BA's IRROPS handling is indeed appallingly bad. While I've never ended up in a terrible situation on BA out of sheer luck, I did have an apple out of the "one shot deal" approach. At 10 a.m. I received a notice that my 1:30 p.m. PRG-LHR flight was cancelled (this was a few months back) due to "weather." (I use quotes because only in England would it actually be considered weather) Got to the airport at 10:30 for the 11:20 flight. The system had already booked me on the last flight of the day. They put me on standby. I was on a non-refundable ticket but am a One World Emerald. I clear standby. They try to process the ticket. The system absolutely refuses to allow them to move me up from the 8:30 or whatever flight to the 11:20 since the system had already changed it. She calls. No luck. And just shoves the tickets back at me and says "you will fly tonight" and walks away. Luckily I had already been talking with the supervisor, she notices I was still showing on the standby list as not having claimed my seat, and starts to work on it. System rejects her. She calls. They refuse her. Luckily, she decided to make a federal case out of it and basically started yelling at them over the phone in Czech. All I heard was "Emerald" about 10 times. This goes back and forth for 10 minutes and finally the ticket releases, and at 11:13 I start the run through passport control to the gate. I made it. But what a TERRIBLE approach to IRROPS.