Bongodog1964

I just fail to understand the mentality of the complainant, he and his wife needed to work on their 2 hour holiday flight, in itself this suggests that they are poor time managers, unless they were ridiculously late with their work couldn't they just allocate 2 hours whilst on holiday ? after all you can only ski during daylight hours. as a result of his actions he lost a complete day of their holiday, what a winner he is, doesn't sound like the sort of barrister I would want representing me.
It must be a good life to reach 41 without anyone ever saying no to your demands, very hard to then take when it is someone distinctly below your own status.
Its the part where he informs the crew that he has reported them to BA, can anyone even get through to the call centre these days ?
He has obviously planted his story in the press looking for sympathy, how else would they have got it, as I'm always told if you are looking for sympathy you will find it in the dictionary between s**t and s******s

Kleffen

If I were the barrister I would’ve given the nanny my seat and gone back in cattle alone. Further away from the kids and I’d be back there with my laptop and a couple of GTs. Problem solved.

The EC261 would’ve been spent on a nice bottle of Barolo in Turin…

SanDiego1K

From an article I just spotted:

Banner and his family had to book a hotel near the airport and traveled from London Gatwick Airport the next day with EasyJet, MailOnline reported.

DorsetKnob

If you want to argue a point of principal thats all well & good. The art is to know when you have more to lose than gain by doing so, Barristers usually do this with other peoples time & money.

In this case he did it with his own time & money, no matter how right he was, he lost and frankly showed very poor judgement.

NickP 1K

Exact thing happened to us once in CE, LHR to Munich. The Mrs, myself our younger one who was 2 at the time and our much older 20 year old. 20 year old with no status got downgraded - we were told at the gate before boarding.

You know what, I had the 2 year old next to me and the older one was fine in the back. End of story
I get he's a barrister, but one short haul flight he couldn't take the opportunity to spend time with one of his children, his Mrs too? What a world we live in that 1hr 50min he couldn't spend with his kids.

PS. BA credited the fare difference on the downgrade, zero emotion and all was good. What am I missing. 2 year old was in a paid seat with a car seat in the seat for her during the flight. Still don't know what the 1 year old situation was

cauchy

Unlikely - pricing up CE to Turin in May comes out at £232 total, of which £67 is taxes and charges. For a one way downgrade you're looking at £24.75 compensation - £232 less £67 gives £165 base fare, so £82.50 one way, and 30% of this is the compensation.

The barrister spent £1250 in total on tickets, so depending how many passengers, £250-ish per ticket.

cauchy

That a 'fare difference' refund alone isn't fair - if someone wanted economy, they would have bought it from the outset. Now they're getting something they didn't want, and for a price made up after-the-fact by the airline. And it might be a price inconsistent with the airline's other pricing - I imagine "fare difference" refunds could sometimes be less than the promo upgrade amounts.

YuropFlyer

Were they all on the same booking?

It seems highly crazy to downgrade one pax for a group of 5, when there must have been single travellers to pick from. Unless all other pax held "super high up" elite status, but even then. The airline must not have known about the "composition" of that group, and breaking it apart any group of traveller on the same PNR seems a big no-no to me.

LBA_flyer

Why should a single traveller be more exposed to this risk than anyone in a group? I would imagine that a single traveller is often more valuable in the bigger picture than family going on their holidays (obviously, that is pure speculation)..

KARFA

definitely true

VSLover

what is also curious is this is clearly a person who found out at the gate and decided to chance it with taking it up with the crew on board. that was a poor choice and knowing the type, mustve pushed it too far if they had actually pushed back and returned.

vectismanpaul

I wonder if this story or even this thread would have had such coverage if the person concerned was of more average means and status.

PAL62V

You may very well be right (from the lawyer's perspective). However I am going to play devil's advocate here and suggest that a lawyer is below the status of someone who works as a crew member and is not only trained to save my life in an emergency, but will very well go out to risk theirs in doing so. I know who is the higher in the food chain....

CKBA

Zero, since anyone of 'average means and status' would not have had a nanny.

DrunkCargo

Here are my quick observations:
- Under 2 hour flight block-time; 2 people wanted to work on flight and keep 2 others entertained by way of a 3rd person. Presuming GDP contribution of 10,000 GBP/hour per person, we are talking a maximum of 30,000 GBP of economic loss should the two not work during the cruise phase of this short flight. I suspect this economic assumption is inflated, but I would hope a top barrister can contribute at least 10m/year of economic value and I assume both are of the same calibre of contribution.
- Airline crews may or may not have made a mistake. If airline did make a mistake (downgrade, killed pax, served slightly stale caviar, etc), there are laws, or worst case, compensation policies.
- Barrister confused airplane with court room: The former is a captive environment with unwilling audience, the latter a public venue permitting voluntary audience.
- A decision was made by an operational pilot likely with regard to impacting the lowest number of people, not a judge looking to set legal or ethical precedent.
- Family subsequently flew EasyJet, presumably as one 5-person solid block of seats. I assume then, the nanny shielded the 2 productive members of society from the wretched duty of babysitting their disruptive spawn so that they could pontificate that next penstroke.

Dare I suggest that maybe they should have suggested downgrading the two kids as well and op-upping random quiet adults from the back? Presumably that would resolve the geting work done thing?

I am not a lawyer. I drink on flights. Too lazy to write in full sentences. I hope this goes to an actual court with capable lawyers.

Edit: Read more articles after this post; kids are very young, desire for isolation makes sense. And the potential lost productivity on this flight are significantly less than what I estimated. And these are not lieflat beds, these were just blocked middle-seat economy seats.