bealine

My apologies to the many Premier, Gold and Silver (and OW Emerald, Sapphire and Ruby) Cardholders who are turned away from First or Club check-in at LGW this year!

If a BA Flight Number is in the 9000 series, the flight is operated on behalf of a Charterer and, although the aircraft belongs to BA and the operating crew are BA, the flight itself belongs to the Charterer so:

(a) There are no EC points/miles to be earned for the flight and

(b) We cannot extend normal courtesies regarding check-in at the First/Club desks for the simple reason that the baggage will end up in the wrong sortation area.

If you are travelling on a BA Charter flight from Gatwick (and you'll probably recognise the different flimsy Charter paper tickets or small Card "tear off" tickets), please pay attention to the TV monitors showing where to check in.

(Sorry! Self-service and OLCI doesn't work either!)

GUWonder

Is this a new policy and does BA sell tickets on said flights through its ba.com website? If so, there may be some very unhappy "premium" customers.

[This message has been edited by GUWonder (edited Feb 22, 2004).]

Dave_C

If it's a British Airways flight with a British Airways flight number, you should get all the amenities that you would expect regardless if the number is in the 9000 range as opposed to any other number. IIRC, in the past, BA used to operate charter flights with planes marked "British Airtours", or after the BCal takeover, Caledonian. I remember flying on a Caledonian TriStar to Salzburg on a skiing holiday. This, was sufficient differentiation that you aware you would be getting a different than normal experience. It is not sufficient simply to have a flight number in the 9000 range, and expect people to put up with it. Either it's BA or it isn't. If it's a charter, then fine use the planes, but put the tour companies, or a different code on the flight.

As an aside, do you still get lounge access?

Edited to say thanks to bealine for pointing this out. I can understand the reasons why BA would do this, but it's still a bit rubbish.

[This message has been edited by Dave_C (edited Feb 22, 2004).]

Panic Stations

BA don't sell the tickets for charter flights on BA.com. When you buy the ticket to go on holiday you buy it through the tour operator, often with no guarantee of who you'll be flying with. It might be Brittania, it might be Balkan Airlines, it might be Onur Air, occasionally it might be BA, but having paid the tour operator for the ticket you get the service the tour operator request and nothing extra I'm afraid.

On the question of "either its BA or it isn't", well with charter the answer is "it isn't". Its just another aircraft and crew somebody has hired.

speedbird2018

Its quite common for the major airlines, to operate charter flights for holiday companies. As panic stations says, it is the holiday company which dicates what level of service the pax can get, i.e no free bar, no papers etc.

2018

WHBM

Reminds me of an article in an aviation magazine where the journalist had flown in the jumpseat of a rickety old Russian Ilyushin 18 freighter that was chartered by Lufthansa for a freight flight from Athens to Dusseldorf.

When he got to Dusseldorf he jokingly asked for his LH Miles & More points, and said this was followed by a huge amount of discussion between the ground staff, referring to manuals, etc !

[This message has been edited by WHBM (edited Feb 23, 2004).]

bealine

The Flight No is BA in order to identify it for many other reasons besides the passengers' needs, it is also using a BA designated ATC slot. As the "operator", BA will use its prefix and its callsign will be "Speedbird".