PJSMITH0

Is Conformity costing BA money that could easily be saved. For the third trip in a row I missed a connecting flight to Manchester. On this occasion our flight from WAW was delayed due to a late incoming flight. On boarding I had mentioned ion the Purser that we had a tight connection but was assured that there were several passengers on the flight for Manchester and it would be held. We arrived at the gate with 45 mins to spare and was at transfer immigration for 36 min prior to departure. My family and others were refused access and directed to the rebooking desk. My apps were showing a 30 min delay but the immigration check staff wouldn’t budge. As this was the last flight we were booked onto the following afternoon and told at 9.30pm to find our own hotel rooms. Since I was travelling with two grandchildren under 8 I told BA staff that this was unacceptable and two room at the Sofitel were provided. I cannot say what if anything was provided for the other passengers. The Manchester flight actually departed over 1 hour late and we could have all been easily made the flight. Surely the cost of hotels, food, delays unloading bags EU Claims could be easily offset in many cases by just employing a couple of extra staff who could fast track passengers through immigration and security when there is still 30 mins before departure. All four flights were delayed on this trip first flight they couldn’t start the engine, second late due to having to remove luggage, and the other two as above. All three BA journeys this year have cost more in Hotels and EU comp than the ticket price

orbitmic

I think you mean conformance, but in this case, your issue is not conformance but pro-active rebooking.

Like anything else, some money will be spent (for instance in your case, where at least duty of care will be expanded whilst it could have been avoided) and some money will be saved (by enabling an early updated knowledge of what passengers are expected on every flight and thus improving time keeping compared to not having it - delays cost airlines huge amounts of money each year).

Obviously, whether compensation is due or not depends on the reason for the delay on the incoming aircraft.

thomasd21

I do wonder it anyone at BA is doing any of this kind of analysis to try to reduce the operating costs they must be facing. I doubt it, but if I were a shareholder I’d be asking these kinds of questions

corporate-wage-slave

I think BA has a potentially easy financial win here, in terms of being able to flex conformance, and fast track connecting passengers, when the next flight is also delayed. But with FMU activities partially outsourced to Delhi this has seemingly got less nimble than before. BA will know the economics and are increasing MCTs perhaps as a result.

Having said that, and using the 30 minute delay as the start point (rather than the 1 hour actual) I have some sympathy for the argument that a large family group, with young children and doubtless checked baggage, is best rebooked, if BA were hoping to improve timekeeping. In theory BA could have reduced that 30 minute delay (typically, of course, that rarely happens) and in reality holding flights for late connecting passengers causes more problems than it solves.

Ziz

Proactivity is not Ba’s strong suit. I was flying from Berlin to YYZ via LHR on the day of the Queen’s funeral. When the airspace closure was announced I knew we’d be held in Berlin and I’d miss the YYZ flight so a week ahead I called to ask about changing flight dates and they refused. Then day of of course it was disrupted and cost them £200 plus taxi and meals to put me up in a hotel. I could see availability on earlier flights so don’t know why they were so intractable.

bisonrav

I'd be amazed if there wasn't a report somewhere showing costs of missed connections, and someone pointing to it in some meeting somewhere.

Getting from that to action isn't always easy in a large corporation. I do agree that relaxing requirements and providing expedited routing would logically save some money, but someone would have to figure out:

1. what is the correct cut off time?
2. is it dynamic based on expected schedule of departure?
3. do we consider different passenger profiles (especially where special assistance is needed, where there is a legal obligation of equality)
4. what is a safe level of connection time for bags?
5. what staffing levels are needed? Are these recruited or redirected?
6. what is the payback?
7. Is it not better to retain the existing conformance rules and invest elsewhere on the customer journey?
8. Should we not just focus on punctuality and better ground handling and reduce costs that way?

It's quite a list. Also what seems obvious from the point of view of individual experience may make less sense if you're looking down on a vast number of flights and connections. It's notable that most airports don't have a concept of conformance, but as I discovered recently in Sofia, auto-rebooking does happen even at other airports.

zarp

I always sort of assume they're not willing to budge on conformance sometimes because they've given the seat to someone else - especially on days with lots of delays. Whether it's true or not I'm not sure.

HIDDY

Was thinking the same myself.

lhrsfo

BA is the most inflexible of all the airlines I regularly fly. I have no doubt that the IT infrastructure would not permit BA to be as flexible as the major US carriers but they could be more proactive where the IT permits.

But the main areas where there could be improvement come in the transfer process. It would be easy to ditch conformance - there’s a reason no other airline (that I am aware of) has such a system. And it should address the requirement for security checks on inbound passengers from G20 countries at least and perhaps the safer EU countries. Again this is not a big stretch.

navylad

I’m confused. Was this in the 15 Jul 23? You said you were flying from WAW, I’m assuming BA851? Schedules arrival 2025, landed 2023. Connecting BA1406, scheduled departure 2155 actual departure 2233 (so 38 minutes late departing and landing 4 minute after scheduled arrival).

Were you on a different flight? Was there a delay in getting a gate?looks like you went straight in to 5B from the flight radar track at 2030? We’re your delayed or slow getting to flight connections?

13901

As always, there's an inherent danger in extrapolating one experience versus what happens each day/month/year.

Conformance is an enormous money saver, for it allows to reduce a LOT of connecting/late passenger delays. It's not or nothing that Amadeus is actually building it (slowly) in its Altéa product for other airlines to use, a bit like auto-doc-checks.

The OP's experience is surely frustrating and a more flexible approach could've been found, but - then again - hindsight is 20-20 and there are factors one might not know. The baggage bins for the OP's onwards flight might've already been sent through to the plane, and the lateral was closed; MAN's baggage forwarder might've been swamped and a decision made to avoid sending short-shipped bags there as it might've taken 3 weeks for them to made the last leg of the journey from the airport to OP's home; the plane bound for MAN must've had to return bang on time due to whatever reason. All those, and dozen others, are many of the factors the airline need to weigh when making a decision on when to hold a plane or not.

Then there's plain bad luck. A couple of weeks ago I was on a flight that closed without 6 connecting passengers. As we were about to push for an on-time(ish) departure, we had to stop and wait for about 40 minutes as one of our fellow passengers suddely remembered that he'd packed his life-critical medications in his checked luggage, and the baggage team had to come back, find said bag, get it up planeside, and the passenger had to rescue his meds. Those connecting passengers could've made it, had they known about this...

corporate-wage-slave

That may well be in there, indirectly. The point of conformance is to make sure passengers can get to their gate - and their bags - without delaying the flight, the OP here will feel this would have been possible. But what happens is that the flight closes at about 45 minutes to departure and standby passengers (crew and some passengers) get slotted into empty seats from that point until boarding closes - this theoretically is 20 minutes to departure, and actually so for bus gates. So that's a fairly narrow 25 minute window, and then conformance is at 35 minutes (it can be less) so you are now down to just 15 minutes. Robotics sometimes off load people an hour before arrival because the robots have a view about delays - sometimes they get their calculations wrong. In this case if the OP was offloaded at 35 minutes then had the flight been on time then boarding may have already started. If someone is HBO and near the gate and has no mobility issues, then BA can and does let people through, but add add in complexity such as bags and children the request is likely to be denied.

Clearly there is scope to compromise here. So for example if the next flight is delayed by 30 minutes it is highly unlikely that all of this can be recovered by a quick boarding, so putting a dynamic and automatic 10 minutes extra margin for HBO passengers would seem to me sensible on first glance. But then you would have some passengers being blocked due to baggage, and while arguing with the ground agent, someone else, HBO, sails through.

tennessetom

Like many things ba a very blunt instrument is being used where a nuanced tool makes more sense both for ba and the passengers. I had one the other day traveling with three business associates, late arriving so we are tight on time, near the aircraft door move very quickly to connections security, for once not terribly crowded I get thru as does one of my colleagues other two miss the cut off time!! Went to a shorter seemingly faster line that was held up, there was zero way to overturn anything and get them thru, security says all electronic nothing at all I can do,by the time you get to someone at the connections desk time has passed and you really are too late. Very blunt instrument here, hbo and no reason not to let people like 20 seconds behind me thru but system says nooooo. We went ahead and colleagues arrived seven hours later as we were finishing up and heading to,the next city

jackowilkinson

Had a similar issue with MXP-LHR-EDI, 1hr 50min connection, inbound 65 mins delayed, outbound 1 hour delayed.

Turned out I’d been proactively rebooked on the next EDI flight (13 hours later)… had a chat with the ground staff at flight connections and he couldn’t move me back onto the flight I was booked (despite having nearly 2 hours before it’s new estimated departure) on because my seat had already been filled with other pax from other misconnects. Seems to have been a tactic to clear a 3 day backlog apparently. To add insult to injury when I asked for a standby seat (which he was happy to arrange), border force closed for connections!

I was able to persuade him to book me onto a LCY flight the next morning instead, that got me in a bit earlier, but I cost me £150 for a docklands hotel and transport to get there.

Out of my last 4 BA bookings I’ve had 3 cancellations and now this misconnect.

bisonrav

You can claim all of that back.