svgittins

This past Monday, as we were taking off on an early morning flight from Berlin to LHR the metal cabin divider plus its curtain detached from the ceiling and fell with a crash into my row (the front one of the economy cabin). It gave all three of us a nasty shock and was rather painful (it hit my hand) but there was no damage done other than than a bruise on my companion's thumb (he was sitting by the window and got the brunt of it). The flight attendants were very concerned and solicitous, and offered us ice for the bruises, and also gave all of us customer service forms to fill in to report the incident. We all completed the forms but so far (5 days later) myself and my companion have received no response - and I wonder if they might have been dispatched by now to some paper recycling facility in Hounslow. By coincidence, as I disembarked I also got one of those "Thank you for flying BA we we'd like to ask 3 questions about your experience" text messages on my phone, which I duely replied to. This resulted in a phone call from customer services the next day to see if I "was alright" - which of course I was. And that was that. Now, I don't want to be churlish or ultra-demanding but shouldn't I expect a little more? Several times on other airlines I have had the flight attendants proactively compensate me with frequent flyer miles on the spot for fairly small issues (malfunctioning IFE etc) and I rather thought British Airways would do the same. This clearly was an airline maintenance issue and could have been a pretty unpleasant incident if a small child had been in one of the 3 effected seats. Or do you actually require hospitalisation to get compensation? Or perhaps it was just that we were only WT passengers?

Paralytic

Its unlikely that BA have or will ignore your email - as you say, this could have been a very serious incident. I suspect your request is still in BA's queue - it can take 4 weeks plus to get a proper response and that's often a copy-and-paste "sorry, goodbye" to which you have to respond to get someone to actually read your email. BA takes a very loose approach to email customer service.

If you want prompter action, phone up and speak to someone.

As to the final outcome, I guess it depends on what you and your companion want and how far you want to take it. I suspect BA will throw you some Avios, but if you want to push things, I guess you could ask for more, a flight voucher, a future space-available upgrade, or if you wanted to go down that route, contact a "no claim, no gain" lawyer to get some real money.

golfmad

Call me old fashioned but if you sustained no damage then why would you expect to receive anything or pursue anything?

itsmeitisss

Come on, do keep up, this is modern society. An apology is never good enough.

"Where there's blame..."

Barnaby100

To be fair on the Op- we get avios compensation for a non working IFE system. If all they are wanting is a bunch of miles then I expect it will be forthcoming. That isn't really a blame/claim culture its a customer service apology when something isnt as it should be- and the divider shouldn't have fallen down.

I dont read it that he is wanting to sue them (or maybe I am wrong)

hugolover

If I were a BA supplier and an incident like this occurred I am sure BA would sue because it all goes towards the bottom line. However, its not easy at all where there is no real injury.

But 100k Avios would be acceptable and trust me, has been awarded for far less!

BA or bust

^

Padmeister

+1

the thought of avios or anything for that matter wouldn't even cross my mind.

it absolutely amazes me the mind of FTers, my boss thinks people on here are nuts!

PETER01

He suffered pain to his/her hand and his/her friend suffered a bruise which the CC gave him/her ice for and this is not something one should expect when flying. Then of course there is the psychological trauma.

An apology would be suffice for me personally and just to confirm ............we are nuts (but in a good way )

Padmeister

ha ha Nice 1 Peter

simons1

Agreed.

Ber2dca

I wouldn't think of asking for compensation myself (I've literally never filed a complaint in my life) but at the same time it'd leave a bad taste in my mouth. And surely that's where a good customer service operation tries to make a difference and turn that experience around.

BingBongBoy

Just to shed some light on the time scales of this sort of thing…

You flew on Monday, forms were filled out on Monday, submitted on Monday.

Forms then are sorted and sent to be processed, I believe in India and all details entered onto a system to then be farmed out to the appropriate department be that in the UK or abroad.

So, in effect, the form has been being "processed" for 4 working days, including its flight to India to be data inputed. So, it may take a few more days.

I take it these were actual paper forms?

HIDDY

I would be delighted with a letter of apology and some ralgex.

You might get some Avios on the other hand you might not.

David-A

They physically move the paper?!?

They don't just scan it and have someone in india do the data capture?