British Airways

The interesting thing about first impressions is that you only get one chance. British Airways royally screwed theirs. I wouldn’t have minded if there’s a problem or even two. But apart from not losing my baggage (other people I met did lose theirs) they managed to mess up pretty much everything. The thing I can blame them least for is British authorities treating me like a suspected criminal whenever I’m about to board an aircraft. Although I do somewhat blame them that they chose Heathrow as their hub. It’s certainly nicer in Frankfurt or Amsterdam.

No, the things I’m blaming them for is that they canceled my flight and didn’t provide an alternative. Well, they did inform me a day in advance via email and suggested I call their hotline. But waiting half an hour on a telephone listening to the same 2-minute loop is not really an option unless you’re lucky enough (as I was) to get someone to borrow you their local landline phone. But it was a really awkward situation not knowing if I’d get back home any time soon. It wasn’t even a problem after I had reached their hotline – I just got on the next flight 3 hours later.
And I do blame BA for every single flight I was on being delayed, on average an hour and a half. I can probably live with some of my flights being a bit delayed, but all of them? And three out of four for more than an hour? And to make matters worse, they didn’t even tell me. I kept sitting in front of the checkin thinking the aircraft would start any minute, but nothing happened. For hours.

So here is what I’m looking for that BA didn’t deliver:

• Don’t mess up all the time. Keep yourself better organized, you don’t have to have delays and lose luggage all the time.
• If something doesn’t work out as planned, keep me informed. And inform me as soon as possible. Tell me as soon as you know about the delay of your flight. This makes me feel like you care about me.
• If something gets seriously messed up, again tell me why. And provide me with options. If you can book me on a flight some hours later, just do it. Send me a mail stating “your flight was canceled, we put you on the next flight, because we thought that would be at your interest. If it is not, please call/mail us at xxx.” And if you provide contact information, don’t let it be a hotline where I have to wait 30 minutes on hold.
• Treat people better when something was messed up. It makes them remember you positively even though theior experience was worse. So if someone has to wait 10 hours for their connecting flight because you cancelled it, how about giving them access to your lounge?

Two things I think I should note that round things up: BA had 4 counters opened at Glasgow for the 3 aircrafts starting soon. Two for fast baggage drop after quick check in that I couldn’t use because of the cancelling (someone fix that), one for people not eligible for quick check in, and on for In-Scotland flights with a guy twiddling thumbs, because there were no such flights. It might not matter for British people if they have to wait for 90 minutes in a queue because there’s some guy twiddling thumbs, but I was a bit pissed.
And the second thing was the guy from LA who told me that his flight from Heathrow got canceled and he only got a flight a day later. But BA didn’t want to change his flight from LA to Heathrow to a day later without a lot of convincing from him. He coined the term “BA: big enough not to care”.