30+ people offloaded from LAX-LHR flight
Apr 16, 2015, 2:27 am
#91
Join Date: Dec 2009
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Misconnecting passengers are a fact of life, but different airlines have different approaches (balancing operational stability against customer service) :
BA at LHR: Conformance means there is no way to pass security, so even if passengers could have made their connection they are prevented from getting to the gate.
KLM at AMS: A similar system to AA, where passengers are automatically offloaded if the computer calculates they cannot make their connection. However there is nothing to prevent passenger getting to the gate, so if you board last you often see some connecting passengers arguing to get their seats back!
LH at MUC: Dedicated teams and buses for short connection passengers, with a 30 min legal connection time I've been successful in making connections with a real connecting time of 15 mins (and my bags made it!).
By the way, the European Court of Justice ruled (against IB) that if you make it to the gate before boarding has finished, but your seat has already been given away and no more are available you are due the full EU261 compensation.
Personally, I think this event seems to show the best aspects of AA and BA. AA for being proactive, meeting passengers at the door with new boarding cards, food and accom vouchers. BA for allowing the passengers that made it onto the plane. I guess AA's calculation is that the cost of accommodating passengers is less than the cost of implementing a fast transfer service (i.e. dedicated bus transfer).
BA at LHR: Conformance means there is no way to pass security, so even if passengers could have made their connection they are prevented from getting to the gate.
KLM at AMS: A similar system to AA, where passengers are automatically offloaded if the computer calculates they cannot make their connection. However there is nothing to prevent passenger getting to the gate, so if you board last you often see some connecting passengers arguing to get their seats back!
LH at MUC: Dedicated teams and buses for short connection passengers, with a 30 min legal connection time I've been successful in making connections with a real connecting time of 15 mins (and my bags made it!).
By the way, the European Court of Justice ruled (against IB) that if you make it to the gate before boarding has finished, but your seat has already been given away and no more are available you are due the full EU261 compensation.
Personally, I think this event seems to show the best aspects of AA and BA. AA for being proactive, meeting passengers at the door with new boarding cards, food and accom vouchers. BA for allowing the passengers that made it onto the plane. I guess AA's calculation is that the cost of accommodating passengers is less than the cost of implementing a fast transfer service (i.e. dedicated bus transfer).
Apr 16, 2015, 2:38 am
#92
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Quoted "Think there is sensible actions and practical actions on their part.
You expect them to transfer 30 pax and their luggage and then rush it to the aircraft with less than 1 hour to go from a different terminal?
Get real. Fly in 3-4 hours earlier next time and stop expecting miracles please."
Yes, Most do expect the airlines to do this, as they do this everyday. Sometimes the luggage does not make it, but the pax should not be denied access to buses to the gate to see if they could make the plane. Not sure if this is the case with this flight, but in the other thread, first the pax was told by gate agent that corporate had taken them off the flight, then the pax received email saying it was the computer system. Pax run for flights everyday, but now the American computer system is predicting misconnects and pax are arriving at the gate within the accepted guidelines and finding they have no seats. If the itinerary is not acceptable for the airline, then they should not sell it.
You expect them to transfer 30 pax and their luggage and then rush it to the aircraft with less than 1 hour to go from a different terminal?
Get real. Fly in 3-4 hours earlier next time and stop expecting miracles please."
Yes, Most do expect the airlines to do this, as they do this everyday. Sometimes the luggage does not make it, but the pax should not be denied access to buses to the gate to see if they could make the plane. Not sure if this is the case with this flight, but in the other thread, first the pax was told by gate agent that corporate had taken them off the flight, then the pax received email saying it was the computer system. Pax run for flights everyday, but now the American computer system is predicting misconnects and pax are arriving at the gate within the accepted guidelines and finding they have no seats. If the itinerary is not acceptable for the airline, then they should not sell it.
I thought they were brave.
Last edited by wolf72; Apr 16, 2015 at 2:53 am
Apr 16, 2015, 3:45 am
#93
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The problem with borderline cases is that a decision needs to be made and a line drawn. It appears in this case that BA/AA possibly made the wrong decision to off-load.
I suspect that AA is much more adept at this than BA (I'm judging this by my experience with UA and BA). American airlines are all about connections. Nearly every flight has issues with late arriving connecting flights. Will people make it or won't they. That's why the gate closes 20 minutes before departure, so as to be able to sort out the standby passengers and, certainly with UA, there always seem to be quite a few. 20 minutes is a reasonable time. You have the standby passengers line up, and their bags ready to go. But BA chooses to do this an hour before, which IMHO is way too early. You don't need 60 minutes and, at T-60, you still don't know who will come strolling up to the gate.
The other aspect is that delays to a flight cause downstream delays. Passengers connecting at LHR for onward flights might miss those connections. The decision to take a delay will also factor in the numbers of people who will miss their onward connections - and, if the plane has a tight turnaround at LHR, it's probably not an option anyway.
The final thing to consider is that it appears that some of the group of 30 made it sharpish. If they were going to accommodate all of them, they would have gone at the pace of the slowest. My experience of groups of 30 is that the slowest will be very slow indeed.
I suspect that AA is much more adept at this than BA (I'm judging this by my experience with UA and BA). American airlines are all about connections. Nearly every flight has issues with late arriving connecting flights. Will people make it or won't they. That's why the gate closes 20 minutes before departure, so as to be able to sort out the standby passengers and, certainly with UA, there always seem to be quite a few. 20 minutes is a reasonable time. You have the standby passengers line up, and their bags ready to go. But BA chooses to do this an hour before, which IMHO is way too early. You don't need 60 minutes and, at T-60, you still don't know who will come strolling up to the gate.
The other aspect is that delays to a flight cause downstream delays. Passengers connecting at LHR for onward flights might miss those connections. The decision to take a delay will also factor in the numbers of people who will miss their onward connections - and, if the plane has a tight turnaround at LHR, it's probably not an option anyway.
The final thing to consider is that it appears that some of the group of 30 made it sharpish. If they were going to accommodate all of them, they would have gone at the pace of the slowest. My experience of groups of 30 is that the slowest will be very slow indeed.
Apr 16, 2015, 5:16 am
#94
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I think some facts are being twisted here. The only reason the regular foot route to connect to this flight would have been made impossible would have been because we were offloaded and therefore (it sounds like) the BP would not have scanned at TBIT security - so in a sense it was their actions that then made this foot connection impossible. As far as I can tell it was not impossible or even improbable by the time they made the decision - although again I do not know how much time they need to transfer baggage.
I think many people who know the layout at LAX would agree that 30mins by foot from an arrivals gate at T4 to a departure gate at TBIT is at least feasible if they are willing to move fast and security is not unusually busy - the distances are very small.
Things are getting a bit trolly here... Nobody is saying that AA or BA are evil or that they set out to screw us over. I at no point during this process shouted at staff or even argued with them. I felt the individual staff were all very helpful, esp at BA. Again - they probably thought they were being proactive but in this case I just felt they pulled the trigger slightly too soon and ended up being a little bit too efficient. They gave up on us a bit too quickly. Selling a 95min connection to 30+ pax and then offloading them when it turns out they will now only have about 60mins to connect just seems possibly a little excessive.
Also I think most people would agree that it was unfortunate that AA staff gave us conflicting advice as this made the situation confusing and stressful - more so for some of the other pax who were nearly in tears. Overall though, on the scale of bad things airlines can do - this is still pretty minor.
Had they rebooked us for the next day's flight but at the same time said "by all means still try for this one", then I would be saying that they did everything perfectly.
p.s. I got my bag back last night. I'm sure some people were getting worried about this :P
I think many people who know the layout at LAX would agree that 30mins by foot from an arrivals gate at T4 to a departure gate at TBIT is at least feasible if they are willing to move fast and security is not unusually busy - the distances are very small.
Things are getting a bit trolly here... Nobody is saying that AA or BA are evil or that they set out to screw us over. I at no point during this process shouted at staff or even argued with them. I felt the individual staff were all very helpful, esp at BA. Again - they probably thought they were being proactive but in this case I just felt they pulled the trigger slightly too soon and ended up being a little bit too efficient. They gave up on us a bit too quickly. Selling a 95min connection to 30+ pax and then offloading them when it turns out they will now only have about 60mins to connect just seems possibly a little excessive.
Also I think most people would agree that it was unfortunate that AA staff gave us conflicting advice as this made the situation confusing and stressful - more so for some of the other pax who were nearly in tears. Overall though, on the scale of bad things airlines can do - this is still pretty minor.
Had they rebooked us for the next day's flight but at the same time said "by all means still try for this one", then I would be saying that they did everything perfectly.
p.s. I got my bag back last night. I'm sure some people were getting worried about this :P
Sure, if you know an airport really well, you might have a good probability of getting to the gate in time for boarding. How is an airline supposed to guess this when making a judgement as to when to offload passengers?
By status?
That won't work - I'm Gold and was GGL for 5 years, but I travel some routes more than others. I could direct you around Incheon airport very easily as have been there 40 times. Ask me about BOM, and I wouldn't have a clue as I have only been through there on one return flight.
Yes decisions become arbitrary, but in many ways, they have to be. Computers and companies can't be expected to know what every passenger's experience is in an airport.
Apr 16, 2015, 5:51 am
#95
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The problem with borderline cases is that a decision needs to be made and a line drawn. It appears in this case that BA/AA possibly made the wrong decision to off-load.
I suspect that AA is much more adept at this than BA (I'm judging this by my experience with UA and BA). American airlines are all about connections. Nearly every flight has issues with late arriving connecting flights. Will people make it or won't they. That's why the gate closes 20 minutes before departure, so as to be able to sort out the standby passengers and, certainly with UA, there always seem to be quite a few. 20 minutes is a reasonable time. You have the standby passengers line up, and their bags ready to go. But BA chooses to do this an hour before, which IMHO is way too early. You don't need 60 minutes and, at T-60, you still don't know who will come strolling up to the gate.
The other aspect is that delays to a flight cause downstream delays. Passengers connecting at LHR for onward flights might miss those connections. The decision to take a delay will also factor in the numbers of people who will miss their onward connections - and, if the plane has a tight turnaround at LHR, it's probably not an option anyway.
The final thing to consider is that it appears that some of the group of 30 made it sharpish. If they were going to accommodate all of them, they would have gone at the pace of the slowest. My experience of groups of 30 is that the slowest will be very slow indeed.
I suspect that AA is much more adept at this than BA (I'm judging this by my experience with UA and BA). American airlines are all about connections. Nearly every flight has issues with late arriving connecting flights. Will people make it or won't they. That's why the gate closes 20 minutes before departure, so as to be able to sort out the standby passengers and, certainly with UA, there always seem to be quite a few. 20 minutes is a reasonable time. You have the standby passengers line up, and their bags ready to go. But BA chooses to do this an hour before, which IMHO is way too early. You don't need 60 minutes and, at T-60, you still don't know who will come strolling up to the gate.
The other aspect is that delays to a flight cause downstream delays. Passengers connecting at LHR for onward flights might miss those connections. The decision to take a delay will also factor in the numbers of people who will miss their onward connections - and, if the plane has a tight turnaround at LHR, it's probably not an option anyway.
The final thing to consider is that it appears that some of the group of 30 made it sharpish. If they were going to accommodate all of them, they would have gone at the pace of the slowest. My experience of groups of 30 is that the slowest will be very slow indeed.
I think it's BA's perogative to close 1 hour before a flight or not.
It's amazing nobody is picking on the fact the OP was maybe at fault for taking/choosing a flight too close to the BA departure time...
Why go after BA when AA was late?
Anyways..everyone expects too much sometimes from the airlines. They have their own operational planning to do in such a short amount of time as it is....
Apr 16, 2015, 6:06 am
#96
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I think it's BA's perogative to close 1 hour before a flight or not.
It's amazing nobody is picking on the fact the OP was maybe at fault for taking/choosing a flight too close to the BA departure time...
Why go after BA when AA was late?
Anyways..everyone expects too much sometimes from the airlines. They have their own operational planning to do in such a short amount of time as it is....
It's amazing nobody is picking on the fact the OP was maybe at fault for taking/choosing a flight too close to the BA departure time...
Why go after BA when AA was late?
Anyways..everyone expects too much sometimes from the airlines. They have their own operational planning to do in such a short amount of time as it is....
Apr 16, 2015, 6:09 am
#97
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I don't think anyone is going after BA or AA. A decision was made by either BA or AA to offload us. I feel it was maybe an incorrect decision given that we still had 60mins to connect but that is just my opinion. I'm sure the decision of when to offload passengers is never an easy one in borderline cases like this.
Last edited by Enigma368; Apr 16, 2015 at 7:35 am
Apr 16, 2015, 7:36 am
#98
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Apr 16, 2015, 8:48 am
#99
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...AA was in the best position to know whether or not the passengers would make the connection. In their estimation, (and from what I read, had the passengers followed the proper route) the passengers would miss the BA flight. In the land of e-tickets, if a passenger is checked into a flight, (here, the BA flight) then they can't be rebooked onto another flight using the e-ticket. AA asked BA to offload the passengers so AA could rebook them onto another flight.
It was all under the hope of providing good customer service.
It was all under the hope of providing good customer service.
No worries. We are good.
Want an example? Flights from Chicago to Hong Kong at certain times of the year cannot carry a full load because of headwinds, requiring some people to get bumped. Oversold? No. Denied boarding? Yes. Denied boarding compensation? Yes. UA does it every year.
Someone denied them boarding (assuming they got there during boarding). So sure, I could see that BA may not be liable. And the OW agreement clearly states it is up to AA to get them to their final destination because of AA delay. But if they were denied, they are owed.
Apr 16, 2015, 3:21 pm
#100
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( see http://airconsumer.dot.gov/publications/flyrights.htm )
Can you provide a link to a DOT page which contradicts this?
Last edited by Dave Noble; Apr 16, 2015 at 3:26 pm
Apr 16, 2015, 4:12 pm
#101
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The DOT regulation covers requiement for compensation when denied boarding due to a flight being oversold
( see http://airconsumer.dot.gov/publications/flyrights.htm )
Can you provide a link to a DOT page which contradicts this?
( see http://airconsumer.dot.gov/publications/flyrights.htm )
Can you provide a link to a DOT page which contradicts this?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/tr...t-flights.html
Updated - found it.
§ 250.8 Denied boarding compensation.
This reg stands on its own and does not require 'oversold'.
Virgin also cites denied boarding without the 'oversold' terminology.
http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/us/en...-boarding.html
Last edited by Global321; Apr 16, 2015 at 4:17 pm Reason: Updated with more information
Apr 16, 2015, 4:41 pm
#102
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From 250.9
International Transportation
Passengers traveling from the United States to a foreign point who are denied boarding involuntarily from an oversold flight originating at a U.S. airport are entitled to: (1) No compensation if the carrier offers alternate transportation that is planned to arrive at the passenger's destination or first stopover not later than one hour after the planned arrival time of the passenger's original flight; (2) 200% of the fare to the passenger's destination or first stopover, with a maximum of $650, if the carrier offers alternate transportation that is planned to arrive at the passenger's destination or first stopover more than one hour but less than four hours after the planned arrival time of the passenger's original flight; and (3) 400% of the fare to the passenger's destination or first stopover, with a maximum of $1,300, if the carrier does not offer alternate transportation that is planned to arrive at the airport of the passenger's destination or first stopover less than four hours after the planned arrival time of the passenger's original flight.
International Transportation
Passengers traveling from the United States to a foreign point who are denied boarding involuntarily from an oversold flight originating at a U.S. airport are entitled to: (1) No compensation if the carrier offers alternate transportation that is planned to arrive at the passenger's destination or first stopover not later than one hour after the planned arrival time of the passenger's original flight; (2) 200% of the fare to the passenger's destination or first stopover, with a maximum of $650, if the carrier offers alternate transportation that is planned to arrive at the passenger's destination or first stopover more than one hour but less than four hours after the planned arrival time of the passenger's original flight; and (3) 400% of the fare to the passenger's destination or first stopover, with a maximum of $1,300, if the carrier does not offer alternate transportation that is planned to arrive at the airport of the passenger's destination or first stopover less than four hours after the planned arrival time of the passenger's original flight.
Apr 16, 2015, 6:44 pm
#103
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I don't think you can say that all denied boarding can be treated equally. e.g. intoxicated or abusive passengers, or security risks. I guess you probably mean denied boarding in cases when the passenger is there on time and fit to fly.
Apr 16, 2015, 6:55 pm
#104
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Apr 16, 2015, 8:26 pm
#105
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MCT is an organisational matter and not the fault of the passenger in any way whatsoever. The listed reasons when an airline can deny a pax boarding without being liable are listed and none has ever been added by the courts.
Policies, internal rules, agreements do not limit the liability of the airline.