Tobias-UK

No, he had already left the sterile area. Once he got back on the transit he was past the point of no return. He would need to (1) clear the UK Border (he was now mixing with international passengers); (2) he would need to get his ready to fly status reset; (3) he would need to meet conformance and (4) he would need to reclear security.

What we do agree on is that in the reported circumstances BA could have done more, in the sense that he could very easily have been put on a later flight without any additional cost. That would not have cost BA a penny.

mandolino

I've been misdirected by terminal staff at T5 several times and in its early days ended up landside on a connection more than once by doing what I was told. Luckily I didn't miss any connections as a result.

There are a lot of clueless staff at T5 whose main interest is to get you out of their faces asap so they can resume their gossiping with colleagues, but you only learn that after several transits.

There are some great ones too and their advice to me was what I just said, "There are a lot of clueless people here"

Ber2dca

Call the kid naive but this probably created significantly more traffic for his blog than it normally has.

Lesson is that hyperbole and sensationalizing language do not make you friends necessarily but they sure get you attention.

HiSo

Which also carries through to BA cabin crew. I like BA, don't get me wrong, but the I find the Thai / Taiwanese cabin crew far more focussed, professional and attentive.

IAMORGAN

It's a life lesson isn't it? We've all cocked up from time to time - he'll be more careful next time! No real harm done.

Andriyko

The only thing the OP was 'punished' (if you can call it that) for was his own actions. There are two ways to look at a situation like this - one either admits his own mistake and owns it or one looks for someone else to blame or to accuse the company of not doing enough to help him get out of a bad situation even though the situation was not the company's fault. I missed a flight twice in my life - once with BA, and once with Air Baltic. Both times I faced the financial and emotional consequences of being stupid. When I missed the flight with Air Baltic, I was 16, I was travelling for the first time internationally (or at all), and while I did not go to a different terminal at the tiny Riga airport I was waiting for the flight to be called in the departure area, rather than at the gate, and then it left without me. The airport staff claimed they called the flight but I did not hear it. All Air Baltic was prepared to do was to rebook me either to DNK in Ukraine or to DME in Russia, and I was supposed to find my own way from there. DNK meant an overnight train to Kiev, while DME seemed like a good option with frequent flights back home. I was forced to buy my own ticket from Moscow to Kiev (and I think the poor dispatcher of my flight gave me a few Dollars because I did not have enough money, and she was so scared that she dispatched the flight without me but my bag was on the plane!), and then I spent the night at the airport in Moscow with no money, food or water. I left Riga for Moscow at 6 or 7 pm, and my next flight was 8 or 9am the next day. Up until this day I think about it as something that I could have avoided had I paid more attention and I certainly do not blame Air Baltic for anything. And I was alone, 16, in a foreign country and with no money. I feel bad for the OP, but I really do not understand why many here think that BA somehow wronged him. Rather than think about what the airline could have done, one should think what they could have done to avoid the situation, accept the consequences, and, hopefully, never make the mistake again.

simons1

Indeed. I wish life was as black and white as the forensic world of FT.

KARFA

Well the staff may or may not have been wrong - but actually going landside on a connection can often be the quicker route. It is actually the recommended route in many cases as noted in the T5 connection guide.

Oaxaca

Indeed. His main complaint in his blog was that after he made a mistake, BA and airport staff could have helped him to make his flight, but didn't. Hardly outrageous or hyperbolic to me.

Maybe also a bit of a generational gap here. His generation communicates with the world in a different way. To them (for better or worse), posting online is not that different to having a moan in the classroom/office/pub, as opposed to swearing a blood oath in the way some of the older generation seem to perceive it.

"The young cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young..." (Albus Dumbledore ).

I also note that until his blog got posted on FT, there were only a couple of sympathetic comments under the article. Since then, several "it's your fault" comments have appeared. Coincidence? I wonder who some of those commentators are...

Ber2dca

The thing that irked people is the choice of word "shambles" likely more than anything. I didn't see any BA shambles in the story. But perhaps 'shambles' is a pretty decent description of this anorak's Heathrow outing.

mandolino

Fair enough - but that wasn't the case with me (they just pointed and said "through that door") and the staff member who actually helped me in the end made this clear, and made his frustration with the staff giving bad advice clear, in language I would not repeat here.

paul4040

Which begs the question - why wasn't he told about it?

KARFA

I don't think he spoke to any HAL/BA staff until he had got to the FCC when it was too late.

stifle

He chose not to ask staff and instead assumed that he could return to T5A airside on the train.

mandolino

A reasonable assumption and experience shows that asking a T5 staff member can leave you worse off, although he wouldn't have known that either .