I know there are worse thing going on right now and that my whinging about BA is not one of them, But what is Flyertalk if not for a good whine and some advice?

I have a couple of long haul trips coming up in the next few months and there have been multiple schedule changes, as seems to be the norm now, and is the norm now, and I have had to call or email 4 different airlines this week. I have status with BA and none of the others.

And yet BA takes 5 times longer to answer their Gold line than Virgin or Delta take to answer their normal number.

The Delta agent could not assist and so passed me to a supervisor who owned the problem and fixed it in less than 3 mins.

Virgin answered the call almost immediately and reissued the tickets for disrupted services before they had hung up.

Vietnam airlines responded to emails the same day and solved the issues.

Today BA sent me two email telling me my LATAM reward flights had been cancelled. In fact one had, while the other was departing 20 minutes earlier. The email advised if I was happy with the new flights/times then I should go to manage my booking and accept the new flights - except you can't, it doesn't work!

So I was forced to call the gold line who took 15 minutes to answer. The agent, was very personable and chatty, looked at the booking and promptly put me on hold for 10 minutes to check something. That something it turned out, was whether I was even entitled to have an Avios booking on LATAM!! I am now 25 minutes in and nothing done.

In the end the call lasted an agonising 43 minutes and in that time I was put on hold 3 times and only 1 ticket reissued. The other has had to go off for re ticketing - Is it any wonder that the call waiting times are so long when simple straightforward issues take so long to resolve? The agents are poorly trained, badly informed, don't know their own rules, struggle with 3 letter codes and, worst of all, are seriously handicapped by the inadequate BA IT that they are fighting to use from home and probably perched on the end of an ironing board.

On one hand my heart goes out to the agents and on the other, I find it utterly frustrating that so much of my time is wasted and I find myself explaining 3 letter codes.

Is there any hope on the horizon that this is ever going to improve? I despair now whenever I have to call BA!

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