fayec75

Recent happening to a friend of mine. Back in February with our 'National Airline' some friends of mine went to T5 check in desk for their flight to San Francisco. They were told by 2 members of the check in staff that they were in the wrong terminal (even though all paperwork had T5 on it). My friends are fairly inexperienced travellers so took the word of the check in staff and made their way over to T3. One of them is 91 years of age and with suitcases and being frail, they were offered no assistance and just sent on their way!! By the time they were sent back to T5 they missed their flight. They were booked onto a flight the next day but have subsequently lost a day of the holiday plus the inconvenience and stress of the whole thing. Long and short of it - the airline are pretty much washing their hands of it and have offered no apology and feel compensation is not due. They have not even tried to find out what happened on that date at the check in desk (if they have, it has not been explained) . I think this is an awful way to deal with this complaint !!!

LondonElite

Welcome to FT, fayec75!

That sounds pretty awful, and doesn't quite shine accolades over BA. Would you mind sharing your friend's destination? Some, like HAJ, have moved terminals over the last few months.

skba1

It says SFO.

(Unless it has just been edited in...)

Ldnn1

Welcome to Flyertalk, fayec75. This sounds like a very unfortunate story. Now, I am pretty certain that no member of staff in T5 will have thought that SFO flights leave from T3. However, were your friends booked under an AA codeshare on the BA flight?

What I’d suspect might have happened is your friends may have asked where the check-in desks for AA were, and someone told them AA operate from T3, and that’s what led to the confusion.

Do you think this could explain it? As I say, I don’t think anyone in T5 would have advised that SFO goes from T3, as it has always gone from T5.

nux

Was the flight marketed by AA or purchased through AA.com?

If so and they told the staff they were checking in for an AA flight that would explain why they were sent to T3.

stewaran

Mentions San Francisco in the OP, I dont think any North american departures have moved with the exception of MIA?

NUX could have a good point, If on AA paperwork it could have appeared that T3 should be departure point. of course no excuse really, but could at least explain their error

Calum

YVR, DEN, LAS & PHX.

Also worth noting that AA don't operate any LHR-SFO flights

LondonElite

Sorry, either missed that or it was quickly added in (more likely the former).

That's pretty shocking unless it was an AA ticket number which confused the staff. Still not much of an excuse. BA clearly acknowledged the mistake, otherwise I could have seen the rebooking turn into another drama, but this is something the OP's friend should be compensated for. Unfortunately it'll be difficult to prove, I suspect.

Ldnn1

Think you'll find I beat nux to that point by a good few seconds

nux

I wouldn't expect BA staff at T5 to know all the AA routes from T3.

Going off second hand information it is hard to know what exactly took place before they were directed to T3. If they simply told staff they were checking in for AA I think the fault fully lies with them. It is not clear whether any 'paperwork' was shown.

stewaran

OK!, havent spotted those when at T3, but usually early morning.

out of those i guess LAS could be feasible for a trip to the bay area

stewaran

Apologies NUX stole a very good point from LDNN1

UKtravelbear

Sounds like it was badly handled.

Surely the BA staff could have spend a few seconds looking at the paperwork (I assume they had a printed itinerary) or even just entered their names into the system before sending them on their way?

Not 100% sure but they could have a case for IDB compensation as they presented themselves for check-in at the correct time.

BA booking them shows, to me, that they admitted some liability but I appreciate others may disagree.

corporate-wage-slave

Let me add my welcome to you fayec75, welcome to Flyertalk and the BA board, though I'm sure we would all wish that the circumstances were better. I am sorry that your friends had such a bad time, it must have been intimidating for them as well as stressful.

By way of explanation - and certainly not excuse - I imagine that when you complained to BA they may have struggled to believe the complaint. And I can see why they would struggle, the SFO flights are one of the flagship T5 services and to get not one but two members of staff giving your friends obviously duff information is quite astonishing. If it was Phoenix then I can see this more readily happening. Did you provide the names of the staff members concerned in the complaint? With so many thousands of employees at LHR you can see the ability to investigate this would be very difficult.

Now this isn't the sort of thing anyone is going to invent, so I certainly don't want to give that impression, but I've never heard of this before, I don't recall any complaints here either, so if a complaint came into BA customer relations you can see the raised eyebrows.

The only way I can see this is happening is if there was a simple misunderstanding and the staff members thought your friends were travelling on American rather than to America, but as has been mentioned there is no direct service from AA to T3 either, though there are many indirect services to SFO from there. Or perhaps the staff member thought they were travelling with Virgin, for some reason.

Did they check in online before hand? I would guess not, and since the boarding passes from that process have "Terminal 5" stamped all over them I am sure that would have prevented this from happening.

By way of consolation I truly can't see this mistake ever happening again, I am sure it was a one off borne of some silly misunderstanding.

I think you may have a point here. fayec75, if you want to take it forward, and indeed force a more thorough investigation, Involuntary Denied Boarding, which is part of Regulation EC/261, may be a way forward. More details in the Dashboard about this, and there are some complexities in the way (where exactly where they sent on their way, was it a BA staff member or a Heathrow Airport staff member? etc), but it would certainly be a channel worth looking at.

paul4040

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

Unfortunately we don't have enough information to do anything other than speculate as to what has happened here. We've no idea how the conversation at check in went, or how it was started. What does seem pretty likely is that there was a breakdown in communication, though who bears the responsibility for that I wouldn't be drawn on with such scant details provided.

I hope the next time they fly things go a bit more smoothly!