bradders81

Not sure if anybody else on here was on it but I encountered a blast of nostalgia, well so to speak!

The flight was delayed 40 minutes or so and when I arrived at the gate, the captain was wandering around A9, openly apologising to punters and explaining whilst it was late.

He then gets on the gate PA and addresses everyone and again explains why the flight is late. Again, a nice touch.

Once onboard, he appears again at the front of the plane, gets on the PA and does the normal cockpit welcome from the aisle.

It made me remember the days before 9/11 when this was much more common practice. I didn't get the name of the skipper but I thought that was excellent. Really added a personal touch and even some humour.

Maybe you had to be there but it certainly was refreshing to see and made me smile!

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/membe...-20-23-15.html

Calchas

www.ba.com/welldone

Your picture hasn't turned out quite right.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/membe...-20-23-15.html

gcuk

I've seen that a couple of times on board before but never in the terminal. I think it really adds a nice touch, particularly in a delay situation.

JamieABZ

I was flying up to Aberdeen a few weeks ago during some bad winds and the captain did the same, something along the lines of "Well folks, you've probably all seen the weather forecast, and I can't lie, this is going to be rough! We've filled her up as much as we can and will give it a go but prepare to land in Edinburgh". It was the right thing to do and whilst it did seem to calm everyone down there was complete silence all the way up the road on the 1 hour 25 minute flight - which normally takes 1 hour 5 minutes.

IAMORGAN

Maybe it was the same captain, but I got delayed flying to Istanbul last year & the captain came up to the gate with the CSD, made a PA to the waiting passengers & then captain & CSD hang around for a few mins to answer any queries. Makes a huge difference & ensures the info actually gets through to pax.

bradders81

Exactly!

I thought at the time that this is how it was before the captains retreated behind the locked door.

The Captain took great pleasure in engaging with the customers and genuinely seemed to want to explain what had happened. I know they can't do it on the larger aircraft but on the 319,320,321, this could be achieved.

CocoPops

As you say, this is what people would like to see.

Doesn't cost anything, doesn't delay anything, yet gives BA a warm friendly face.

More of this please BA!

Calchas

I had a captain come out and talk several times on KL last year when went a KL Fokker 70 went tech with a pneumatics failure over the English channel. Captain came out after we landed at AMS and powered down on the run way to apologize for the fire trucks and the inconvenience of being bussed all the way from the runway. I was in the lounge ahead of schedule. ^

We all felt a lot safer to see and hear his calm Dutch humour about the situation.

bradders81

I've put this into the 'Well Done' form on ba.co.uk - hopefully he'll be given a pat on the back for it.

It makes such a difference to the passengers. I've heard lots of skippers take to the cockpit PA but this wouldn't waste any time as we hadn't pushed back.

It gave me a little hope that there's still a lot of excellent staff at BA.

aceman

I don't really think the staff have ever been a problem, its the product and the cutbacks.

bradders81

In general, I'd go with that. Like us all, I can recount a lot of stories where staff have just behaved strangely or inappropriately but I guess you can get those bad days anywhere.

Given the negativity that surrounds a lot of the stories here, I thought it would be good to share a positive story

no longer atc

We had a 2hr delay leaving JNB last year- engineers had flattened batteries on 744 and they were arranging to borrow some from SAA I think- Capt, F/O and a couple of cabin crew came up to gate lounge. Capt made a PA explaining the problem,and then he and the lady F/O walked around chatting to pax.Cabin crew had one of the bar boxes of soft drinks and snacks, which they proceeded to hand out. It was very well received by the pax ,very good handling of delay.

Globaliser

I believe that BA has been encouraging this.

GK

We were on that flight, sitting in 3C and 3D.. I shook my head at the Captain when he made derogatory comment about Manchester weather..

bradders81

Humour...

Being from Liverpool, I do agree with him