BA Reportedly Breaks Post-Outage Pledge to Compensate Pax as “Quickly as Possible”
Jeff Edwards July 18, 2017
Following the holiday weekend computer outage that saw massive flight disruptions, British Airways promised to make it right, but many say their pleas for refunds were met with silence.
The Late May Bank Holiday is traditionally a busy travel weekend in the UK. Unfortunately for those hoping to get away for the long weekend on a British Airways flight, a massive computer outage grounded nearly a huge number of the carrier’s flights for huge chunks of the holiday weekend.
The resulting delays and cancellations stranded more than 75,000 of the airline’s passengers, including thousands of flyers left with little option but to spend their holiday getaways sleeping at the airport. The company at first blamed the unprecedented service disruptions on a “power surge.” It was later learned that the outage was believed to have been caused when a worker inadvertently unplugged key computer components from the power supply.
Days after the frustrating IT crash, the head of British Airways’ parent company, International Airlines Group (IAG), praised the airline’s handling of the computer calamity. After boasting about how quickly the airline corrected the technical difficulties, IAG President Willie Walsh promised that focusing on the passengers affected was now the airline’s primary concern, adding that the carrier would be doing “…everything we can to make up [for] the disruption they suffered.”
“The team at British Airways did everything they could in the circumstances to recover the operation as quickly as they did,” Walsh told reporters in the hours following the airline’s near standstill. “Our focus will be on making sure that any of our customers who experienced disruption are managed and satisfied with how we handled things.”
Now, The Daily Mail reports that hundreds of those affected travelers are still waiting on promised compensation. Many passengers say that the company has made the process for applying for compensation unduly complicated and accuse the airline of refusing to clearly communicate with them about the rather complex application protocols.
More than six weeks after having to scrap a planned trip from London Heathrow Airport (LHR) to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS), passenger Francesca Pearce says she is still waiting for British Airways to make good on its promises. “We were sure British Airways would reimburse us after making such a massive mistake,” Pearce told the Mail. “Communication has been terrible from the start and I won’t be flying with British Airways again.”
Dozens of other passengers, many of whom already had their holidays ruined, say that they are being left out in the cold once again by British Airways’ stonewalling. The airline says, however, that the company is making a good faith effort to honor its obligations.
“We have put additional resource into our customer relations teams, and thousands of payments have already been made to customers who have completed their claims,” British Airways officials told the newspaper. “We are processing claims as quickly as possible, and thank our customers for their patience.”
[Photo: Shutterstock]
You’re Reading
The process is certainly very complicated, particularly if original tickets were purchased through a travel agency. One has to claim refund from TA, who claims it from BA, then TA pays customer. Customer notifies BA, who then deduct this from cost of new flights. However, many people won't have realised they could claim for meals, etc, but without receipts, no deal. I feel rue airline, knowing that people have to eat should pay an agreed pr person amount, without the need for receipts. I expected our Flagship carrier to be much kinder to its customers, many of whom suffered incredible stress and inconvenience.