MrALIG

I thought I might take a different tack and respond to this first line.

There has been a lot of helpful advice here on how to mitigate the likelihood of something similar happening again. Clearly with a new and distressing condition it will take some getting used to.

Nevertheless this does not excuse the very poor efforts by the BA CC and perhaps by BA corporate on getting information across to them. It is not clear if the crew were even properly informed as it appears at one point that the issue was listed embarrassingly incorrectly. Sadly I would assume that this will happen and therefore you need to inform them yourself, even thought you shouldn't really have to and made a lot of effort to do so through the proper channels.

So what to do now. Personally I don't find the offer of a space available upgrade very generous at all. Yes it has a monetary value, but if a flyer is GGL and has lots of Avios they may fly a lot for work and in CW already so it could be effectively worthless, especially as they are unlikely to be in a hurry to fly again.

But the reality is that these events cannot be effectively compensated. We have all been in similar, although probably much less distressing situations. I have had many a stand up argument with some unhelpful person I am trying to deal with. It is embarrassing and distressing. Later I may write a letter of complaint and it may or may not be taken seriously. Once a manager met me as I got off a train to personally apologise for how I was treated. That's a proper apology and I am still friendly with him to this day.

I think what you really need is a personal apology and a reassurance that they will try to stop it happening again. For some reason companies often feel unable to do this as a real apology looks like admitting liability and they don't want to do that. They don't seem to understand that a real apology would probably draw a line under things.

Perhaps try writing to them again asking for a sincere apology and an explanation of efforts being made to stop this happening again. Of course it may get you nowhere, but you can only ask.

After that I am afraid only time will help. There are plenty of times in the past I was incredibly infuriated or upset for days or even weeks. I can barely remember why now. I hope this doesn't sound like minimising, I am sure it was absolutely awful at the time. Going to the media won't help as you'll still be upset and it will just make a bigger deal of it.

Hopefully it is a one off and it will be smoother sailing in future.

BTW BA should still change your flight and upgrade you. A good customer service manager should not be standing behind the availability of miles seats on a different day. I don't actually think they should be doing this as compensation per se. They should be doing it because they are the ones who should be embarrassed by their actions, not you. Maybe it would help you feel better if they did this as it might show that they realise how wrong they were.