Insulator-King

Funny article from DailyMail.com

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...rmed-cops.html

• Charles Banner, QC, 41 was forced to leave the plane with his family and nanny
• Matters became heated after Mr Banner was told the children's nanny had been allocated a seat in economy and he and his wife wanted to work during the flight
• Mr Banner claims BA plane staff were 'rude' with one commenting: 'You wish.'
• Pilot refused to take off until family left. The flight was delayed by 90 minutes

Seems like the story was updated after initial posting to include. Matters became heated after Mr Banner was informed that the children's nanny had only been allocated a seat in economy when he arrived at the boarding gate.

Mr Banner paid for business class tickets, but his nanny had been downgraded because BA oversold the flight.

HIDDY

Much ado about nothing. I refer the honourable gentleman to Rule EC261.....free of charge.

Midships

From his chambers profile, I see he is an expert in dispute resolution.

Bit odd though, assuming it is correct, that it seems there was a spare seat for the nanny in Club the crew wouldn't let her sit in. There may yet be more to this story.

Edit to add that seems empty seat may have been blocked out middle seat so ignore my observation above.. Also not clear if 1 year old was going to sit on lap or had own seat.

carrotjuice

“Mr Banner claimed that even though there was a spare seat close to him in business class, cabin crew staff insisted that nanny could still not sit in it.”

Isn’t that the middle seat in CE that’s supposed to be kept empty?

SKT-DK

It is the Daily Mail, so I would expect 70% or more to be made up fiction - that would explain a lot

CX HK

I assume (from the article) that the issue was made much bigger than it needed to be due to the attitude of the crew - perhaps they were, as the QC says, quite rude and made Banner escalate the situation.

Midships

I think you may well be correct.

Midships

Another source here:

https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-co...row-over-nanny

Interestingly Charles Banner QC is of the view that after making a complaint to BA and telling the cabin crew that he had done this, (I suppose he must have done it on his phone during the dispute) the cabin crew then asked the pilot not to fly the plane with him and his party onboard, "...most likely to provide the cabin crew with cover against the complaint."

Of course if both he and his wife wanted to work, I suppose one of them could have swapped with the nanny.

Never Stansted

‘Owing to customer feedback, we’ll allow the middle seat in Club Europe to be occupied from now on, so you can be closer to your loved ones.’

Coming soon to an airline near you.

i_concur

I know CB and he is a decent chap. The fact that it was his child's NANNY as the DM put it is irrelevant. The flight was overbooked, and BA involuntarily downgraded, This would not be apparent at check in I presume because of the variable number of rows in CE. They would have been on the same booking and therefore same group. Or seats were not properly assigned until the gate.

I can well believe the attitude of the cabin crew. It strikes me that this i reminiscent of every encounter I have had where people take the piss and then whinge to the boss about me.

There is an assumption above that we are talking about the middle seat rather than an actual spare seat.

I'm with CB on this. BA oversold, downgraded a passenger and then, it appears to me, have not been very helpful to a longstanding GCH.

firstlight

it's good to get an informed viewpoint, and I too would have been upset, although to be honest it's just a two hour flight and it sounds like it escalated very quickly to get to the point where the DM picked it up - although if he used twitter to complain I know from personal experience that you can quickly get quoted in press reports!

Waterhorse

We only know one side of this story, only that of the barrister, and even that as presented by the DM ~ hardly enough information to make an informed judgement. I can tell you from a captain's perspective that to kick a passenger off a flight is not a small matter and that to turn the aircraft round and return to stand is a decision not made lightly.

simoflyer

It can’t be that common to be downgraded at the gate! Has this every happened to anyone on this forum?

jcmalcolm

Hard to believe that the DM could even approach the CNN benchmark of 90 percent fiction.

Midships

In fairness, its not clear where the downgrade occurred.

From the website where I think the DM got the story:

https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-co...row-over-nanny

QUOTE
"Eventually they gave us boarding passes but did not indicate that the nanny, whom their mother and I needed to look after the children whilst we worked on the flight, had been downgraded to a separate cabin from us. We were only told this at the gate on boarding the plane".
UNQUOTE