Aztec_Flyer

I travelled over from Dublin to LHR on Monday (BA827) and the flight was delayed about an hour and half initially due to baggage reconciliation and then ATC weather / slot delays into LHR.

C’est la vie – these things happen.

On landing in LHR it took nearly 90 minutes before the bags came out on the carousel. I went to the BA baggage desk in T1 domestics and they said that multiple flights that landed at the same time (two from Dublin one from Belfast) and that they weren’t quite sure of the cause of the delay as BA didn’t do its own baggage handling at T1 so it wasn’t really their fault. Whilst I fully accept it wasn’t the fault of those individuals it does seem disingenuous for BA to disclaim responsibility for baggage handling at its home hub?

Is this correct or are these delays normal? 99% of my flights connect through LHR so I haven't collected bags in the UK&I claim area for quite a while.

I've fired off an email to BA as I ended up being late for a dinner meeting despite having taken an earlier flight to try and prevent it.

BA6501

T1 baggage handling IME is a nightmare - much worse than the bmi days.

jbfield

It's a BA thing - I personally don't think they pay much attention to this part of their service. Once they've touched down, it feels like they wash their hands of their responsibilities.

In the bmi days I could get my bags very quick - often already there waiting for me as I walked in to the claim hall.

Kgmm77

I posted recently about a T1 DUB flight where the baggage handlers "forgot" (Captain's description) to unload the inbound bags for 45 minutes.

BA at T1 is increasingly "out of sight, out of mind".

BAflyer2007

It was bad in the bmi days but yes definitely bad now!

Roll on the move to T5!

RJLondonGold

Today I was flying to DUB from T1. There were 3 bags that needed to be offloaded as pax had not arrived. However, it took them 30 mins to find the bags..the captain apologised for the delay and said it was due to the ground handling being "very slow". It also took them quite a while to get the tug for push back. Again, the captain was very apologetic and said he would put in a complaint.
So it does seem something is going on in T1 ground handling / Menzies that is affecting the service.

paulwuk

Your contract is with Ba. They outsource it. If the outsourcing arrangement doesn't work is Ba's fault. Please complain to Ba.

mjh0

Well, Menzies know that BA ops at T1 are being wound down, so there's no incentive to try and meet targets.

I dare say, in the same way as UKBA have had to rob Peter to pay Paul with bringing T2 online, Menzies (who handle many *A airlines at Heathrow) have had to do the same.

However, I think we're all getting a little bit sick of the almost Gallic waiter style shrug that we see from BA staffers when the organisations BA chooses to outsource parts of it's service to screw up.

BA need to start taking responsibility for their suppliers failures whenever it affects delivery of the service to the passenger, rather than finger pointing and blameshifting.

Aztec_Flyer

Just a quick follow-up.

I got a call from Customer Services today to apologise and explain that they do take responsibility for sub-contracted services etc. etc. and that they are working to improve (what seemed to be known) issues at T1.

Nice timely follow-up. ^

paulwuk

In other words "yes yes yes, here's some shut up avios now go away". Except without the avios.