henkybaby

Life is a biohazard. As is sneezing and waiters that don't wash their hands...

http://elliott.org/blog/biohazard-bo...happen-planes/

I am not apologising for BA at all. I would have probably added to the problem as vomit makes me puke... Just that we don't exaggerate the risks. Just don't lick the vomit and prevent people directly vomiting on you.

If the vomit has been cleaned and sprayed with disinfectant, it is still yuck but no longer a biohazard.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trou...ean-1410993651

And if you're really interested... http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs...rp_rpt_091.pdf

Does BA carry a biohazard kit for disinfecting and cleaning after an 'accident' ?

passy777

Which is fair comment, but in this situation, it had been 'deposited' and left unsanitised.

The affected areas do not need to be 'licked' to cross contaminate. Just touching the area can result in the spread of the virus and the risk is increased in relatively confined and populated areas such as an aircraft or cruise ship.

henkybaby

Sorry, I added to my response... Spraying it with disinfectant will do nothing against the way it looks. It just eliminates the most common threats. Also, if a contaminated passenger has been sneezing over your seat, you won't see it, but it is just as contagious.

jamesreid978

I never thought about the whole hazardous aspect, however as mentioned previously, I suspect it was from lots of BA booze, perhaps got rather excited about the new premium fever tree tonic option to have with their Gordon's gin. I also suspect that they would have been too embarrassed to notify staff about the incident, which is easy for us to disagree with, but I know that if it were me especially through booze, swallowing my pride and admitting I have had too much to drink would be difficult. Based on the fact you would expect it would be cleaned during turnaround anyway.

I had thought that when you are sick, you are usually left with some of it around your mouth and nose and that has probably been wiped onto the seat where my head would be.

CIHY mentioned it isn't normal practice to take the stool down, but it was also visible on the floor when it had dropped down.

In terms of the compensation, looking back on it, I should have mentioned that I have a CW trip in a couple of weeks, at the time it hadn't been linked to my exec number though, and a first upgrade would have helped. But even more so I have a WT+ out and CW back trip to NYC with my gf in November, an upgrade there to CW would have been a much better form of compensation, but then again probably not an option based on CIHY's previous post.

passy777

I suspect they may carry a 'vamp kit' (or similar) which includes a chemical sanitiser, gloves, face mask etc.

Certainly in the University where I work, these are the standard issue for the colleges and they are frequently used and I advise that all body fluids are treated as 'infectious materials'.

henkybaby

One thing I can say: this is newsworthy stuff apparently...

Standard airline response seems to be 'sorry, better luck next time' though. Given the exposure stories like this apparently get, I would aim high with regards to compensation.

Can I help you

We do.

LifeontheBeach

I agree. Especially given the fact that Twitter played an important part in the BA CS contacting him.

travelwithross

henkybaby I don't think you're doing yourself any favours here in defending BA. It's funny to see the usual suspects of "apologists" not out in force in the thread and others not touching it with a barge pole.

-This was in a CW cabin.
-BA markets CW as a premium offering
-The plane was on the ground for hours.
-The vomit was not discovered or cleaned.
-The airline when notified of this [on board] did not proactively offer compensation or use the iPad to complain for the customer.
-This is not United Domestic
-This is not Ryanair

I would have seriously been fuming if this was me.

It's a bloody disgrace. BA are defenceless in their actions.

And the OP is a bloody fool for accepting 20k in avios.

Good night.

henkybaby

I don't think that I am defending BA, to be honest.

Explaining that vomit is not highly toxic, nor a biohazard per se does not mean I would accept a seat like that. Just to ease the possible health worries.

Maybe you should read the rest too.

LifeontheBeach

^^^

It does look like the OP has accepted the 20K avios by his wording 'gave me 20k'. A pity. it would have made a very interesting observation in a legal venue.

Purim

What is an airline to do here? We don't know what happened on the outbound. Was it logged by CC and then ignored or was it is a 'private barf?' More culpability if the former than the latter. We don't know. If the former, then the seat should have been taken out of service and BA suck up the cost of some guy's IRROPS. We are know outstation cleaning crews are even worse than UK based crews, and for me, this is where BA's culpability lies. BA know the cleaning is substandard. They do nothing about it. A recent post of the state of the new A380 cabins testifies to this. I would not have high hopes of a CUN cleaning crew.

What BA should have done is call the OP after his twitter complaint and figure out a way to make this right. May be they did this and the OP agreed to 20K and all was well? 20k is riches for one, peanuts for another.

No blame on the OP at all. He is a victim. Next time he'll check his seat before take off, and come back to the intelligence of this board for compensation ideas before settlement.

HIDDY

No excuses for the selfish idiot who peuked or split something on the incoming flight for not informing the cabin crew.

henkybaby

No, this is definitely BA's fault. Indirectly maybe (bad cleaning company) but no way this cannot be blamed on the airline.

jamesreid978

When the BA rep called me, we discussed the issue and he said he would like to offer me Avios compensation, when I asked how much he said 20,000 and I said that doesn't seem like much but that's all they could offer. To be honest, 20,000 does very little for me with the devaluation, I use them exclusively for 241s, which is limited to once a year, and I use these every year as I have enough Avios.

I won't be going to the press with this or taking it further as I see it as resolved, however just wanted to inform this forum as a long standing viewer to see how people would react. As someone mentioned above, it is almost refreshing on tho forum to not see BA defended. It also seems more and more unbelievable that the CSD or CSM (don't really know the difference) never spoke to me after the cabin crew member had a discussion with him/her.