OT: 'Boris Johnson brands LGW bosses 'chimpanzees' after his holiday bags go missing'
 

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...ing/article.do

With LGW perhaps getting hived (hiven?) off from BAA soon and the 2012 Olympics not a million years away, the Mayor of London had a poor people experience at LGW - not clear whether N or S but probably S?

Boris Johnson launched a blistering attack on Gatwick airport after his bags went missing following a family holiday.

The Mayor of London criticised staff shortages in the arrival hall, claiming airport authorities had a ‘chimpanzee-like’ control over luggage handlers and that the service was worse than that of many Third World countries ...

Mr Johnson said his nightmare started when he got through passport control with wife Marina and their four children ...

He said: ‘It did occur to us to wonder why there were so few passport controllers, and so many hundreds of exhausted travellers shuffling round the ox-pens, like inmates of some Victorian penitentiary. By this time, I knew we stood in hell.’

He said the baggage hall was full of people — some who had been waiting more than two and a half hours ...

‘It is a measure of the extreme cowardliness and cynicism of the airport authorities that there was no one from BAA in that baggage hall.

'There was no one from Servisair, the baggage handlers whose entirely foreseeable ‘staff shortages’ had caused the problem.’

Mr Johnson spoke to the only representative available — a man in the lost luggage department — who said he knew nothing.

‘All he knew was that our bags were out there in the dark on the rainlashed tarmac,’ he added.

The man gave passengers a photocopied letter from Mark Poynton, the Service Delivery Controller for Servisair, apologising for any delays. But Mr Johnson described it as ‘one of the most snivelling and insincere letters I have ever read’ ...

Welcome to the travelling experience, Mr Johnson. :eek:

Was he really expecting anything better from Servisair?
From coffee in the lounges through to attaching jetbridges to delivering luggage (especially "priority", but the rest of it, too), they're a disgrace to all airlines who use them...

With respect to the OP, he didn't actually call them "chimpanzees", he said that they had "chimpanzee-like control", which is quite different.

Er, yes, but it was the Evening Standard that used the expression, which the OP merely quoted. Daily Mail-style subbing. ;)

I do have to hand it to the Brits for having some of the most refreshingly candid, honest, and entertaining politicians around. Can you imagine Mike Bloomberg openly calling Port Authority staff "chimpanzees"? He'd probably be hounded out of town by Reverend Bacon.

The article was actually in todays Telegraph and was about the fact that by 2012 LGW and co need to get their act together. It is so tedius reading articles about articles when they quote out of context.

What he failed to do was actually lay any blame at the door of the airline who checked his bags in the first place - probably Sleazy Jet or some cheap jack charter. Peanuts and Monkeys comes to mind.

Yes, here's the link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m.../12/do1201.xml

The Hate is getting quite a reputation for lifting other papers' stories, and this seems to be no exception. The Telegraph story was written by BoJo himself.

What is the probability of the BoJo having flown BA into LGW?


(Agreed that was quite an un-attributed steal of the Mayor's work!)

Lots of primate metaphors flying around here, but I'm not sure the Paying Peanuts to Monkeys one is entirely fair, given that many of us who have paid a fortune in miles or £ to travel in F on BA have ended up with the same frustrations as BJ.

James

Some of the comments on his Telegraph article above are hilarious :D

You just paid more peanuts than he did. A mile in BA First costs less than a mile on the First bus to Pudsey.
The non-cheapo alternative would be private jet (which, I hasten to add, I cannot afford!).

Sounds like he was on a holiday charter flight in peak (school holiday) season.
I suspect many business travellers feel exactly the same when faced with the carnage that is holiday season compared with regular business flying-they just don't have the Telegraph to express their dissatisfaction.
It was quite amusing traveling with friends to and from the US this month. They kept looking at the long check in and security lines and saying "Shouldn't we be in THAT line ?" as I whisked them through first class/elite non existant lines instead :)

Fair enough! :)

I often quote the Evening Standard too. It makes me sound all refined-like. :p

(ducks)

No doubt - but that is as far to BA as it gets as he didn't happen to be flying British Airways and the article was not about them.

For once.