NickB

I agree that these comparisons are utterly meaningless.
The "20 times more than some other carriers" tells us mostly that FT is an English language board and that individuals whose native or working language is English will be heavily over-represented on FT and fora of airlines based in the English speaking world will be more frequented than others.

corporate-wage-slave

The car hire element looks to be consequential unless it was part of a BAH arrangement, and one big aspect has nothing to do with BA at all. I don't really fancy your chances on that one, so that may be one for your travel insurance. I would hope Avis could on the day come up with a better offer since in theory they could have kept your original big car by dint of you paying for it and having notified them of force majeure - and the latter they would be perfectly aware of in any event.

SxMan

Goodness – this made me laugh, long and loud – so much so that my colleague asked to see what had amused me so much. He thinks that it is supposed to be a serious comment – but I still think it is said completely tongue in cheek. It has to be, doesn’t it?

LancashireFlyer

Surely had you picked up the vehicle you reserved at your booked time, the vehicle would've been there. The fact it now won't be there the day after is concerning!

vectismanpaul

You misunderstand my point completely! I am just saying that for most people BA does the job. This forum is not representative of
the flying public.
Some on here fail to understand that most people today are guided by price and schedule. Extras may be pleasant but are not essential to them.
Most people would also not be prepared the true cost of a fare that enabled any airline to provide all of the service standards some demand on here.
Of course some basic things should be expected such as a robust IT system and a minimum service level according to fare.
We are often told on here how wonderful the ME carriers are along with some of the Asian ones. Maybe that is the case. However some of the ME
carriers are subsidised by governments, have dubious working practices, and originate in countries where democracy and rights for certain people
are non existent. For me that makes them a big no, however good thy are.
Of course, if you don't like what's on offer go elsewhere. Its that simple!
Apologies for taking this thread off topic.
I also must stress I do not seek to offend anyone but I am simply stating my view. Best wishes.

vectismanpaul

Yes I am serious.

BOH

Of course you can! We are talking about the very, very basics here of providing adequate staffing levels for example and the provision of basic, basic services such as flights departing on time, BA not being surprised when one of their own planes lands at their own base - and there are no staff available to meet it!! And someone (anyone!) just answering their own phones in any sort of reasonable timescale to assist a customer!! And lastly, not having their own systems and website constantly crashing.

It's THE BASICS here, the bare minimum of competence to run a functional, reliable airline we are talking about, not the comparison of the frills of seat pitch, meals etc.

BOH

See my reply above - the bar for your expectations of service and of an organisation delivering what you paid for must be incredibly low? So why aren't all UK based airlines in the SH market suffering the same as BA now that services have returned? They all reduced staff / furloughed / grounded planes etc over the pandemic. Do you think BA has handled this all as well as other airlines and would this have happened under previous regimes that did not focus on ruthless cost-cutting as the overriding #1 business objective?

It is the very basics that BA are getting so spectacularly wrong here.

Jambon87

We can compare the airline at its fundemental level to how it was 20/30 years ago.

The key difference between now and then is technology. Which BA (and IAG) has woefully underinvested in. I suspect there are components in the BA tech stack that are 20 years old, and are the underpin of most services which over the years have been built on top of it.

This outage along with the subsequent outages demonstrates that BA’s infrastructure has absolutely no fail over plan (I am sure they do, but resorting to paper isn’t a failover) that when it goes down, it goes down hard.

what’s the answer? You can’t change tech overnight, that’s a given. There needs to be fundemental rethink of their tech stack and how to manage outages, so it doesn’t bring the company to its knees, each and every time.

silonic

I raised the same thing with them, via the call centre. I was told that when I wouldn't show up at 10pm, the car would then be available for rental by another customer. Personally, I don't think they have the staff to drive the cars from T5 to the new location - and the new location has limited stock.

They did tell me to dial a different number and choose 4 for the local Heathrow rental office. Unfortunately when I pressed 4, it took me back to the main menu, where I was offered the same choice of options again - including pressing 4 for the local office, which when pressed took me back to the main menu, where I was offered.......you get the picture

silonic

Thank you for this. The hardest part if getting anyone on the phone who can help. It seems my options are cancel or not cancel and my booking is lost as I won't be there at 10pm tonight......

Robespierre

Go back 15 years and BA plc had a Main Board Director for IT (at the time there was the move away from GDS to direct sales on BA.com) so at least there was some focus at the top as well as some competence internally. No doubt that even with this focus there was always a budget limit that caused things to be patched rather than properly replaced.

I would have thought that the IT has gone well beyond business as usual now. One of the measures of good CEOs is recognising when you need to cut through the layers of policy and organisational politics and put in place a dedicated recovery organisation reporting to the top with adequate financial resources. I would have thought we are close to that moment now.

lloydah

But it's the robust IT and minimum service levels according to the fare which are the fails here, causing most of the disgruntled posts.
I generally take my money elsewhere and have been far happier since so I've no axe to grind. And no, I don't think you offended anyone but you do seem to have set yourself a low bar regarding the services you pay for.

Europeanexplorer

It seems to be getting worse again as the day progresses. My LHR-MUC at 20:30 this evening just got canned, but I luckily managed to make BA rebook me on LH. The system automatically held Salzburg for me tomorrow morning which is only about two hours from Munich!

Check your bookings if you have some this evening!

fliegwech

I get this and I also would like to say that the food has much improved. However to get a workable apps is very difficult when a company for what ever reason has failed to invest in modern IT systems for years. to update the galleries is much easier and cheaper (my guess to get the IT systems sorted at least 50 to 100m $ are needed,)