Land-of-Miles

Indeed even the County Court isn't going to be confused by that one, a failure to ensure sufficient IT/Data Centre resilience is extraordinary, it is extraordinarily incompetent!

RoyalSwazi

Agree their corp comm failure might very well be down to cost cuts. BA were lucky this was "just" an IT meltdown, but what if there had been injuries or worse in the scrum yesterday? What about a possible fatal accident in the future? There are several airlines that can testify to the cost of mismanaging the fallout of tragedies with regards to both profits & share price.

I have the deepest sympathies for all affected travellers and staff who are trying to help out. Out of curiosity I've put notifications on BA flights to my home airport today. They managed to operate the morning departure to Heathrow but the second and now third departure has just been cancelled. Being a Scandinavian style long weekend here I fear there are lots of people who'll get an involuntary extension...

rockflyertalk

Popcorn sales have gone up this weekend I'm sure!

Its been fascinating to hear and read the insights, speculations and well rumours too. It's incredible the FT knowledge.

I'm tempted to blow my own trumpet here and say that my only tweet and input to this was a suggestion to BA (Cruz) that he needs to address the passengers, oddly enough 2 hours later he appeared in his hi-viz! I can't say my suggestion was actioned but the timings are interesting!

The handling of the entire crisis, regardless of the 2 videos from Cruz, clearly was shockingly bad. If and when he gets dragged in front of WW and the other board members he will certainly not be sleeping well over the next few weeks and months.

I hope people are moving today and getting to their destinations at last.

Swanhunter

Given the operations meltdown Vueling experienced last year, I'd suggest that airline was beyond him.

Calum

Has to be under Ł400, I wouldn't pay Ł527 for CW and the risks of being left in LHR for over 2 hours

Nansbread

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...ders-system-f/

The last line is poignant.

Globaliser

If you paid Ł527 for CW and you were left in LHR for over 4 hours, it would be a free trip!

T8191

ISTR we made a small profit from our EC261 on our 24-hour delayed 2-4-1 trip in CW to KIN. Didn't compensate for the loss of an expensive night's hotel and the loss of a day's holiday though. Insurance came nowhere near covering that loss!

Jonrross

Ouch!

'"Inexperienced' BA boss who oversaw cost-cutting drive is blamed for IT meltdown which could cost Ł150m"

http://dailym.ai/2s9vHcS

henkybaby

By the unions.

pianotraveller

It's quite an achievement to get the Mail and the unions to agree on something. I'd call that a pretty broad consensus. Congrats, Alex.

gtomlinson

I'm absolutely done with British Airways.

I've flown with them for 30 years. I don't care about my civ, the card, the miles. I'm absolutely done. The farcical lack of customer service and the obvious fact IAG and BA do not give a toss for about customers. They have ruined a special week for me. I can forgive failures, things do go wrong. I can't forgive how they were handled and how I was spoken to yesterday by ground staff and BAs contact centre team.

There's in benefit in flying BA, perks are disappearing, service getting worse, reliability downhill.

You may consider this a flounce and I'm sure my tens of thousands of pounds a year are a drop in the ocean but they don't ever seem to learn or improve. They don't care.

Farewell BA.

henkybaby

I will certainly bet against IAG's stock price on Monday morning....

MPH1980

OK - let's be clear - the message relayed here was from BA's internal messaging system. This has NOTHING to do with any press or public communications.

He basically means there are four sets of people in BA right now:

1) Those fixing the problem directly
2) Those working and supporting the business out of the problem
3) Those sitting at home and not working on it
4) Those sitting on the messaging system discussing the issue (when they should either be working or sitting at home).

The point Alex is making is that if you're in category 4 - right now - you're not helping.

If, internally, the relevant policies haven't been made clear? Sure - let's get them clarified and that's something the communication team could help with.

If, internally, they haven't updated people on the status of the relevant systems - that's something that could be done.

But no one, except the team fixing it and their mgmt, needs to know the root cause today. And if anyone from another team starts asking about it - guess what - that's a distraction!

No one, except the teams rebooking customers and their mgmt, needs to know the intricate details of the policies for rebooking. And if anyone else is saying "why can't we do ..." that's a distraction.

And right now - I can't think of anything else you could be asking about the problem that is in the slightest bit relevant. Everyone seems to expect to know everything immediately these days thanks to Twitter etc. A staff member sitting at home or in a non-relevant job simply isn't entitled to know the intimate details of a problem while it's occurring. Power failure - we're rebooking - that's enough right now.

I used to work in a business that had a warehouse that was struggling to scale. Roughly once every 3-4 weeks on our peak day the WMS software would crash with a new scaling problem. It became pretty predictable - frustrating - but predictable.

On that day - head office got divided into 3 groups. Group 1 - fixing the problem (and that was a pretty small group). Group 2 - supporting the warehouse team to get product out the door. Group 3 - calling customers who needed contacting to apologise. That's it - there wasn't a "group 4" sitting around talking about it and there wasn't another group who was just doing their normal job - even CEO/CFO would be hands deep in the warehouse or phones. Everyone was either resolving the problem or digging the company out of it.

And once we got past it - the following day - a company meeting was held and everyone was informed about the problem and what's been done to prevent it. THEN everyone had a chance to discuss it ("Wouldn't it have been better if ..." type stuff).

Edit: And yes - the PR and communications teams need to have done a much better job with this. The mgmt and teams at the airports needed to do a much better job at getting people out etc etc etc. All of that will (hopefully) come out in the internal review they'll inevitably have to do.

M.

Flyingandserving

As a BA staff member I feel not just disappointment but also shame that you feel this way.

As a person and a long serving BA employee I fully understand and am infuriated that BA has dropped to this appalling level of service.
As one of my colleagues said to me there is only so many times you can kick a dog before you lose their loyalty. I fear BA have kicked to many times to warrant loyalty from anyone.