DYKWIA

which is why I said *try*....

RollAnotherFatOne

I'm sorry I'm not able to provide much in the way of useful comment here, except to thank you for sharing this experience with us. Reading about this makes us all the more aware in future about the needs of others.

I honestly find it shocking that anyone could deny someone access to this facility when clearly needed. As a decent society, if someone says they really need to, I could never stop someone. What the CC was thinking, I don't know.

I'm also sorry to see insensitive comments posted here, even if their intention may be positive.

And I wish you good luck with your complaint and I hope something can be done to make travelling a fairer experience. As per the equality act, you should not be at a disadvantage, and certainly shouldn't be discouraged from travelling.

gingerlucy

First of all I'm so sorry to hear about your bad experience. That must have been awful and you have my sympathies.

One thing you may want to think about is how you might approach the queue of people waiting for the WT loos, if you find one again and do not wish to/cannot access CW, or there is a queue in CW too, or indeed anywhere else when you are out and about in future. We British are terribly afraid of being seen to jump a queue, but there are circumstances such as yours where it is entirely justified.

Things I would urge you to bear in mind:

First, there has been some research about the willingness of people to let someone go ahead of them, and this dramatically increases if the person gives a reason. However this reason can be something that is, frankly, not a very good excuse at all. The particular study I have in mind had someone ask to jump ahead in a queue for a photocopier, with much better results every time the request, "Please may I go ahead of you?" was appended with "...because..." and crucially this worked even if it was only "...because I'm in a hurry" or even just "...because I need to make copies" (obviously!) rather than any kind of good excuse. Adding a reason raised the likelihood of being allowed to cut in from 60% to 94% for "because I'm in a hurry" and 93% for the rubbish excuse of "because I need to make copies". And of course in your case you DO have a good excuse. "Please may I go ahead of you because I have a medical condition and it's an emergency?" will get you very far if said politely but firmly. Once you have the card you've ordered you might have more confidence, but even without it "because" is the magic word.

Second, it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission in these situations. As you make the above polite request, with a reason, be moving past the person already. Assume they are OK with it. It will be less easy for them to say no once you're already past. In fact presumably on a plane you could simply ask to get past the queue as if you are heading to the galley, then make your request directly to the person at the front of the queue from the other side.

Third, if it comes to it, you will never see these people again. We are highly conditioned not to be rude, to obey the rules, but so what if these random strangers on a plane (or in a shopping centre, or wherever) think you are rude? I don't condone this in all situations but if it comes down to it would you rather these strangers thought you were rude or would you rather they saw you have an accident again? It does not matter. They will forget you almost instantly. Do what you need to do. The idea may make you cringe but contemplating it in advance and coming to terms with the concept might make forcefully queue jumping easier in practice.

Hopefully on the latter point you can also take comfort that the people who witnessed your accident also won't remember you at all, and so your embarrassment is only something you carry in your mind. I would put money on none of them being able to identify you from a line up now (I actually saw someone have an accident on the bus last week; I couldn't describe her face). They don't know you and they don't matter.

Chin up and best wishes for finding a way to manage your condition as quickly as possible.

navylad

LTN Phobia

I know this might sound a bit 'brave' thing to do at this stage, but I have often seen people (in the ladies, where the facilities appear to be far more prone to queues than gentlemen's facilities although, I hasten to add, this is an observation I made by witnessing the lack of queue spilling out of the door of the gentlemen's rather than by invading their space!) "I'm so sorry, may I go first, I really don't want to have an accident!" said in an urgent voice ALWAYS triggers extremely supportive and immediate reaction from everyone to let her go first, and I have seen people hurriedly come out of cubicles (presumably they've heard her) to let her go. I have never seen it fail to work, although I have never exercised it myself.

Your need is medical based, but regardless, any physiological needs justifies it in my opinion, and not something you should hold back on. I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how understanding and cooperative people are when you ask clearly, and politely, and state why (you don't have to say anything about your medical conditions, just a mention of "accident" in this context will trigger an emergency button in people's head).

Do speak out - you are very likely to be pleasantly surprised. And if anyone doesn't cooperate, then they have my wrath on your behalf, and I pity them for being an unsympathetic human being (unless of course they also happen to have an urgent need!).

Silver Fox

When I was holding my cheeks like a huffa puffa fish running to the back of the Luftwaffe plane that was sitting on the tarmac, even the Band of German Maidens made way as I reached it just in time to violently be sick. They still told me off for moving about the cabin as the seat belt sign was on, so I suggested that if I stayed in my seat and was sick they can clear it up. And could I have an orange juice please?

danielflyer

It sounds to me like the staff could have been more trained to handle your situation. I would say this is BA's fault up to the point of the Club World FA yelling at you. Given your condition, you should have worn protective underwear and brought a second change of pants just in case.

Fatdickie

Hi Navylad

just out of interest, how are you feeling today?

is it still as bad or settled down at all?

best wishes

navylad

Fatdickie

Glad to hear it ^

Jed

Sorry to hear of your experience. BA should have better communicated your special circumstances to the crew. Sounds like you did everything you could to mitigate the situation and you were let down by a crew member that thought they were simply policing the CW cabin toilets, but in retrospect played a part in what must have been an awful situation for you. I’m sure you were glad to simply get off the plane upon landing- I might have been inclined to hand over to him your sunflower lanyard and box of chocolates at the end of the flight to see what his reaction would have been.

As others have said, don’t let the incident put you off and continue to enjoy many more years of happy GGL flying!

navylad

Thanks for your message.

Although your tongue and cheek suggestion would be somewhat interesting, I’m not one for goading others mistakes.

For those who don’t know, BA was one for he first (I understand that a pilot suicide promoter it) to instigate a just Culture (at least in policy- I’ll leave it to the staff members here to share their experience in practice should they wish). It is a good policy and one that the NHS through NHS are trying to copy and implement (so far not very successfully).

But essentially, this individual CC’s failure may well have not been his fault, if the CSD didn’t brief it, he didn’t look at my booking (he was serving WT+ so why would he) and ultimately the sunflower lanyard is new to Heathrow fleet, so technically yes he may have broken policy, but did it with the right intentions of protection of J pax enjoyment of the flight and ultimately revenue protection.

Thats not to say the action shouldn’t be taken to support and educate that individual and as a customer, the concern here is that if this is the case with one CC, it’s is likely to be a system wide failure (indeed the CC who consoled me down the back knew the lanyard meant something but didn’t know what).

My concern really is two-fold, to resolve the anxiety of the return leg by BA properly owning the issue and resolving it for my particularly flight and more widely, BA work to resolve the systemic underlying issues (dare I say human factors).

Of course I’ve also learnt lessons too.

MSPeconomist

I wonder whether part of the problem was due to the OP's designation as "developmentally disabled" (or whatever the term was) on the manifest. That *might* have made it more likely (but still inexcusable) that the CW FA would yell at the OP. In fact, I'm having a hard time imagining how that FA believed that yelling at a customer from another cabin would improve the experience of the CW passengers.

There have been a lot of suggestions here, many of which seem very helpful and sensible. However, the one that I'm unsure about in practice is the advice to board early and speak with cabin crew. The problem is that speaking to the service director won't help unless that person speaks to the rest of the cabin crew. If that's already happened (... it should have), good and it would be helpful for the OP to know this. However, if the service director hasn't yet done anything, there won't be time to do it before takeoff or at the beginning of the flight, and it also seems inappropriate for crew to discuss the special needs of a customer when and where other passengers can hear. It's also impractical for the OP to initiate conversations with specific FAs since the number of crew that one might deal with during a flight can be large. In the OP's case, talking with the WT FAs wouldn't have helped much as ther were busy elsewhere with other duties, while there would be several other FAs working in CW on a longhaul flight.

In addition to the OP's current strategy regarding the return flight, to discourage BA from behaving badly toward special needs passengers in the future and especially to increase the odds that the horrible CW FA is reprimanded/coached, it might get more serious attention is the OP files a complaint with the applicable government regulatory agencies.

RockyRobin

The CC was 6ft? Only 6ft?

My solution is to fly me out to come back with you, I'm only 6ft 7in and wouldn't look out of place on the probably cancellled BA flight out of Edinburgh this morning with the Scottish World Cup Rugby team.

Tiger_lily

The last bit (my bolding) I think is very important. It seems that BA never learn any lessons except those which hit them from regulatory or financial directions.