My wife has travelled BNE-MEL-SIN-LHR-CPH in Business Class to seek treatment in Denmark for spinal cancer. Our 17 year old daughter travelled as her assistant, also in Business Class. Special assistance (wheelchair transfers) was included in the reservation. The trip was a nightmare !!

Check-in in Brisbane got the journey off badly.
(1) Online seat selection was never available for the MEL-LHR trip, the screen would say "Seat choice will be available at check-in" or on the Qantas website "advance seat selection is not available for this flight, please select seats at check-in". So my wife, with very limited mobility and considerable pain on standing and walking, was unable to do seat selection to pre-select seats alongside our daughter with easy aisle access and as close as possible to rest rooms, etc.
(2) Online check-in for BNE-MEL and MEL-LHR-CPH was never offered either under BA's Manage My Booking or her Qantas login. The BA website stated "check-in via the operating airlines website" but on the Qantas website the Online Check-in button just did not appear. So my wife was unable to check-in prior to arrival at BNE domestic, and unable to go directly to bag-drop.
(3) Upon arrival at BNE domestic we found that assisted check-in counters no longer exist, and the electronic check-in would not check my wife and daughter in either. In great pain my wife made her way to a person at the far left of the check-in area, only to be told that she had to go to a counter at the far right of check-in. By now she was in agony.
(4) Despite having Special Assistance (wheel chair, etc) in her booking, to this point we had still been unable to find a "human" to provide this special assistance.
(5) Not surprisingly at check-in the remaining seat selection options were limited. Despite the Special Assistance annotation in the booking, the counter attendant initially just gave my wife and daughter the first seats offered for MEL-LHR. These were several rows away from the rest rooms. Only after I firmly pressed the point were some seats nearer the rest rooms offered.
(6) Only after check-in was complete was the wheelchair fetched for my wife, who by this time was sucking on an "Actiq" opiate painkiller stick after having been standing and walking for over 20 minutes. The painkiller had been reserved for the time that she would have to sit upright prior to, during and after take-off.
(7) My wife finally boarded the BNE-MEL flight in extreme agony. A very distressing start to a 33 hour journey. We had really hoped that she could have at least made it on to her first leg in a relatively comfortable state. BA/Qantas certainly ensured this was IMPOSSIBLE.

Transfers were reasonably smooth thereafter through to Heathrow. By this time my wife was exhausted (30 hours travel) and in much pain. Now the saga started all over again:
(1)Flight BA 7309 arrived into Heathrow 45 minutes late at 5:45am and my wife had to wait for 3 wheelchair interchanges, and ended up missing the connection to CPH by 5 minute. Each time they changed over wheelchair and driver they lost about 10 minutes.
(2) Flight BA 0812 took off from the furtherest terminal at Gate 48. When they went through security screening it came up that boarding had closed and that was at 6:35am for a 6:55am flight. The desk attendant agreed to hold it open if my wife and daughter could go straight there, but from there on they had to go up and down elevators, onto a train and through security screening a second time (taking shoes on and off). They got there at 6:50am (5 minutes ahead of scheduled departure) to be told "too late", the flight doors were closed and our bag had been removed. My wife was shattered.
(3) They were taken to the BA Club and were told that they would try and get them on the next flight at 9:20am, but it was pretty full and Business Class may not be available. It was now 7:05am. My wife advised that she would not make it until the 12'ish flight which had spaces as she would need to access furher painkilling medications by then. BA then offered that my wife fly Business Class and our daughter go Economy. My wife cannot get in and out of her seat without our daughter's assistance and stated that our daughter was her helper and she needed her in the adjacent seat.
(4) By the time they finished at the desk it was 7:30am and BA suggested that they go back to Terminal 5, but to A as there was a lounge that was closer to the next flight departure gate. BA also arranged for their suitcase to be held airside so that my wife could get some extra pain killer. They didn't get back to the A section until just after 8am (2-1/4 hours after landing) at LHR. My daughter had to buy water for my wife during all the messing about (clearly "Z" class rather than Business Class).
(5) Next the wheelchair person got lost, and from having 3 hours they had just 15 minutes in the lounge.
(6) At the lounge counter they got my 17 year old daughter to sign something (remember this is my wife's booking that my under-18 daughter has no right to sign for) and they gave her a paltry 30 pound credit voucher for surrendering her LHR-CPH Business Class seat (and the price difference on the BA website is 322 pounds, plus BA would know that living in Brisbane the credit voucher will never get used, so the downgrade to Economy was effectively not compensated at all).
(7) Once on the aircraft no help whatsoever was offered between LHR and CPH, my wife had to shout down the aisle to economy when she needed my daughter's help.

Terrible, inexcusable, woeful treatment for long haul business class passengers. I wouldn't condemn my worst enemy to travelling with BA.

(first of all this belongs in the BA forum, as it is really more of a rant than a trip report)


My sympathies to your wife for what sound like quite painful medical conditions. But, even with the standard hyperbole that is common among these types of posts, it doesn't seem that BA did anything particularly poor here. No airline is truly qualified to handle passengers with serious medical conditions. I think BA (and its partners and airport staff [who are not BA employees]) did about as good a job as can be reasonably be expected. If your wife's condition is so poor, I think you might need more medical assistance than a low-wage wheelchair pusher or 17 year old girl can provide.

Case in point:

5 - During check-in the agent provided two seats far from the bathroom (although in J, the seats are never more than a few rows away). You asked them to be seated closer to bathrooms (a perfectly reasonable request given the medical issues) and the agent did so. How should the agent have known what seats you wanted?

Again, my sympathies with your situation. But I am not sure you will necessarily find better service elsewhere. The bottom line is, flying 30 hours with a serious medical condition is almost surely a difficult journey.

I do have sympathy for you but I think you're nitpicking a lot. I'm a survivor myself and know Fentanyl very well. I know the pains and exhaustion.
With all the online "unable to check in" notices did you try calling as this is so important?
As to the wheelchair service, why didn't your wife and daughter sit at one point and you go handle getting the chair from 1 person instead of her walking around?
I'm glad that longest flights worked out for them as sitting that long must have been intensive.
Flight delays happen and buffers for people that are ill should be longer than standard. This is a learning experience. The fact that the gate was far was not BA being evil and laughing sinisterly at your wife. Gates do close at a certain time ahead of the door clothing. Your Wife and Daughter not being in the Terminal at that time would allow them to lock in the flight and get it out early.
The Wheelchairs at LHR especially the guy getting lost is idiotic of that worker and a legit complaint. They should know their way around and be able to assist people in a respectable amount of time
As to your daughter having to purchase water...they were in a lounge without water?

Not trying to say the experience wasn't ideal but maybe it was made worse by not taking the appropriate actions ahead of time. Yes you did note she needs a wheelchair but it doesn't seem like you left enough time between flights through LHR, wife should travel with 2 days of medication at all times (this is a rule I have for myself whenever I travel. In fact i my pocket I have 3 days of my meds as I'm on all oral meds) and contacting them when online check in failed. Maybe you did the last one but you didn't say you did.

Write your complaint to BA but leave out a lot of what you wrote. Complain about the Wheelchairs and the bumping down to Economy as those are the real problems.

Having recently taken my father in a wheelchair to SFO, i can understand your concerns but i would suggest you should have taken greater steps yourself.

The first thing i did when making the booking was get on the phone and make sure my needs were noted in the booking. This included the need for seats next to the toilets. Airlines do allocate seats where a medical condition requires it.

I also pushed the wheelchair myself only surrendering it at the plane door, thus keeping me in control.

I have to say the wheelchair helper i had at LHR on my return was absolutely brilliant.

Wouldn't 'Horrible QF Experience' be a better title as it seems only your LHR-CPH sector was actually on BA?

My thoughts too!

Indeed.

I'm afraid to say it but a lot of the blame lies on the OP's shoulders for not contacting Qantas/BA by phone pre departure and asking for seat allocation and assistance. MMB can be screwed up when flying on code shares.

if you were really sympathetic you would have posted nothing.

and sorry HIDDY, the average pax relies on the notice each airline provides about being able to select seats. the average person does not expect BA/QF and other airlines to be totally inept when it comes to carrying out the same.

case in point, why not ring up BAEC and ask if you can reserve seats in J on a CX partner award ticket in advance. what do you think the response from those BAEC staff will be most times......"computer says no"...when in fact, yes you can. just get the CX locator and then book via CX.com directly at 185 days our or so.

i think every single one of you that has posted has blamed the pax in one way or another.

i hope you feel proud of your responses. karma is a great thing.

It's not a matter of the average pax that relies on the airline, we're talking about a severe medical condition.

mkjr I don't know if you ever travelled with someone in such condition but it's painful and the very first thing I ever thought of doing was making a call to the airline to make sure that everything would have been ok.

Everything in such situation is worse, it doesn't just feel worse, it actually is, but to avoid that, a phone call is the bare minimum...

The OP is QFF Plat, bmi Diamond Club Silver and Velocity Silver, I think he knows that seats are available to be chosen before check in. It's not a secret for seasoned traveller.
If the computer doesn't let me select my seat and I know how important it is I would have make a phone call. Of course in certain situation the most obvious thing to do is the one we forget because we have bigger problems to take care of.

That's why the forums like this exist, to share experiences. I think that while sharing is experience the OP blamed it a little bit too much on the airline, but we can definitely feel the pain of what happened. I don't think that anybody would deny that.

We all are sympathetic with the OP, and now that is a member of flyer talk I suggest him to ask before any other trip because there are many people here that with their expertise can help him to make any future trip better.

PS By the way I always called BAEC to reserve in advance seats on CX award and they always did it.

I don't think i blamed the OP. Or defended BA, as per your edit comment. But given that only 1 of the 4 sectors was on BA i thought the title seemed a little misleading. I wouldn't absolve BA of any blame in the saga, but let's remember it was QF that gave them a bad start and got them to LHR late which caused the knock-on issues they experienced with BA. BA undoubtedly could/should have handled the situation better, but the root cause is down to QF yet it seems no blame is being allocated to them.

And we get it, you hate BA. That's your choice. I fly them because i live near LHR and they offer direct flights to most of the places i go to. That's it. There's no need to start throwing around accusations at anyone who doesn't slag them off in every post.

my elderly mother required a wheelchair after a severe ankle injury last year... I took her to the airport and got her to sit at the car drop off point while we went inside to get the wheelchair...

also I can't understand not getting seats in advance. a platinum would get through to qantas in 10 seconds to make the request.

I was initially confused about the routing... going from Brisbane to Melbourne... but I'm guessing that was to minimise any transfer issues at Sydney. but why not fly direct out of Brisbane? I realise the departure from Melbourne has full flat beds... but it takes a good four hours of extra travel to go via melbourne... in regular seats. that's way over half the flight brisbane to to Singapore (on angled beds) already done.

wheelchair changing causing missed flight in London is not good... that should be coordinated.

the downgrade fare compensation on a single sector of a long haul ticket will never be the same as published for the one way sector in question. and the downgrade was a voluntary one. you could have retained business class on a later flight if I read correctly.

having to shout down the aisle to the daughter in economy would be extremely embarrassing. how many rows apart were they? and the crew refused to pass on a message to get the daughter to come forward?

I have sympathy for your wife and pain she is going through - however it seems that part of the distress was caused by poor planning and execution even not getting a wheelchair at the airport before check-in... did that really need to happen?

Exactly!

there is a big difference between feeling sympathetic for the OP's wife, and the OP themselves. don't confuse the two. anyways... the return trip will be much better executed now I am sure, with all the necessary phone calls being made.

Indeed....it goes without saying that the OP has our sympathy.

However there is no harm in putting the OP straight on a few things.
The title for a start is completely misleading. Qantas seems to get off Scott free in all of this but they are much more to blame than BA.

More here on AFF http://www.australianfrequentflyer.c...eck-35087.html
AFF thread post 33