I hope you'll forgive me for posting extracts from a couple of emails I received yesterday. They are from a friend who has never before flown BA longhaul; being rather more an Emirates loyalist. Some months ago I'd helped her book an itinerary to the West Coast US, departing yesterday.
She was re-routed owing to the strike schedule, and apart from a slight glitch in ticketing the revised routing (handled exceptionally professionally by the Disruption Team at Waterside - ba.com/welldone) the contingencies seemed to work as planned, resulting in the following comments:
All checked through and fine. Fabulous airport.
That was T5 at about 7.30am yesterday.
Managed to catch 6.45pm flight to XXX with about 10mins to spare! BA flight not too bad only wine to drink no spirits but the crew were very handsome pilots so that was more than enough to compensate.
They flew WTP and were slightly delayed inbound, with a very tight connection. Ground agents met them in the baggage hall with rebooking details onto AAnother domestic flight departing just over an hour later.
The flight was full so no upgrade but the seats weren't too bad. The American Airlines flight was some auld rattly thing and to be honest was glad to get off.
Well, that's pAAr for the course
.
Seriously though, I'd have thought that for a generally non-BA passenger, faced with all these worries and anxieties pre-travel and then having to cope with the reduced on-board service too, slightly less positive reports might have resulted.
Perhaps then it's a snaphot of (admittedly only two) passengers' views on how visible the effort that the company has put into getting them away is.
And at least I'm still on their Christmas Card list having suggested BA in the first place!