and innecessary purchases........

Dan Air 87

If you feel that this is the correct way for a company to handle complaints, then your definition of what constitutes customer service, and mine, are rather different. In fact, in those words, you pretty much summed up what's wrong with BA.

I'll add a little extra to my complaint. When I mentioned my concerns to someone I'd met in a different context, and who happened to be a BA sales representative for the travel trade, she told me that if, in my complaints, I'd told them I was in charge of the travel budget for a department of a multinational company, and had written on company letterhead, they would have 'sorted things out'.

That was just another nail in BA's coffin for me. It should not be necessary to 'pull rank' to achieve a result. A complaint from Fred Bloggs should be treated the same as a complaint from the head of XYZ Corporation. The reality, as we all know, is that not all beings are equal, but for this woman to have the gall to tell me this just knocked in another nail.

Why ARE shopping centres so important Airside? I have already packed my bags, and they have long since disappeared into the mysterious world that usually delivers them to me at destination. So what is then supposed to happen?

OMG - I can't live without that shirt, I gotta have it and stuff it into my carry-on? Oh, and those 4 ties, and that yummy sweater?

OH - I have never seen a Harrods shop before, I must buy some of that? Keep filling my shopping bag, I'm sure the airline will now let me take it onboard.

IIRC - they even sell LUGGAGE? How does that work when you're already airside?


A little interest in the PEOPLE [those poor souls who actually pay a lot of money to fly in the aluminum tube] and their welfare [I said their welfare, not your profit] might reassure some of us.

Two Tone-you're going off on a bit of a tangent here mate. The shops etc are all down to the airport operator not the airline. The airport operator has no say on what happens onboard the aircraft with regards to welfare. I don't quite know what your point is with regards to BA's treatment of premium passengers

Apologies ... I went off one one. :oh:

I guess my main point [lost in the haze] was Donkey497's point. So much bullsh1t in the Terminals, and actually very little to justify me paying a J-class fare.

However, I will use my Company letterhead for complaints in future. I tend to keep private and company aspects separate. I have already ensured my Company does not use BA for business purposes - I just happen to be caught in a personal pre-booked BA trip in a couple of months.

I promise to sharpen up. ;)

All old companies are like this - in ANY sphere of commerce (or govt for that matter). There is nothing that can be done about it. There is no sorting things out. There is new Board/Pres/CEO that can fix it, because the corporate response is now so deep and so wide, that it has overtaken company instructions. The need to save money and maintain 'face' is exactly the approach that kills the company/govt in the end.

It's just human nature and it's been like this, I rather think, since man formed the first village committee ... So I have stopped complaining (unless I think I can get a small freebie but then only for the freebie) and I just buy elsewhere. I do this in ALL my purchasing decisions. In this forum, I have been saying for a couple of years that I though BA would not be in it's presently constituted form within 10 years. Once the cabin crew made their decision, and the various responses of the mgmt, I have shortened that to five years.

hunterboyFirstly, the UK govt will jump around a lot and splurble at the TV cameras as they always do, "We want to secure as many jobs as we can" blah-blah but the deciding factor will be how much consolidation the UK govt (via Monopolies & Mergers Commission, or whatever it is called these days) will allow.

• If VS want a big chunk will they allow it?
• If no single buyer can be found, will they allow it to be broken up amongst several, with the Short/Medium/Long going in different directions?
• Will they insist it be sold 'as one entity' thus almost guaranteeing it's downfall?
• What about a consortium led by it's One World partners?
• What if BD (oops, I mean LH) wants to take the major piece?

The politicos will want someone to buy the husk lock, stock and reinvent Britland Airways/Brits can really fix this Airways/whatever, but my guess is that commercial realities of a market that has more carriers and capacity than needed, will go for consolidation, not more of the same. Thus, I suggest, an independent UK carrier is likely to close.

I take no delight in this and feel very sad for those that will lose their jobs, particularly the 95% brilliant staff (at all levels) BUT this is what happens to old companies and BA started in 1919 and those preceding 90 years that gave them their worldwide reputation - are now dragging on the wings. They lived on their reputation for some time but that too is now fading. I stopped using BA as my first choice after the Dirty Tricks episode, my lack of spend is infinitesimally small and the times that I have travelled on them since then, have been good. My argument is with the mangers.

There are many examples of old companies that have gone under/been bought out, Woolworth's and Cadbury's for two different and recent examples.

I assume the senior manager avoided immigration and customs as well.

Hunterboy wrote:Ah, but so many of us are paying more because of LHR's exhorbitant landing fees etc... what are they doing with all that money?
T5 was supposed to be state of the art, and should have been built to cope with at least the next 10 to 20 years in mind. How come it needs buses to operate after about 2 years? Bad planning, lack of foresight... whatever, it will be down to so-called senior managers somewhere, people not fit to do those jobs

Having been thouroughly dissapointed by BA T5's "seamless" service over the last year on many occasions, for example European to long haul = arrive T3 stand, bus to terminal, bus from T3 to T5, long walk around endless terminal back to gate with......another bus to the aircraft on T5 stand I can only assume that the whole thing must have been designed by one of those wonderfully British committees with lots of tea and buns and not a cross word said....:ugh:

Terminal 5C should alleviate some of the problems but as far as i'm aware there was never enough capacity planned into T5 to cope with all of BAs needs.

I just find it incredible that these stands without jetties aren't better served and that aircraft regularly arrive without any coaches waiting or steps. I've been on several BA flights myself that have had to wait 15 or 20 minutes for steps to be put on. Clearly not acceptable.

All the above comments are spot-on. Question is, who is responsible and will anything change?
Where does all that APD and landing fees go? It certainly isn't being pumped into improving UK plc's transport infrastructure. BA and the other airlines have to lump it.
Sadly, because BA is LHR's biggest user, we have to lump it more than everybody else. That coupled with the employment of some of the worse managers and staff I have ever met, mean BA is what it is. Given carte blanche, WW or even I could sort BA and LHR in 3 months. Sadly, life ain't like that.:*

I can also ask when C will be finished and will this help!

JarvyI don't know when it will be finished but I confidently predict it will make no difference. I say this because:

• They pitched expectations for T5 too high and after such a big fall, it can never be recovered in time.
• LHR has been known as chaotic for the past 30 years. It was not fixed by T4 and not by T5. No expansion through Sipson will change anything. The place is congenitally poor.
• The capacity issue was never dealt with by UK govt.
• The Loco's have ripped away capacity and much money from connections that are now more difficult. to make. So it might have eased capacity demand but it took revenue.
• Other carriers, such as Continental, have taken up the offers from the regional fields that were enlarged for the LCCs and now can support medium and slightly longer routes, where people can connect easily (USA East coast, or Middle East) so it might have eased capacity demand but it took revenue.
• Now the global recession has removed much of the demand and will continue to affect us. Since the war, we benefited from US pax who wanted to change planes in a country where they could (almost) understood and often to visit the old country. All of that is going to slide away in the continuing economic crisis. We might be out of recession but that is a purely technical measure, we are still off the runway and have the gear well ploughed in.

The airport has been caught been the conflicting demands of:

1. British Airports Authority, then BAA plc and it's various owners/managers shareholders that have changed nothing.
2. Civil Aviation Authority of all persuasions that have changed nothing. 'Light touch'? no problem but, actually, that seems to translate into heavy touch behind closed doors because of (3) ...
3. Governments of both persuasions that have never allowed clear forward planning. (Remember the whole Stansted inquiry? Will another runway be built at STN? Nope!)
4. BA has always wanted special treatment to match the special treatment it's competitors get but were not allowed it for T4 and so went full out to get it for T5 and ... screwed it up.
5. All the folks in transport and govt that took decades to get the Tube connected to the airport and even longer to get the mainline and then ensured that it was horrendously expensive.

These factors mean, I contend, that LHR lost the edge against continental Europe some 20 years ago Since then, the Middle East has opened up as well with their mega-terminals and (some) subsidised carriers. Consequently, the game is over, finished and done. Whatever happens at LHR is all avgas in the wind. The place will remain what it is. As always I repeat, this gives me no pleasure to say but I simply comment on what I have seen in the 44 years since I first paxed through the place as a boy.

Can I ask one simple question?


WTF not?????



What kind of moron (& I use the only because I can't think of a stronger one) has a billion pound terminal built that isn't big enough & has no room for future expansion? The BA board members who agreed to this deal must have the collective brain power of a six week old boiled cabbage.

Terminal C is due to open soon, that should ease congestion and diminish bus transfers.

There isn't enough ground space at that end of the airport to cope with the number of flights, there was always a plan to build a T5D where the ancilliary area east is located but I guess the downturn and the takeover of the BAA has put paid to that for now.

T5C will hopefully help but it's still not enough.

Open soon ? The last I heard was that T5C was not expected in time for the wonderful Olympics

Terminal 5C is due to open in May this year and is on time. It is Terminal East that they are trying to get ready by the 2012 Olympics.

Dave

T5 is squeezed between the two runways to the north and south. The m25 to the west, and the central area to the east. Heathrow is by modern standards a very small airport in area. That small space meant the architects had to go "vertical" with the design of T5. Hence the lifts and elevators that everyone hates.

T5 was never going to be big enough for BA. It cannot be any bigger because of the space constraints.

If the UK was China we could bulldoze most of Staines away...

So the quote below seems a little over the top.

Cos there's no room on the airfield. Is that too simple? It's really that straightforward bearing in mind it's built on a reclaimed sewage works. It was the best they could do.

Speaking of capacity, I see that the new gates 247-249 at Terminal 1 as part of the Heathrow East building are already in use.

As I said, governments of both persuasions, have never allowed forward planning. They did not allow the site to be expanded and they did not allow a brand new site - other than proposing them in silly places like mud flats and far out to the East or even far South East. A new site that was further along the M4 could be have been set up 25 years ago but it wasn't and now the cost would be horrible.

The airport is trapped and I am doubtful that the Northern expansion through Sipson will actually go ahead. If it does, I suggest that the operation of the place will remain as chaotic as it is now.

Thanks for that clarification