1P

BA had major European operational problems yesterday, compounded by the usual UK Border farce.

All pairs of flights to and from Nice except one were seriously delayed, ostensibly by thunderstorms over central France. I was on the last one out, scheduled to leave at 20:40 and arrive at LHR at 21:40. I already knew long before I got to the airport that it was delayed by 40 minutes, about the same as when I flew down two weeks ago, when strikes by French ATC meant a lengthy detour over Switzerland and Italy. By the time I arrived at the airport, the scheduled departure time had moved back to 22:00.

No further information whatsoever was given until 22:05, when the captain of our 767 appeared and said that UK ATC would not allow them to land and had taken away our slot. We would now leave at 23:45, arriving at LHR around 01:00. They would not board us until 23:00, unless an earlier slot opened up. Not a drop of water or any other relief was provided, which is contrary to EU regulations for delays of over two hours, and those not fortunate enough to be able to use the Canopy Lounge, which stayed open an hour later than normal, had nowhere to go for liquids. The captain admitted that the main reason why we couldn't board was because the cabin staff would not be able to provide liquids. He did not of course mention that this is because cheapskate BA insists on charging (card payments only, please!) even for a glass of water. We finally took off at 23:57, eventually touching down at LHR at 00:35. All the way along, the delays were blamed on weather and ATC. In fact the weather problems were easily surmountable, especially as our aircraft took on extra fuel, in the end not needed, to fly around the storms. ATC is another matter altogether. My ATC friends tell me that they are really fed up with the way airlines, and particularly BA, blame ATC for all kind of scheduling problems and IRROPs when in fact the problems lie with the airlines themselves and their own scheduling and operations.

At any event, we arrived at LHR, 3 hours late, which in itself is not particularly unusual with BA, though annoying when it is late at night. Also arriving were delayed flights from Malaga and Malpensa. You can guess what happened next. Into T5 immigration hall, and not a single one of the electronic passport gates are operating. Only one solitary border agent processing all the UK and EU passports, and one more for the non-EU passports. Hundreds of people crammed into the immigration hall, with the EU line stretching back a very long way towards the gate. Despite the notices saying no phones and no photos, phones were ringing and being answered, and photos were being taken with phones. I hope they are published online. One imagines that the notices are actually saying, Please don't film us so that everyone knows how badly we're doing.....

The thing about the electronic gates is that it is not machines that measure your biometrics, as everyone thinks. There are real human beings comparing your image on screen with the image on your passport. Those real human beings had all knocked off work and gone home. You would think that they had contingency plans to deal with delayed flights late at night, which happen pretty frequently; but the plain fact is that the Border admin simply doesn't care. After we had been inching forward for about 45 minutes, some staff produced water bottles. Not a supervisor in sight until another border agent suddenly appeared and signed on at his computer (it took him a long time to do that). A supervisor then appeared and started berating him, presumably for not being there earlier. Why the hell wasn't she behind a desk helping to deal with the immense queue?, we wondered, as she disappeared from sight, to be replaced by a gang of cleaners. In the end we exited the immigration hall at 02:00, 1 hour and 25 minutes after reaching the gate. It would have taken those at the back of the line at least another hour — the line was still stretching out of the hall when we left.

Of course, by this time the Underground has shut down. We found ourselves talking to a girl aged about 18 who was supposed to be taking the Tube to East London and being met at the other end. If we had been going in that direction we would have given her a lift. I wonder what sort of duty of care BA thinks it has towards vulnerable females who are left without transport options because of BA's own operational cock-ups? Not a single member of BA personnel was in evidence, apart from a solitary agent in the baggage hall who was dealing with another huge line of people (not from our flight) whose luggage had presumably not arrived.

Is there no way that BA can (a) improve its scheduling and ops instead of trying to pretend that it is all ATC's fault, (b) liaise with the Border Agency when it is known that flights are delayed, and (c) show that it actually cares about people? "To serve, to fly..." Ha!

corporate-wage-slave

It does sound a pretty shoddy experience. But Extraordinary Circumstances does not exempt BA from the right of care provisions to EC261. If you had not had lounge access / it was closed before departure then you can buy items from BoB and then ask BA to pick up the cost. Presumably doing it by Avios to make repayment easier. As far as I know, BA pays this without quibble though there is paucity of data points at this juncture. There was some sort of procedure for services which were known to be at risk of long delays where BA would load biscuits and water packs, I'm not sure what has happened to that.

1P

It was not so much the BoB thing that bothered some of my travelling companions (though I did hear some comments about being charged for cups of tea on the flight) as the fact that by the time the captain finally admitted that we would not be boarding anytime soon all the retail outlets in the terminal where liquids might have been purchased had closed.....

fransknorge

This is a bad experience.

Just to get back onto one point, it is clear ATC individuals are fed up with BA blaming ATC for delays when the reason is other. I see ATC individuals calling out BA on Twitter with documented experiences (last one earlier this week where the delay was due to a broken tug but BA blame ATC publicly).

LTN Phobia

There are often multiple factors such as broken/slow XYZ => missed slot => replacement slot not available for ages => blame on "ATC" (=slot delay).

fransknorge

Indeed there are.
However when ATC union and workers publicly debunk BA affirmations, I think we can seriously think that there is a real problem of BA being to quick to pull the trigger "It is ATC" when the root cause is not.

UKTony

Misrepresentation of the truth to avoid legally imposed compensation is not a good idea especially given the size of IAG and the consequences (think PPI) to the whole airline industry.

simons1

It's a sad aspect of modern corporate life that the 'blame game' is at the front of everything. Just like the railways.

Of course cost cutting has a lot to do with it, if BA gave everyone a free carton of juice or bottle of water it would cost them, wouldn't it? And they know by not telling people about rights under EC261 that few people who pay themselves will know to claim it back. When it comes to trying to pass the buck BA are masters of it - remember the complaints from the insurance industry at the time of the IT failure.

gms

So by "T5 meltdown" the OP actually meant long queue at immigration for flights arriving after the airport has normally closed. Yes, it would annoy me that the Border Force people don't have contingency plans to keep staff on duty when flights are delayed after the normal curfew. But it's not a "meltdown"!

frandrake

Poor experience indeed.

I am somewhat lucky, coming from a country where the above mentioned situation is the normality I do not get particularly upset the rare times it happens at LHR. In Italy they would have never even remotely thought of offering bottles of waters and if they did, they would have probably asked 2 EUR for it.

flyuk

Airlines (not just BA) often blame us (ATC) for delays, when in fact the delay is because they failed to turn the aircraft around in time and missed their slot. Best they can do is call ready and hope to fit in another slot missed by someone else. You could say it's ATC's fault, but only because we can't magically put them on the runway where there's no gap.

Misco60

I had such an experience a couple of days ago, at LCY.

The aircraft arrived late, due to a late departure from TXL, and then boarding was delayed very significantly because (according to the gate agents) of problems in deplaning a disabled passenger after the requested assistance failed to materialise. By the time we had boarded we had long missed our slot, had a 45-minute wait for a new one and eventually departed 90 minutes late.

The captain made four announcements - two on the ground and two en route - and in every case made a point of blaming the delay on "air traffic restrictions". It was almost as if he had been instructed to say that to discourage potential EC261 claims.

IAN-UK

Given that T5 is unlikely to experience a literal, physical meltdown, the OP's allusion is clearly metaphorical.

Perhaps the vivid metaphor could more fittingly be applied to the UK border, rather than the terminal as a whole. But that would be a rather silly quibble.

newyorklondon

Considering the glacial pace of processing described, I think 'meltdown' is entirely appropriate in this age of global climate change!

nd100

First time I've ever read this. Would you have a source that explains how this works? The only government site I've found on this topic is here, and it says, "the gates use facial recognition technology to compare your face to the photograph recorded on the ‘chip’ in your passport." Wikipedia says the same thing. Are they all lying?
https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles...border-control
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPassport_gates