cosmo74

A now former Thomas Cook pilot was on BBC Breakfast this morning and said that a large UK airline he didn't name had tried to charge the stranded TC crew in Vegas £10,000 to get home. He then went on to say that Virgin had been fantastic and were putting them in their crew hotel until they could get them home. Say what you like about Virgin, but they know how to generate good PR. BA on the other hand...

firstlight

I've seen a fb message from a friend of a friend stranded in vegas, being chucked out of their hotel with ba allegedly looking to charge 10000 for the last 3 seats from Vegas. Glad to see virgin might be helping them out instead.

rapidex

I think this is the crew that operated out before the bankruptcy. They were in the crew hotel to operate the return. Now the hotel is kicking them out and they are having difficulty getting home.

Sam Bee

Yeh - it's on here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-49770817

If you watch the video at 08:17 "Thomas Cook crew may face high prices to get home" then basically confirms it. Arses.

Jimmie76

I heard from somebody that some routes where there was space on normal carriers it went quite quickly when TC pulled down the shutters. I have had to explain about different ticket selling classes to someone who was incensed this morning.

If the seats aren't in the system (GDS) then they can't be booked by anyone. Normally to protect space on planes in situations where mass repatriation is required they put the prices in the system for remaining seats up dramatically to say £10k. This dissuades the public from booking the seats and protects the inventory for those who actually need it and will be booked by the CAA on regular flights.Those people who just look at the prices and assume it's price gouging are often wide of the mark. JAXBA can explain it better than me.

cosmo74

I get all that, but in this case it seems TC crew were being quoted £10,000 after they approached BA directly. This is from an Simon Calder article in the Independent: "Ms McQuillan reported that the cabin crew stranded in Las Vegas had approached British Airways to fly out on Monday on a scheduled service to London. She said the airline had three empty business-class seats for which they were quoted a one-way fare of £10,000. The cabin crew reportedly asked to be able to occupy jump-seats on the London-bound Boeing, but were told that as they were technically no longer cabin crew trusty would not be allowed to do so. “Absolutely fuming,” she wrote." https://www.independent.co.uk/travel...-a9118086.html

I'm sure there were all sorts of reasons behind this, but it wasn't handled well by BA, and they're getting bad PR as a result - there are lots of journalists trying to contact the crew member in question through her twitter feed and plenty of people slating BA in replies to her initial tweet.

Jimmie76

It's no surprise to me that the BA press team are useless.

T8191

They don’t have much positive material to work from, TBH. Just ‘disaster recovery’, which they also don’t do very well!

binman

This story also on the BBC web site who interviewed a Captain on when he was told he lost his job. BA just do not know how to behave anymore and have lost all grasp of rational thought. surely given the publicity around this happening over the weekend they someone in BA could have made the decision to repartriate crew and customers for free if seats were empty. The positive publicity would have outstripped the nominal costs of doing so. BA just don't give a flying ......

Porky Speedpig

Many of the experienced BA Press/PR team have left over the last two years or so - much the same as the senior folk in other roles. A few years back this would have been nipped in the bud straight away. Depressing. Assuming the reports from LAS are true - where is the common humanity and common sense? They were cabin crew yesterday, let them ride on the jump seats for goodness sake and stop hiding behind "rules". Think about how you would like to be treated yourselves in the same circumstances.

salut0

And here’s how VS handled it. Pity BA didn’t use the PR opportunity as well:


Clearly LAS doesn’t have many BA flights but you’d have thought they could’ve routed the crew on AA to JFK or EWR...

corporate-wage-slave

What's not coming out in the LAS reports is that BA are now overbooked on almost all services for the next week or so. If crew were trying to get back on a service which is currently D3 W0 Y1 (LHR service) then regardless it's not going to be likely they will get on board, ditto BA's own staff on staff travel. The LGW service is also overbooked in all cabins, if I'm not much mistaken, it is zero'd out.

salut0

Yes, of course that’s important to take into account. But when you say “all services” do you mean nonstops from LAS or all routes departing the USA? With the JBV isn’t it just as possible for BA to route Thomas Cook passengers and ex-crew on AA+BA connections?

rapidex

I think almost all of them are now sorted. A large group went LAS-ATL-LHR/MAN with DL/VS. DL/VS have been particularly helpful. with other routings.

Andriyko

Yes, the flight may have been overbooked and BA was willing to accept a GBP10,000 passenger and then deny boarding to someone on a cheaper ticket. There is no way to explain to the general public why a last minute ticket can cost GBP10,000 without looking bad; of course, people will think that airlines are trying to profit from others' misfortune.


How do you see that work? BA just telling AA to accept passengers for free? Should not it be AA to help those stranded in LAS?