Reading an earlier thread (Delayed flight BA113) has prompted me to wonder what the rest of the board's experience of 'Long' delays has been with BA.


I'll admit that it is a slightly loaded question from my point of view...

I had a 27 hour delay last week when BA192 (DFW to LHR) had to turn back to DFW when the landing gear wouldn't retract. I've waited a week for some form of apology/comment from BA and haven't received any communication thus far.

I lost more than half my weekend and am a little bit annoyed; it's a shame, as the CC and the guys on the ground at DFW did a pretty good job dealing with a full load of passengers, and I have no complaints about the sorting of hotels/meals etc.


Does anybody have experience of similar delays with BA and what was their response?


Cheers,

Kuchen

Have you contacted BA about the delay and so on ?

I would suggest that if you haven't this should be your first course of action.

BAH

Will do... I guess I kind of hoped/expected something proactive from BA Customer Services or BAEC.

Is there an email address or is it just the CS form on BA.com?

I'd use the CS form on BA.com to start with.

BAH

The words "proactive" and "BA Customer Services" are not used in the same sentence.

Ha ha... To be fair it only just a week, so perhaps I'm asking a lot of them.

I guess I'm maybe too 'English' to think I should have to complain in order to get an apology.

Answering the basic question ... none at all, ever.

However, on occasions, sh 1t happens and you live with it or go into hyperventilation.

The only serious irrops recovery I've ever experienced have been with FlyBE [flew in a replacement aircraft after many hours] or BA during the 2010 strikes [which was superb].

I live in a world where things happen. I have learned to cope with it, for 60+ years.

I've had a number of experiences with BA (and several other airlines) along the lines of your recent misfortune. And I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. In my case typically planes go technical, or there's bad weather, or a series of events leading to staff running out of hours. It seems to run at 1% to 3% of flights, in my experience.

Of the major airlines BA is actually quite or even very good at the "duty of care" side - hotels, meals, communications and so forth. And so long as they do that to the best of their abilities, and they are putting safety first then I tend to go along with it, and not make a fuss. As T8 puts it, that's life. Other airlines are rarely as good (KLM springs to mind) as BA.

I've always regarded the EU Regs on the issue as a fallback - broadly cancellations are open to compensation, and delays are currently subject to an extended appeal process which may or may not bring long delays into compensation. But that isn't really the point: if there isn't a safe plane you're stuck, and you're looking to BA to look after you and do everything they can to resolve the situation. Does money really help? So I had 3 delays over 12 hours in 2011, all handled well, and I'm happy to leave it at that. No compensation or Avios requested or required. OK so you've lost half a weekend but BA ultimately can only apologise for that.

The two areas where BA is open to criticism are: (a) they are very reluctant to re-route lots of passengers on to other airlines - they prefer to delay and try to re-run the service even if it's very late. I notice that status does matter in that one. (b) total operational collapse - typically bad weather. Then BA stops being helpful at the airport and chucks you on to overloaded call centres. And you're on your own, and often seething! Not that will get you anywhere faster.

I am sorry to read of your experience.

No, I have not had any 'long' delays with BA for many, many years, if IIRC (but see below), although a 2+ hour delays to IST a few years ago, late in the evening, which meant I was in the lounge for way too long () with a colleague, limited self control and an important working day the following morning was not good....

In the last few years, volcano excepted (stuck in SYD for s few days, so could not get back to work ^ :-, my longest delay was with VS as the 'plane went tech - about 12 or 13 hours.

No one is hyperventilating and, yes, .... happens. However, a 27 hour delay due to a BA tech issue deserves some compensation IMHO.

For sure... I'm pretty laid back about such things usually - I guess I just feel slightly hard done by for losing the whole of Saturday... probably wouldn't have minded so much if I'd 'lost' a work day


I've been impressed with BA having really upped my use of the product recently (I switched to a job with a lot of travel at the end of last year) and was happy with the way they handled the duty of care stuff on the ground... This is the first time I've had to deal with BA's CS side of things, and I would have thought an apology would have been straightforward to send out to everyone on the flight.

Thanks,

I am relaxed about it all.

I am genuinely interested in whether anyone had similar experience (when talking to the CC and the guys at the desks none of them could recall a delay of such length), and how proactive BA had been on the service side of things.

What corporate-wage-salve said. How CWS remains ever so sensible and very helpful with all that travelling and the time it must take is really beyond me, but there you go.

I have had a disproportionate number of disruptions in the past, particularly in 2010 - that was a very bad year for my travelling as I had the disruption rate running at around 15% of my flights - just bad luck/timing with volcanic ash, snow chaos, strikes etc. BA was really good about all of them. Some of the trips would have been curtailed but for the fact that they were happy to move the inbound flight despite being non-flexible ticket when the outbound was cancelled or severely delayed etc.

I take the view that CWS takes that 'no compensation or Avios is required or requested', and T8's "that's life". Compared to some airlines' handling of disruptions, BA in my experience does very well. So did Lufthansa - both went beyond the 261/2004, although I had to be proactive in dealing with situations as well - taking some of things in my own hand, like hotel bookings, alternative transport etc, not that I was 'demanding' things - with mass disruptions, just sitting back and watching things unfold doesn't do me much favour.

In fact recently my flight was cancelled, but BA put me on a rival carrier and I managed to reach the destination within about 2 hours of the original schedule. I thought this was really good of them.

As for automatic apology, I haven't received one from any airline ever in literally dozens and dozens of disruptions. The only time I have received automatic communication in relation to a disruption is a notice of cancellation. To be honest, I don't really need an apology. Airlines don't want a delay much as passengers don't. It's extremely expensive and disruptive for them. While it would be nice if they sent out an apology, I don't require it. Likely they have suffered more than I have.

Good on you that you have learned to cope, when things or sh 1t happens
However, we are not all like you and deal with things in different ways.

It would seem reasonable to deem, that given that this is a daily flight, that a 27 hour delay is equivalent to cancellation, for which BA are liable to give compensation of €600, a liability they accede to: https://www.britishairways.com/trave...club/_gf/en_gb Indeed,a ssuming this was the flight of 13th January, it does appear to have been cancelled in fact: http://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW192

Further, under EU rules, it's quite likely that BA would pay up on the basis of a claim for delay anyway, irrespective of whether this constitutes 'cancellation', although their page above doesn't confirm that they will do so.

So, put your claim in, '€600 please BA'.