“BA Put My Life at Risk,” Says Woman With Serious Disease
Joe Cortez September 02, 2015
A woman says British Airways forced her to choose between paying over $1,000 to bring vital medical supplies aboard, or leaving them behind and putting her life at risk.
A British Airways flyer struggling with a serious medical condition claims the airline would not allow her to carry on her care supplies unless she paid over $1,000 in baggage fees. Stephanie Chin, 21, says the U.K. flag carrier put her health in jeopardy over a misunderstanding at the gate.
Chin suffers from gastroparesis, a chronic stomach condition which requires her to carry along medical supplies and liquids for treatment. According to her account of the incident, after booking a flight from London Heathrow Airport (LHR) to Singapore, Chin notified the airline that she would be flying with the supplies and was told it would not be a problem.
However, once Chin arrived at the LHR, gate agents allegedly told her she would have to pay £700 (approximately $1,071) to carry-on her medical fluids and the airline would not waive the charges – despite what she was previously told.
“I phoned twice days before I traveled and was repeatedly told I did not have to pay,” says Chin. “At my terminal they denied they’d waive the charges. I ended up leaving the fluids behind. British Airways put my life at risk.”
Chin purchased five days’ worth of new ones for around $200 upon arriving in Singapore. The young flyer says she will never fly British Airways again over fears this situation could happen once more.
British Airways has since apologized for the incident. “We do not charge excess baggage for medical supplies but it must be pre-arranged,” said an airline representative. “We are sorry for this misunderstanding. We refunded Ms. Chin the full amount, as well as an offer of a £100 [flight] voucher.”
[Photo: Evening Standard]
The article is confusingly written: it seems to be talking about hand baggage, but I've never heard of BA charging 700 GBP for hand baggage. The linked article clarifies: "She said that ahead of the trip to visit family, BA agreed to let her take four cold boxes of nutrition and one box of fluids, which are taken intravenously."
It's BA, what do you expect, Inconsistent staff who don't know their own operational manuals is the norm.
The takeaway should be that when something life threatening is against the policy, get it in writing. Taking a risk otherwise is ill-advised with ANY airline.
AAJetMan - that is true - and totally up to the person to decide what works best for them. If it is true that she was proactive and notified them ahead of time and they told her it would be fine, why would she trust that it wouldn't happen again? I get letting people know if what happened could happen on any airline - there are a lot of complaints about issues that are minor and some passengers do not fly enough to realize that. She feels that she did what she needed to do and they did not follow through, so she will not fly them again - fine by me.
Jane42...sometimes that "if you have a choice" means an extra connection, driving hours to an alternate airport, several extra hours, inconvenient flight schedules, and extra $$$$$$. Suddenly the principle is not so important.