Originally Posted by orbitmic

on that last point, I may well be the one not using the right words to explain but from my personal experience, ba have removed something from contracts that lhg and others have not:

ive had it rips and cancellations on both lh and lx in the past 12 months and each time, the local handlers were able to reroute me (including on non *A airlines) without any issue. I have had even more cancellations and irons on ba (just because I use them a lot more) and was told that they couldn’t do the same.

At my main airport it’s the same subcontractor handling lh, lx, ba and others and they were very explicit BA are the only airline which won’t allow them to rebook in case of irrops and needs stranded passengers to call the contact centre (a la aa). They were clear that even with ib they can but not with ba and they it is the only airline in thyy their portfolio which won’t allow it.

with respect the rest of the argument falls in the « makes total sense in theory but does not work in practice » because in cases of major irrops (weather, atc systems etc) I found myself in catch 22 situations whereby 1) all flights were delayed and local staff told me to ask the GGL team to put me on one such delayed flight but GGL see it as notionally closed due to original departure time and local staff who are still checking people in can’t move me and 2) where local staff know about planned long delays on my flight but GGL does not see the delay (or see it as under 2hrs so far on their systems so refuse to move me even though the local staff know the delay will be a lot worse and confirm they would face moved (which they did many times in the past in such cases especially when they know I’m connecting).

So unless handling staff at several outstations including ba supervisors I know are all lying, ba has removed competencies from outstation staff that no one else (lhg included) has, and despite all the belief in systems, there are real life cases where this very much does matter and has resulted in my missing connections I wouldn’t have on other airlines because systems are not perfect and local staff sometimes have information about local situations and their developments that somehow
contact centre staff don’t seem to have until it’s too late.

i should add that I’ve written to ba several times to complain about this as this is probably my no1 issue with ba but only got the standard « we are sorry, will you take a few thousand avios to stop bothering us? » answer.