How damn awful BA is.

It's been about 3 years since I last flew with them and due to the snow I had the unfortunate/unpleasant experience of being subjected to them again last night.

I flew CNS-HKG on Cathay and was supposed to be continuing on the very pleasant Cathay to Heathrow. However upon landing in Honkers the gate staff met us and told us that our flight was delayed for ~4 1/2 hours and we were therefore being transferred to BA. Flashbacks went through my mind of my last experience on BA, I thought to myself surely they have improved in 3 odd years and surely they can't have persisted with those awful business class seats.... How mistaken I was.... Especially after enjoying the lovely Cathay service in business and expecting to enjoy it for the rest of the trip.

We must've been on 747 S/N #1, the plane was that old, replete with a similar age crew. The attitude of the crew would also suggest they have been working a continuous shift since the plane was put in service.

Those seats must be some of the worst of any top-tier airline in the world, to think that people actually pay money for them beggars my belief, when there are both NZ & CX plying this same route. The whole business class product is truly awful, the personal screens are so small and rubbish that you need a back-board to keep yourself upright, because as soon as you get on an angle you can't see the screen.

Then there was the meal, I didn't bother with the dinner, as I wanted to sleep, but I had the "English Breakfast" for brekkie. Thank god I'm not an Englishman if that is what is now deemed an English Breakfast. I've had some stuff that is as far removed from bacon as I thought one could get, especially in some muslim countries where you cannot even get bacon, but that slab of rubberised-ham this morning took the cake.

When we departed Honkers we sat on stand for ~1hr, because BA control had requested holding off, due to the weather and not expecting to be able to take landings before 6am. Fair enough. Approx 40mins out of LHR, the captain informed us that we would not be landing at LHR, but at Cardiff. No biggie.

Anyway we landed at Cardiff and waited on ground for ~1hr whilst they organised buses to come and get us, as I guess there are no bridges suitable for accepting a Jumbo there. That was fine as it gave me a chance to organise new flights to my end destination, Hanover.

Whilst we were parked on the tarmac at Cardiff the captain informed us that planes had been continuing to land at Heathrow, it was just BA that was getting shunted. I noted then that my original flight was en route and would've ended up landed at LHR only 3hrs late, as it did, had I stayed on that... The captain’s reason that BA was being shunted was that they had no spare stands left and could not cope... How many years have they been doing this, how much practice do they need? Surely it's not that hard to have mitigation plans in place, it's not like 6" of snow is completely abnormal? It seemed the captain was trying to pre-empt any complaints with the way he informed us of this.

Anyway, we were finally off-loaded onto buses and cleared immigration. Thankfully I had organised a new flight on KLM via Schiphol, so I was just able to go and check-in for that, rather than take the 3 hour bus journey to Heathrow, with no certainty of onward travel. Whilst checking in, I learnt that all the passengers on my plane were being offloaded from the buses, as Heathrow was no longer accepting buses! More great situation preparedness from BA.

Incidentally, we were given no information other than we were bussing to Heathrow, if it wasn’t for the fact that I was able to organise an onward flight from Cardiff, god only knows when we might have found out about onward flights, and I can only imagine the zoo that Heathrow would’ve been when we finally got there, if we ever did.

As I said above, I cannot believe people actually pay for this, and reading some of the threads here where people have been as uncomplimentary to BA as I am, there seems to be a lot of people defending BA. Do you all seriously believe they are good? I know all airlines have their bad sides, but come-on, BA takes the complete experience to a new level.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the fact the weather disrupted my travel, in all of the travel I have done, I've experienced far worse than this. I just can't believe BA can operate like this, with such an awful product and service and then when a rather small fly does get in the ointment, it causes massive disruption across the whole European continent, because some muppets at BA cannot create effective mitigation plans. When does 6" of snow ever cause this sort of disruption in the US.