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Silver/Golds can no longer select Exit Rows in advance?

Silver/Golds can no longer select Exit Rows in advance?

Old Feb 11, 2016, 5:28 pm
  #286  
 
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Originally Posted by Phorbas
It's an unfortunate vicious cycle of not being able to release changes to the live environment regularly. In turn means each release includes a greater number of changes, which then has a higher likelihood of breaking something. When it does break, the answer is to add additional testing processes, which then means releases take longer to prepare - rinse and repeat.

Over time these processes get formalised, new structures established to perform each role, and then nobody has the whole picture nor the incentives to care when things aren't working.
Plenty of truth in that I think. The Yammer and presumably other orgs model of "flighting" stuff to increasing percentages of users to plot technical and business outcomes seems to be a good mechanism for avoiding complete meltdown.

Of course, BA may already be doing that and the above chatter may be from just 10% of the population ...
EsherFlyer is offline  
Old Feb 11, 2016, 5:53 pm
  #287  
 
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BA need to sack or seriously council their IT team. Quite simply, the failures highlighted in this thread indicate that they failed to test for many scenarios, and even worse failed to plan for common scenarios in their programming and implementation plans.
Aus_Mal is offline  
Old Feb 11, 2016, 6:30 pm
  #288  
 
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Originally Posted by Aus_Mal
BA need to sack or seriously council their IT team. Quite simply, the failures highlighted in this thread indicate that they failed to test for many scenarios, and even worse failed to plan for common scenarios in their programming and implementation plans.
A few people on a message board couldn't select the seats they wanted for flights more than three days away. Yeah, let's sack the entire IT team.

Should Microsoft or Apple do the same every time they find a bug in one of their products?

What a massive overreaction
darthlemsip is offline  
Old Feb 12, 2016, 2:00 am
  #289  
 
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Originally Posted by darthlemsip
A few people on a message board couldn't select the seats they wanted for flights more than three days away. Yeah, let's sack the entire IT team.

Should Microsoft or Apple do the same every time they find a bug in one of their products?

What a massive overreaction
While I don't think the whole IT team should be sacked let's be fair here....this isn't exactly the first poorly implemented bit of IT work from BA so this isn't just about this glitch.

As far as this glitch goes, per Traveling For Miles, BA have sent out info to travel agents explaining that exit seats will be priced separately (no info on actual pricing) and are holding their hands up to issues caused by the IT work being implemented.
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Old Feb 12, 2016, 2:13 am
  #290  
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From speedbirdclub, posted yesterday evening:

From 05 February 2016 customers selecting Paid Seating in Euro Traveller will see Exit Row seats priced separately to Standard seats. Customers who selected Paid Seating in an Exit Row prior to 05 February 2016 may continue to sit in their chosen seat, however, a system limitation will prevent them from making a voluntary change to an alternative seat.

Advice for customers seated in a Euro Traveller Exit seat

Exit seats in Euro Traveller will be priced separately to Standard seats from 05 February 2016
Customers who purchased Euro Traveller Standard seating before 05 February 2016 and chose to sit in a Euro Traveller Exit seat may continue to do so, however, a system limitation means they will be unable to change to an alternative seat.
The only option is for them to cancel their paid seating and obtain a refund, they will then be able to purchase seating for an alternative seat.
A system solution allowing them to change seats and pay any difference will be available in the near future.
Customers who purchased Exit Seats in Euro Traveller from 05 February 2016 will be able to change to an alternative seat.
So this IT bug is the result of some changes in the proposition, although for non status holder it seems.
fransknorge is offline  
Old Feb 12, 2016, 2:17 am
  #291  
 
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Originally Posted by darthlemsip
A few people on a message board couldn't select the seats they wanted for flights more than three days away. Yeah, let's sack the entire IT team.

Should Microsoft or Apple do the same every time they find a bug in one of their products?

What a massive overreaction
Agree to a certain extent! But I do hope BA will have a serious word with their IT team given the persistent problem, albeit an inconvenience, is impacting their frequent flyers. From a customer experience perspective, it hasn't been great. It's really not an experience one comes to associate with being a top tier member of a FFP.

Another data point, I called BA to try to sort out my seat selection on 4 bookings but to no avail. Emergency Exit rows were not greyed out on several of my flights but the agent wasn't able to get the seat selection to stick. She initially thought it was the "club curtain" problem but having looked through several of my bookings, she quickly realised that that wasn't case and she escalated the problem to her manager. At least she was very apologetic about it.

Let's hope this problem gets sorted soon but I'm keeping my expectations very low.
chilledflyer is offline  
Old Feb 12, 2016, 2:18 am
  #292  
 
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Originally Posted by Aus_Mal
BA need to sack or seriously council their IT team. Quite simply, the failures highlighted in this thread indicate that they failed to test for many scenarios, and even worse failed to plan for common scenarios in their programming and implementation plans.
But they have only just employed them...
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Old Feb 12, 2016, 2:20 am
  #293  
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Originally Posted by darthlemsip
A few people on a message board couldn't select the seats they wanted for flights more than three days away. Yeah, let's sack the entire IT team.

Should Microsoft or Apple do the same every time they find a bug in one of their products?
If it was just this issue in isolation, then I'd agree. But you just need to look at the Glitches/Bugs thread to see how badly changes are managed.
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Old Feb 12, 2016, 2:34 am
  #294  
 
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Originally Posted by Aus_Mal
BA need to sack or seriously council their IT team. Quite simply, the failures highlighted in this thread indicate that they failed to test for many scenarios, and even worse failed to plan for common scenarios in their programming and implementation plans.
Apple iTunes 12 has a number of well documented and annoying bugs, some even predate this release. They might have been predicted and may have shown up on testing. Unlike the BA scenario they show no sign of being fixed any time quickly or at all.

Are Apple sacking their programmers? Are they counselling them?

I don't think so.

In the real world, mistakes happen, and they get rectified. Unforeseen and unpredictable things happen, and the shortcomings that arise are fixed. Nobody loses their job for identifying and addressing issues as they arise.

I am afraid that this mentality that no-one is allowed to make any sort of mistake without retribution (and compensation) is becoming far too wide spread. I presume those who advocate it are either infallible immortals or happy to find themselves frequently sacked for doing a job with occasional human lapses from the ideal perfect standard.
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Old Feb 12, 2016, 2:56 am
  #295  
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Originally Posted by FrancisA
In the real world, mistakes happen, and they get rectified. Unforeseen and unpredictable things happen, and the shortcomings that arise are fixed. Nobody loses their job for identifying and addressing issues as they arise.
You obviously don't work in IT.

There will be somebody ultimately responsible for QA. I've seen plenty of people lose their jobs when these sort of issues continue to occur.

One poor bloke I used to work with pleaded with "the upper management" not to issue a release of software as "the workers" told him it wasn't ready. He was overruled, it was a mess, and he lost his job.
DYKWIA is offline  
Old Feb 12, 2016, 3:09 am
  #296  
 
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Originally Posted by fransknorge
From speedbirdclub, posted yesterday evening:


"From 05 February 2016 customers selecting Paid Seating in Euro Traveller will see Exit Row seats priced separately to Standard seats. Customers who selected Paid Seating in an Exit Row prior to 05 February 2016 may continue to sit in their chosen seat, however, a system limitation will prevent them from making a voluntary change to an alternative seat.

Advice for customers seated in a Euro Traveller Exit seat

Exit seats in Euro Traveller will be priced separately to Standard seats from 05 February 2016
Customers who purchased Euro Traveller Standard seating before 05 February 2016 and chose to sit in a Euro Traveller Exit seat may continue to do so, however, a system limitation means they will be unable to change to an alternative seat.
The only option is for them to cancel their paid seating and obtain a refund, they will then be able to purchase seating for an alternative seat.
A system solution allowing them to change seats and pay any difference will be available in the near future.
Customers who purchased Exit Seats in Euro Traveller from 05 February 2016 will be able to change to an alternative seat."

So this IT bug is the result of some changes in the proposition, although for non status holder it seems.
You mean that the information provided by the BA Company Representative is again not fully reliable, at least not complete?
vibguy is offline  
Old Feb 12, 2016, 3:23 am
  #297  
 
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Originally Posted by DYKWIA
If it was just this issue in isolation, then I'd agree. But you just need to look at the Glitches/Bugs thread to see how badly changes are managed.
I agree with you, I have two other issues in my bookings due to software bugs. Upon calling, the agents look into it and come with : 'Very sorry, it is a software glitch, nothing we can do, keep an eye on it, hopefully it will be fixed before you fly.'

The problem is that this happens much more frequently than before.

Of course, the BAEC terms, the booking terms and the possible options (now additionally price differentiation between buying a regular seat and an exit seat reservation) have become so complex that the IT team might have difficulties to catch up and might release too early under pressure from the revenue team.
vibguy is offline  
Old Feb 12, 2016, 3:32 am
  #298  
 
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Originally Posted by vibguy
The problem is that this happens much more frequently than before.

Of course, the BAEC terms, the booking terms and the possible options (now additionally price differentiation between buying a regular seat and an exit seat reservation) have become so complex that the IT team might have difficulties to catch up and might release too early under pressure from the revenue team.
In addition, the underlying architecture of the system is archaic and is spaghetti code. Try modifying spaghetti code with new lines of code - combine this with poor systems testing - et voila the results we see all the time with BA IT.
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Old Feb 12, 2016, 3:39 am
  #299  
 
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Mistakes do happen, they'll always happen and you can only attempt to mitigate against it. However, this does from the outside appear to be a lesson on how not to do it.

A change to the seat booking rules was implemented with no announcement to either staff or customers. This change went wrong and was still not acknowledged for longer than should be acceptable. When incident/problem management* kicked in it still appears that the staff were not communicated to as shown by the varied and confused replies from the contact centres. We then had a fix applied to the problem that only resolved the issue for a fraction of customers suggesting that root cause analysis was below par and the fix was not tested correctly. It's possible that it was known to be only a partial fix and they decided to get it out while they worked on the rest but this also doesn't stand up for me as we were told by our long suffering BA contact on here that it was fixed, not partially fixed.

End of the world? Of course not but the lack of control, QA, ownership and communication of this issue to customers and staff should be an embarrassment. If I was involved in this I'd be hiding under my desk for a while.

*Assuming they have incident or problem management and that they actually got involved.
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Old Feb 12, 2016, 4:13 am
  #300  
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I think this whole issue needs to be put into perspective. We're talking about exit seats here in Euro Traveller. Yes, I agree looks like it hasn't been handled great in ways but there really are some over exaggerations, hyperbole and rants. Just my own personal view.
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