13901

My spiel was more generalised than the here and now, but on the topic of capacity LHR is 15% down vs the comparable period in 2019. That's around 80-82% full, which is a level many European hubs didn't get to as a peak (let alone average) back in the day. And this is all in a world where a good portion of the world still has travel limitations and against early projections of a five-year slog to normality!


Daily Traffic Variation - Airports (eurocontrol.int)

What I'm saying is that even in a normal situation (and this isn't) there are issues around punctuality caused by 'environment' factors. Even back in the day in 2018, 2019, even with a full complement of staff and planes, BA's punctuality measures were off a cliff in the summer vs the winter. Now on top of that we have staffing and hardware issues.

LCY8737

As much as I like HIDDY 's attempt to remind us that those good old times were in fact not always that good, we are objectively dealing with a lot more disturbance than before. A chart of how delays have developed (across the whole BA network):

https://speedbird.online/flight-stat...?view=delayhrs

Shows total delay in hours per day. On a good day, that value can be negative (more flights arriving ahead of schedule than are delayed), but the overall trend is not good.

13901

That's super cool, and it'd be nice to see it going "backwards" in time too. Do you have the data for 2019?

LCY8737

Sadly not, the site is a pandemic baby. I have some actual flight data going back to the 90s, but the delay data only starts in Nov 2020.

NWIFlyer

And, besides, with the advent of better systems, what should be more reliable aircraft, better baggage handling, mass-produced catering which will reduce costs - shouldn't we actually expect things to be rather better than 10/20/50 years ago?

I was fairly fortunate on my last trip with BA, back from LAX last week, to get a good crew, a very decent meal (albeit still single tray service), give or take an on-time arrival and no delay on connecting the airbridge. I don't ever check bags, so I've zero experience of the baggage handling. But it's clear that's very much the exception, and I've made it perfectly clear to BA that their catering in CE, coupled with a mealy-mouthed CS response, is a primary reason for me moving my short haul business to either other airlines or travelling in Y where no other viable option exists.

The clincher is perhaps that they should reflect that much smaller airlines like AS currently just blow them away with their call handling and customer service attitude. Certainly BA is some distance from "The World's Favourite Airline", to use a tagline from the past.

Dave_C

Interestingly, the market caps of Alaska vs IAG aren’t that different. $5.2bn for Alaska vs €5.4bn for IAG. How much of that is a product of the poor IAG share price I don’t know. Fleet-wise, Alaska have 340-ish narrow bodies and IAG are up at the 530ish mixture. So they’re not that much smaller now.

Accepted though from a network and ops perspective, they’re very different entities.

13901

I know that the neighbour's grass is always greener, but Alaska is not free from problems.

On a brighter note, Shappie Shapps has remembered he's the Transport Minister and is doing "something" to protect passengers, though admittedly this is too little, too late. At least he's consistent with the way his department behaved throughout the pandemic...

AAtticus

"We do more good than bad flights" should be BA's new tagline if that's all we can expect from paid service on a premium (at least branded as such) airline.

toothy

I'd add that whilst BA are not great, it appears that all airlines and airports are struggling at the moment based on my experiences in the last 4 weeks. This week I've had:
Flight MAN-HEL cancelled on the morning of the flight by Finnair and no rebooking options offered in a timely manner.

KLM flight to AMS (as the alternative route to HEL) delayed so much that the connection was missed. Whilst rebooking was offered on the website (but not in the app), nothing on hotels to stay in overnight etc. Luckily I had a travel agent to sort it, but there were people who arrived in AMS and were basically told to sort out their own hotel and no explanation on how to claim it back etc.

At AMS the hotel was advising that I check in 3 - 4 hours beforehand for a 7am flight as there had been so many people who'd missed their flights and come back. It's all set up for big queues outside of the terminal. Security queues looked huge but took 45 mins in the end.

Came back HEL-MUC-MAN. Once again all delayed, but quite shockingly Lufthansa were making announcements that their airport service centres were all closing at 11pm and that they can't book hotels or do anything. Lounges were also closed at 10pm.

So basically, it looks like it's not just BA that are having poor service levels at the moment.


T

Sharratt4

"To Fly (hopefully), To Serve (possibly)"

Its got a ring to it...

benmitchell

[QUOTE=G_CIVV;34378533]I was sat in the lounge with the lady was in 1K on that flight and I had to keep asking for help for her and the staf in the lounge just do nothing to help her. I felt so sorry the front line staff.

CMK10

I flew GVA-LHR-JFK last month in CW. I dealt with a lot of the same issues as the OP:

- Terrible one tray meals on LHR-JFK
- Out of my preferred beverage
- Completely uninterested staff
- A whole lot of bags left behind despite a 70 minute ground delay at LHR

It's amazing just how bad the CW experience is now.

makin'miles

A good point, which likely contributed to the OPs delay. The Dulles 380 service has also been consistently late - not uncommon to see the departure two-three hours late most evenings and sometimes much longer.

If at all possible, I’ll be avoiding the A380 services for the time-being. It may move one tick in my favour.