I came across on the frequent flier forum, and as I was not sure if the link would work, I thought I would cut and paste it here for the benefit of those who are negotiating with BA for their various service disruption issues.

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BA Concorde Mishap and My Ramblings - LONG!

Posted By: Bil
Date: Thursday, 11 September 2003, at 1:27 p.m.

I just thought you would all apprecite this...

I embarked on a trip of a lifetime a month or so ago, that comeing from a man who has been almost everywhre in the wordl. The difference is on this trip I would be flying Concorde transtlantic- both ways.

My trip was nice. But....

My return Concorde trip was interesting to say the least. We departed about 30 minutes late, no big deal. We took off at full power with afterburners, cool! Not to mention loud. Concorde got up to mach 1, then mach 2, 51,000 feet, we were flying at mach 2 for about 30 minutes when everyone was jilted out of their seats by what felt something like turbulence. It wasn't your regular turbulence feel to me though, it had more of a strange sound and feel. Almost like the plane had twisted sideways slightly.

Flying along for another 15 minutes or so, now nearly halfway into our 3 1/2 hour crossing of the Atlantic and it happened again.

This time the Captain came on saying that there seemed to be something a bit wrong with one of the engines and that it had burped a couple times. He was trying to figure out what was up and would keep us informed.

Needless to say, about 10 minutes after that, it happened again, but this time it continued. The captain at that point shut down the number 2 engine.

He came on saying that Concorde was designed for supersonic travel. And as such she needs all of her engines to sustain that speed. With him shutting down one of the engines, supersonic speed could not be maintained and we would have to revert to subsonic flight for the remainder of the trip.

Of course this meant to me that the length of our flight would be significantly increased. I did not know just how much, but with some quick calculation I figured we would still have about 4 hours on board before landing.

Hummmm I thought, 7 hour Concorde flight? This bird can't fly for that long.

Sure enough, about an hour later, the Captain came back on and said that Concorde was designed for short duration, high speed travel. Since we were flying low speed, long duration, we would not have enough fuel to make it to New York.

I knew it!!

He came back an hour or so later and said that we would be making an unscheduled landing in Bangor, Maine. If he was able to readily figure out the engine issue we would take back off and head to New York, if not then some form of contingency plan would have to be made to get us to New York.

We landing in this small rural northeast town of 35,000. Looking out of my window I could see people swerving on the road to see us land, and as we got even closer, I could see folks on their front porches gazing at her graceful descent to their simple town airport.

We landed without incident, and were met on the tarmac with stairs and the flashes of local peoples cameras. For nearly 5 minutes I walked around the bottom of Concorde, staring up at her nose, walking beneath the wing, checking our the landing gear. COOL!!!

How I wished my camera was working right then and there. I was cursing it! AND my camcorder battery died minutes before. DOH!

They put us on a local school bus and took us into a completely closed Bangor airport. We cleared customs and immigration and sat.

We sat for nearly 4 hours waiting to hear something from BA about how we would be getting our butts to New York for our Friday night.

Then one of the invisible staff members came in and said that BA had figured out a way to get us to New York. You see BA183, a 747 that had departed from Heathrow after us, was in close range and cold land, pick us up, then continue on its way to New York. Cool.

So we stuck out our collective thumbs and sure enough a 747 swooped down to give us a lift.

The flight attendants from our Concorde flight were manning a makeshift table with a print-out of our name. Asking each passenger their name as they boarded, they handed us a hand written boarding card. "Mr. B. - 60C".

I boarded the 747, and was told by the purser that all premium seats were filled and that I would have to take a seat in economy. But what about all those empty biz class seats I see there? "Do you have anything up front" I asked... "No sir, those seats are taken" he replied. "But I have an assigned seat upstairs in business class" I said. "I'm sorry sir, but we are not going to disrupt our premium passengers anymore than they already have been" he blurted. WHAT DID HE JUST SAY???

I'm a Concorde passenger! One step above first class. You don't get more premium than Concorde passengers! How dare he say that he doesn't want HIS premium passengers disrupted any more! YEAH RIGHT!

I sat my butt down in an economy seat for the next hour until we got into New York.

Given the circumstances, one would think that BA would have a special team waiting for us. NOPE.

We left BA183, headed to immigration where I pointed out to one of the agents that we had already cleared customs and immigration in Bangor. "That's impossible sir" I was told.

"No really!, here's my passport stamp to prove it, the other passengers have their I94 visa forms, and we've all cleared at Bangor. You see we were Concorde passengers and Concorde had to make an emergency landing. This 747 just stopped by to pick us up" You should have seen the look on this poor guys face.

"You've got to be kidding?!" he said.

"NOPE! I'm not kidding"

Now there were nearly 90 passengers behind me wondering what to do, and where the hell BA staff was to help us out.

He waved us over to the crew agents, and he just waved us on by with showing our passport stamped in Bangor.

Getting into the terminal, there was absolutely NO BA STAFF. None. Not one!

I've missed my connecting flight, others had limos that would wait, hotel rooms got cancelled, and tour busses had departed on their tours. Now what?

Some lowly BA supervisor walked by. Nary a word did he say. That changed when I grabbed him by the shoulder and mentioned that HE had a problem on his hands and what was he going to do about it. He handed me a business card and told everyone to call BA customer relations on Monday.

WRONG ANSWER MY FRIEND!!!

No one said a word about a 7 hour Concorde flight that should have only taken 3 1/2 hours, no one said anything about having to land in Bangor, no on said anything about being taken off the plane with school busses, nor sitting in a completely closed airport for 4 hours. No one complained about the lack of information, or direction as to what to do in New York with customs. No one complained about sitting in coach on the 747 that we hitched a ride on.

But let me tell you..... having absolutely NO BA staff around when we got into New York was the straw that broke the collective camel's back.

I having missed my flight to California by 5 hours was not about to have some BA staff supervisor tell me that I would have to call BA customer relations ON MONDAY!

I'll keep it kinda short here, but it got ugly!

A word of advice to any airline staffers, don't argue with a passenger with my experience traveling the world in the past 20 years or so. We get to know what the real rules are and how to enforce them.

They didn't like that! But who cares, we didn't like all what we had gone through either, and it was their responsibility to make it right.

I got my hotel for the night, I got my meals, and my taxi, as well as a handful of calling cards (I only wanted one!) And the others got the limos, and hotels in the city that they needed. But I think this could have been handled a lot better. Especially given the fact that they had some 7 hours advance notice. They could have easily put contingency plans into effect and had everything waiting. Not just business cards telling us to call BA customer relations on Monday.

You know what... on closer look at that card, it didn't even have a telephone number. It has their address, and FAX number.

Monday rolled around and sure enough this boy was on the phone. As we all know, airlines are a different breed of company. They don't want to hear from the customers. So finding a number to vent my frustrations was a frustrating this among itself. But I succeeded!

I got thru to a VP of Customer Relations for North America. Voice mail no less. But still a step in he right direction.

I left my name and number, identifying myself as a Concorde passenger from BA001 on Friday.

30 minutes later I received a call from BA London. They knew everything about our flight, the mechanical failure, the unscheduled landing, the diverting of BA183. They knew everything. EXCEPT one thing....BA London had no clue that we had no clue. They didn't know that NOT EVEN ONE BA staff member assisted us. Not one BA staff member could answer our question, and that we sat alone for nearly 4 hours in a closed airport. Those folks in London had no clue that we were kept completely clueless, and when we did get to New York we were handing a business card with a fax number and told to call it on Monday.

They had no clue that BA's procedures for interrupted Concorde passengers had failed. MISERABLY!

I did get an apology from the rep, and she was very understanding and copasetic. She would call me back tomorrow with some form of solution and make it good.

She did call back. She offered me 200,000 BA miles. More than enough miles needed for a first class ticket to almost anywhere ther fly. NICE!

But what about my fellow passengers on Concorde? I wanted the same for them. And I wanted BA to take a proactive stand in trying to locate them and make it right for them as well. She assured me that she would do her best to locate and extend the same offer.

Not bad.