BA flight home terrible smell and no help - advice please
 

Hi everyone, new tot the site and hope you can help.

we flew home with BA in November from Boston and straight away we complained about a smell of sick. We were told that a child had been sick on the inbound flight and whilst they were sorry the plan was totally full and they couldn’t move us and there were nothing other options.

it was horrendous, I have since complained to the CEO and the response was nice in that they said we shouldn’t have been subject to such a horrid journey, however they have informed the relevant department and thanked me for my feedback. They ignored my request of compensation.

inot to mention it took 8 weeks for them to send this. I have asked them to escalate my complaint as I am not happy with their lack of any form of compensation and they state I have complained to the highest level already and that they will not be giving any compensation.

is there anything else I can do

Next time offload yourself and demand they book you home another way.

At least it wasn't bed bugs.

Cabin crew find bed bugs on British Airways plane; flight delayed for 4 hours, Europe News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

https://www.theguardian.com/business...ug-infestation

Complaining to any airline "usually" nets you a perfunctory coupon of sorts at the most, what were you expecting back ?

Compensation?? Did you suffer any financial losses due to the bad smell?

Perhaps the loss of the fare expecting to ride in an airplane not a sick up ward?

OP could ask the kid to pay. I don't see any article in the air passenger rights regulation saying that airlines have to pay compensation in case of bad smell. BTW: BA did return to Heathrow a couple of years due to stench coming from the lavs.

Is that the standard now? I wasn't aware that previously compensated passengers suffered financial losses for among other things, broken IFE and seat motors.

Where do you expect a complaint to the CEO to be escalated to?

At lest a broken IFE or seat motor can be financially valued and thus be compensated. FWIW all airlines heavily advertise IFEs, lie-flats, etc. and a customer reasonably expects that the offered functions work. A lie-flat stuck in the seat position is at best a glorified economy seat and certainly not worth X,000$ for a long haul flight.

As far as smell is concerned, I haven't seen any airline advertised their cabins as smell free. I think all of us have been in an aircraft where someone had to make use of the bag and the subsequent smell. It's not nice, but that's life. It's not like the airline made the kid puke. And where do you draw the line? Should you get compensation if you're placed to an unwashed, smelly passenger?

Have read in these threads about stuff that was compensated even though it was not part of the CC.

Maybe in the US, but not in the UK/Europe

Americans seem to believe that the idea of getting financially compensated for all annoyances that one has to go through in life, is universally accepted - sorry, but this is not the way things are working guys

This has very little to do with broken seats or IFE not working.

Welcome to Flyertalk @Martin John.

Please follow the redirect as we send this to the BA forum.

~beckoa, co-moderator Information Desk

Par for the course on BA these days.

If persistent you may get a few Avios for your trouble but the "thanks for your communication and we will let the relevant department know" (translate as hard luck and that's the end of it) is the standard response.

That actually sounds extremely unpleasant. I’m quite smell-sensitive and I’d hate to spend a flight on a seat that stinks of sick. I’d agree with the comment up thread that you could have asked to be offloaded and put on the next light (if that suited) unless they could move you and i would have thought some courtesy avios would have been in order.

interestingly, however, i think your choice of ‘writing to the ceo’ was completely counter productive. CEO offices are not in the business of compensating passengers (that’s customers relations’ job and they are incidentally extremely inconsistent on it at ba, sometimes lavish for no obvious reason, other times oblivious despite serious issues) and its also probably why the answer took so long to come.

Firstly, welcome to FT and to the BA forum where your thread now sits, sorry it is in such circumstances.

Whilst I don’t think BA are legally liable here, persistence often yields a small reward and I would try writing back to BA via the reply link on their email in through the complaint form on BA.com. You may be able to try alternative mediation and there are good details of how to do this in the EC261 thread available in the BA forum dashboard (:sticky near the top of the forum). unfortunately, EC261 is not applicable in this case, but there is still useful information in that thread.

Ultimately, this depends on how much you wish to spend time pursuing this, Any ‘compensation’ is unlikely to be significant and you may just think that BA didn’t manage the situation well and choose another airline in the future.