TangoOneSeven

if you miss a flight due to Heathrow/security line issues is that a case of being IDB’d? I know you say if you were upstairs you may get called forward but if you are downstairs?

LCY8737

BA would probably argue that airport services are outside their control. Not sure what the legal situation is.

Might be interesting to sue HAL in the small claims court. If their legal department has the staffing level of the rest of the airport, a judgement in default might be easy to get. I love the idea of sending the bailiffs to the CEOs office.

corporate-wage-slave

There is some case law where someone on easyJet, who missed their flights due to airport congestion, was able to win their case since easyJet only opened their desk 2 hours before departure. The passenger checked about 10 minutes after that opening . In reality airlines just rebook people when this happens, so long as the passenger wasn't reckless about it, and that's the end of it.

nldogbert

Not fully related to current Heatwave edition and not fully BA related - but about 3 weeks ago, when I was at the AA (T5) desk for some ticket related issue business in the late afternoon - next to the ticketing desk was the only open check-in desk and there were a couple of pax which arrived late and missed their check-in/flights but I was rather impressed with how AA was being flexible about the situation

1) a guy who was supposed to fly to JFK, missed his flight because his bus from Nottingham was late due to traffic - but he was just rebooked without any question asked, and put on standby for the last JFK flight that evening
2) another guy - who turned out to be deaf - missed his flight due to getting lost and due his disability had difficulty getting help from the public/staff (I don't know the details), was brought over by a staff from the First Wing (he was accompanied by a Heathrow staff too) and was rebooked the next day without any questions asked. [this situation is understandable]
3) A lady missed her flight due to her connection arrived late - also placed on standby by AA. She had a separate connection at DFW to SAT on a separate ticket - the AA agent helped to also rebook that ticket to sync with her new schedule.

So it seems at least AA is quite flexible and understanding in certain circumstances. I guess BA would most probably too...

Cheers!

corporate-wage-slave

I think this now a sensible time to close down this thread. It wasn't anything like as terrible an experience as I was expecting, but there again if you knock a third of your flights out of the schedule then life does become easier. We could see some issues still looming. So the shortage of ground staff and baggage handling staff meant that flights were delayed by typically 20 to 60 minutes. This happened without many extra on-the-day cancellations, which suggests there was enough wriggle room to just about manage. On other bad weather days then a complete halt to domestics, DUB, AMS (etc) would be a typical outcome.

I will spin post 1 off to a new thread, and any feedback on the thread contents / post 1 (as opposed to reports relating to operations) can go here:

Meta discussion: Live thread advice