Flexible preferences

I'm not quite sure why compensation seems to be a dirty word anyway. By its very nature, it is an attempt to make amends for a wrongdoing. Personally I think that's OK. I'm not so comfortable with it where it is excessive, or for very minor matters, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Betteronacamel

You should have sold them on Friday

Airlines are notorious for losing money in the long term and they are very susceptible to sudden shifts in value - usually caused by external buffeting such as sudden oil price hikes, 9/11, stock market crashes, economic downturn, volcanic ash, war etc etc

Here we have a PR disaster of their own making.

dca100

Depending on the severity of the dip tomorrow it will probably be an excellent buy-in opportunity :-)

Short terrm sentiment will be shaken by the IT fiasco but I am prepared to bet that confidence in IAG's fundamentals will quickly return.

IAN-UK

that's sounds like a measure of sophistry

Lufthansa's been through quite similar disruptions, caused by strikes.

The German carrier handled with my DUB FRA MEX travel disruption by replacing M&M award tickets for my family with full fare business-class tickets on BA through LHR. No prompting: they simply came up with that as a solution.

True, LH had warning and could implement crisis plans to deal with consequences, while poor BA had no warning - and ineffective, or non-existent, plans to deal with the crisis.

Dave Noble

What? There was nothing at all that was intended to deceive nor was the use false

What the person wanted was compensation due to the flight issue.

That some here think that it is clever to try using weasel words such as "service recovery" so as to appear to be superior by not claiming compensation , does not stop it being compensation

HilFly

What the OP wanted was for BA to rebook him on other carriers so that he could get to his destination when BA could not get him there.

He is now out of pocket because he bought tickets himself instead of BA rebooking him via other carriers.

Service recovery as in fixing things so that the OP can get to his destination. BA coudn't do it so he's now out of pocket.

The OP doesn't mention compensation. In fact when you bring it up a couple of posts later, the OP states

Absolutely not interested in compensation,it's a question of principal and integrity which sadly is now missing with BA

I find it totally reprehensible tha BA did not rebook as many passengers as possible onto other carriers to get them out of this mess of BA's making.

crazy8534

Absolutely, nail/head/hit etc. ^

apollo00

Exactly, while I'm a critic of their unreliable IT generally and cost cutting on service recovery generally, there's no evidence this was a result of that. Power (the cause it's being blamed on) is actually quite hard to make 100% reliable and ridiculously edge case failure scenarios can come back and bite you. I've seen it at far from budget IT operations and it's been seen at Delta a while back too (an org whose engineering generally is well regarded by all accounts)

1010101

No, the problem itself may have occurred whether insourced or outsourced.

What I'm certain is down to the outsourcing is how clueless they seem to be in getting things back up again.

capin

Absolutely spot on!!! BA had a team on 24x7 troubleshooters labelled the coverage team. They were made up guys with years and years of experience fixing operational issues at BA. They were outsourced last year.

BarryAZ

It would seem that the ranks of BA apologists are declining and have been declining over the past several years.

Let's face it five or ten years ago, BA was one of the handful of world class airlines. Since then there has been a steady decline in the product (today's BA Business class is but a shadow of what it was in the past), along with the service (largely a function of bottom line management of a labour force which increasingly is demotivated when taking care of customers). There are exceptions here regarding customer service -- but the sense is that "why should I compensate for an airline which no longer is 'special' in any way".

Add to that the serial systems failures -- likely a function of bottom line cost cutting as much as anything -- AND the effort to cut cost exposure for non-performance (unwilingness to rebook on functioning airlines as an example), and it should be seriously obvious that BA is no longer "World Class" -- not even close.

One further senses that their powers running BA -- DO NOT CARE about this fall from grace and won't care until they see it in their knickers as the bottom line deteriorates -- when higher paying customers seek alternatives. Further I suspect BREXIT is also going to encourage business flyers to alternative paths to and from Europe to the US, Asia and the Middle East.

Frankly, I've no faith that BA will turn things around and in future will seek alternative routing from the US to European cities, routing which EXCLUDES the UK.

Banana4321

Thank you all for your concern

Just checked and bought at 395p

Will keep an eye on it tomorrow, but I don't expect any blips. Luckily for BA this all happened in a period when the market was closed.

Aeschylus

Wouldn't that be reimbursement?

LCY8737

I find this whole "never going to fly BA again" a bit on the drama side. BA is by far not my favourite airline, and certainly there are better (and frequently cheaper) options on many routes. At the same time, they have a pretty good schedule and non-stop routes from London - that is an enormous benefit.

I'll continue to make my choices based on price and convenience, and being based in London that makes BA a pretty decent option - even if the product isn't that great.

stevie

I am impressed 12k spend gets CCR. I scrape Gold spending this annually.

Anyway, get out there and use other airlines, there are way better options.

I feel the last few days may be the final straw for many.

I plan to cancel two BA CW trips to the USA/Canada today.