Originally Posted by
orbitmic
Your experience sounds pretty bad I must say and confirms ground services are still way below the onboard experience overall. That said, the part of your post that struck me most was the above routing! Sounds like a very significant detour, so just being curious why you chose that!
A good question
3 main reasons ....
1. I fly a lot in and out of Africa so I tend to try and stick with OW carriers and EK, so that when things go wrong (which they frequently do in Africa) I am looked after due to my Status. Also, each year I easily make BA gold, but this year it is only July and by August I will get the much sought after BA Concorde Room Card (CCR) - and my year ends in December. The TP's I get on Qatar more than make up for the inconvenience of the flights, but I am a self confessed air mile/status junky
2. On this route (normally) involves a 2pm - midnight flight followed by a 7am - 1pm flight - I get a reasonable sleep in a hotel and can 'top up' on the second leg so I am fresh for when I meat my kids. If I flew on BA, it would be LOS - LHR - MAN - 1130pm departure 530am arrival 2 hour ish transit at LHR and a 30 min - 1 hr hop in a A319 to MAN - I usually arrive feeling very tired. As I am going on home leave I would rather arrive a few hours later feeling ready for action. I used to get a Starwood night also before the airport hotel opened but now I am LT Plat, I care less about that - plus there is the airport hotel which is much more convenient.
3. I also have a Kigali flight straight after the UK. Almost nobody flies there. The pricing of the ticket is such that if I do the whole thing on Qatar I almost get 2 flights for the price of 1. Qatar is very well priced on Africa - Europe tickets as it is slightly out of the way.
That said, now I am CCR, probably I will stick to BA until my year resets