Jon MilnerMatthews

Well, that was a bit of a disaster.

Oil leak caused APU to fail meaning the plane got far too hot sitting on the apron at DFW. Showing as delayed by 30 minutes on screens in the main terminal but on time in AA Flagship lounge and they insisted boarding would begin on time at 1910 hrs. Boarding kept getting pushed back at the gate (with, of course, not enough seats for an A380’s worth of people), no real information provided. Eventually (after a good couple of hours), the Captain came out to say the APU had failed and the plane was too hot to allow people to board so they were trying to cool it with plug-in portable air conditioning units. Needless to say that plan didn’t really work to cool an A380 that had sat for a number of hours at a gate in temperatures of over 40°C with no air conditioning.

They then got a high powered portable air conditioner which was broken, so they had to wait for another one. All this time no real indication of how long delay would be so no idea if worth heading back to the lounge or not and BA didn’t even provide water to passengers stuck at the gate.

Finally they got a powerful enough portable air conditioner that worked well enough to bring the temperature down to a safe level (although still not a comfortable one) and boarded us all over three hours late. Of course, boarding an A380 isn’t a quick process and so people were sat for quite a long time in a rapidly warming plane. Once we finally pushed back and got the main engines spooled up it did start to cool the plane but it took a while and the cabin temperature was uncomfortably warm for the whole flight.

On-board crew were extremely good, table was laid with care, cutlery staggered slightly so those for the starter was higher than those for the main course, salt and pepper mills rotated after placement to ensure letters were correctly oriented to the diner. Appetisers were very good (caviar on BA!), starter pleasant, main relatively poor (and all from a very uninspiring menu). I didn’t partake of breakfast what with it now being lunchtime but did elect to take coffee (and relatively quickly regretted my choice).

Landed at LHR 2 hours 58 minutes late which for a while BA claimed was the flight arrival time (which of course it wasn’t as we weren’t even at a stand yet let alone the doors being open). Got to stand and nobody there to connect external power supply despite this being requested over an hour before landing, as APU inoperable we had to wait with main engines running until they finally connected the external power. Doors open approximately 3 hours 20 minutes late, BA have at least now updated the flight ‘arrival’ time to 3 hours 4 minutes late but I’m still half-expecting them to quibble over EU/UK261.

Of course, this being a BA long-haul and I travelling in F I should have had arrivals lounge access (and was very much looking forward to a shower and freshening up after being stuck in very warm conditions for so long and with my connecting flight from IAH plus the drive from New Orleans (end of a road trip) I had been travelling for over 24 hours by the time we actually arrived. With it being a BA flight that was delayed, a good service option would have been to extend the opening of the (BA) arrivals lounge such that eligible passengers could grab a quick shower but, of course, this was clearly not BA’s thinking on the matter.

I was half expecting my bag to have not made it to LHR with me (despite them having an extra three hours to load it at DFW) but thankfully the final insult was not delivered and my bag was so at least I don’t have that to deal with, just an important event this afternoon that I should still make but without the chance to have a decent shower beforehand.

nufnuf77

Of all the things when did BA serve caviar in plane?

Jon MilnerMatthews

It was the tiniest amount on top of a prawn as one of the canapés but I’ll still take it no matter how fine a straw it is I am clutching at!

nufnuf77

Haha gotcha - i managed to consume 8 packs of 30g on BKK-DXB-MXP-JFK within 24 hours. Obviously this was EK not BA... --> At your ratio i would need to eat 2kg of prawns to get 240g of caviar hahaha

Swanhunter

They did on Concorde. 😉

nufnuf77

now that is something i never got to try (and i would have flown it even in hold space with no fodd or drink

HarryHolden68

Flying on Tuesday, I was surprised to board at LHR and find all the window blinds open and the sun shining through heating the furniture on that side of the aircraft. Having all the soft and hard furnishings heated up to 50 degrees + means that the air conditioning is not only cooling the air down, but also these furnishings that will act like efficient radiators for several hours. That is a cost cut that Alex Cruz missed out on. Bad Alex.

I am not aware at what point BA deem a hot uncomfortable cabin to become a hot unsafe cabin, but I wonder what the result would have been had the captain said something like: "It's 40 / 104 degrees on board. You can wait for an unknown length of time until we get it cooled or cancel the flight, or board and put up with it." and taken a show of hands. If the majority want to board now, anyone who wants to offload, can do so and take the next available flight which may be in a couple of days.

xarantine

I was wondering this too - there are absolutely scenarios in which I'd want to get home ASAP, and would happily take an uncomfortably hot flight over an overnight+ delay. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the problem was a safety one (Wiring/electronics overheating? Heat causing pressurisation issues?) rather than a comfort one - I can understand why they may not couch it in such terms to the public however!

LondonAussie

A couple of weeks ago when I arrived back from the US and went up to the arrivals lounge I was told the showers were closed because there was an issue with the hot water and they didn't want to let us have cold showers, although in your case that may have been exactly what you wanted!