Crampedin13A

Seems a pretty balanced assessment. Title is a bit misleading

https://www.forbes.com/sites/douggol.../#705e670f2c60

South London Bon Viveur

Basically BA is not that bad, but not very good either. Fair assessment.

T8191

That seems very fair, IMO. I've never had to play the various cards for cancelled/rescheduled flights, so I've obviously never encountered the lack of "Desk empathy" the author highlights..

Yeah, BA's sort of OK in CW, and bearable in CE. I wish I could say better, but there we are ... that's why we fly AA as much as possible [destination related, of course].

orbitmic

I realise that the author is unhappy with much of his experience, but in his case, whilst there was a disruption, he actually ended up getting better flights and better seats than he originally booked on an itinerary that would have undoubtedly been far more expensive had he wanted to book it in the first place. I am struggling to think of any seats on the 772 J used on LGW flights which would be better than any 744 UD seats myself though of course tastes differ. He is also unhappy about BA upgrade rules but they were scrupulously followed here and in effect, never were more flexible on that front (perhaps less if anything).

There is plenty wrong with BA, and a lot of things have deteriorated in recent months, but it seems to me that the author's trip was actually an example of things working well and indeed, with the JFK-LHR he ended up experiencing the best of what BA is currently offering. I disagree with him on the new pillow being 'too big' too.

pomkiwi

Very fair article I thought. Most of the irritations were related to BA's 'rules' but I thought the comments about the lack of sense in many of them was fair - a little more flexibility would probably improve BA's short-term income and generate more happy passengers.
BA to SYD in F is now usually about £2k less than EK/SQ/QF and that is reflected in the experience - OK but not special. The article reflected that well I thought.

orbitmic

I think it is important to understand what 'flexibility' means in large organisations. The immense majority of airlines do not actually empower individual agents to do much more than BA, there are just different things that they have fixed or indicative rules on with different levels of refinement. I fully agree that I would like BA to become more flexible on some issues but quite frankly, I do not share the author's priorities here.

Paradoxically, I think that this is a good case study because I do think that flexibility should occur primarily in cases of IRROPS and where status or premium class passengers are concerned. My sense is that if any regular passenger is authorised X then high status and premium passengers should be allowed X+ or X++. So for instance, if rerouting is allowed to everyone with a time change of 1 hour, then for SCH or C it should be from 30 minutes, from GCH+ or F it should be from 5 minutes. If in case of a cancellation rerouting is allowed within 300 miles, then for SCH or C it should be up to 500 miles and for GCH+ or F it should be 700. If you get rebooked in the same class of travel, then again for GCH+ it should be the same class of travel or the one above, if rebooking is on BA or OW, then for GCH+ and F, it should be on any airline if no OW solution can be offered within 2 hours, etc.

I would also really want the GGL line to be given the same latitude as airport staff in terms of rebooking and rerouting on other airlines etc as most outstations do not have priority queues (either customer service or sales) for status and premium class passengers.

By contrast, my objection to the sort of flexibility that the author asks (allowed in UD as SCH, allowed to upgrade outside of rules) is that it is actually a zero sum game, ie he'll be given seats that won't be available to, say, a GCH now buying a ticket, and his requested upgrade would have otherwise most likely benefitted someone with higher status and very possibly suffering from the exact same disruption!

HIDDY

This harking back to the good old days of the 80's is wearing a bit thin....has he been reading this forum I wonder?
Travellers have become much more savvy since then thanks to the internet and are now able to find who offers the cheapest fares rather than believe what a travel agent used to tell you.

IAN-UK

But surely what counts is the individual's perception of the trip. If a traveller reports unhappiness with the way things went, then it seems a tad perverse to tell him that things actually went well. To suggest that his experience represents the best BA can offer damns the carrier with the very faintest praise.

If customer satisfaction is low when BA is operating at its best and providing the finest service within its reach, then something is wrong. Perhaps the marketing sets expectations too high, perhaps it was simple a bad day for the crew - or maybe the customer really is a crotchety old sod


Got to say, though, I didn't quite get the pillow business...

scillyisles

Very fair article which identified the various issues that can affect a paasenger’s experience on BA.

orbitmic

Well, the thing is: I'm not telling him anything! I am not answering an OP here, just discussing an article written by someone who, I far as I know, is not an FTer let alone on this thread.

Now for the sake for argument, to see if my argument is indeed unfair, imagine that the opposite had happened to the same traveller on his next BA flight: that the author was actually booked on JFK-LHR-CPT, with the new CW experience, 744 upper deck seats and was rebooked on JFK-LGW-CPT, with the old CW, LGW 772 dormitory, and had to leave 1h15 earlier than planned to arrive about 1 hour later than originally planned. Would you not say that this was way worse?

dylanks

I guarantee he's read this forum quite a bit, especially with a few of the comments in the post that are essentially direct quotes from here (e.g. that BA knows the cost of everything, but the value of nothing).

GlasgowCyclops

I thought the article was fair-ish. Yes I agree that a wee bit flexibility would be good. However, if people know that, then you will get tons of people not leaving the desk until that flexibility is used, instead of people being rerouted and then move on to "help" the next person.

corporate-wage-slave

What I thought was interesting is how his travel companion - identified as a nervous and infrequent flyer - was probably rather more positive about the experience. On the basis that "no man is an island", I suspect they will both be back on BA before too long. I'd query writing a long piece based on essentially a rather one-off pair of flights, this is a bit of an anecdote rather than analysis.

dougzz

dougzz