Computer outage causing delays for BA worldwide

[drron]

yeah, problem is BA have been slowly trying to turn themselves into Ryanair......

I think they have succeeded.

 

[ellen10]

My 20 year old son, on his first solo overseas trip, was grounded by a severe snow storm in London.
He and other passengers sat on the plane for 6 hours after boarding, they tried to de ice the plane twice. They were not served any food or drink. Finally after 5 hours they were given a bottle of water whilst still on the plane. After 6 hours they were told that they would need to disembark at 11pm and that the flight was cancelled.
By the time they got off the plane the terminal was near deserted, all they were told was see an airport representative tomorrow morning. Due to the storm there was no public transport and he and many others had no other options but to sleep on the tiled floor.
Next morning they were told to queue up, which they did, only to be told after 4 hours of queuing they were in the wrong queue. And had to change to a different queue. 2 hours later they were told at the head at the line that the next flights home to Australia was already full and they would have go on a standby list. he and 4 others he befriended in the queue were given a voucher for 3 pound ( that does not buy much at Heathrow. They pooled their money 15 pound in total and bought some half price Christmas lollies etc. Being a poor uni student he had no other cash. He managed to call us (before his phone died, (he had packed his charger in his suitcase) but didn't know when he would get on a flight. We at home here could not find out any information as to if he was on a flight, or when he might be on a flight. We had to wait until he was in transit in Hong Kong 2 days later to let us know when he would arrive in Sydney. This fiasco was a complete fail and he was given no compensation.

 

[katiebell]

Maybe its my inexperience but if this was me, I would just go to the nearest airport hotel available, look after myself and not expect the powers to be to step up.

Sort my own accommodation and food, confirm with insurer if I will be reimbursed with another airline and if the airline tried to downgrade me, wait until a flight with correct cabin is available. Fortunately, I can work anywhere as long as I have wifi but understand this isnt the case for all and/or have kids waiting for them at home.

I think its a situation like this, mass confusion and dis-information, do not expect "someone" to resolve/take care of you in the immediate short term.

Im sorry you got mixed up in this fiasco, sounds incredibly frustrating and upsetting and I hopoe BA/all the airlines learned from it.

Thank you for your sympathy! Very early on I realised that things were bad and arranged accomodation for myself and my elderly mother. We had to travel as we were trying to see relatives she had not seen for 20 years and her flight back to Aus isthis weekend. We could not wait days for J seats to become available but the whole business really knocked her around.

It shows that BA have no disaster management plans for mass cancellations yet this scenario has occurred with bad weather and the IT issues have affected other airlines and still BA did not plan for this.

They have legal and contractual obligations to look after pax but did not.

yeah, problem is BA have been slowly trying to turn themselves into Ryanair......


=drron;1642565]I think they have succeeded.

Ryanair are now much better than BA. Ryanair also released media saying something along the lines of BA computer says no.

In terms of recovery and managing pax: zilch, nix, zero... I suspect staff have been ordered not to use any initiative. We lost our included meals and, only after I and other pax in the same situation complained were we given a free cup of coffee. What about the champagne and food we paid for? Surely a bit of good will would have helped perceptions, eg offering all pax inY complementary food and drink from the M&S on board range? But no, absolutely no good will from BA to try to make pax feel like they understood the distress that this has caused. This makes the 'personal' apology from Cruz all the more nauseating and insincere.

The media here are canning BA managemnt big time and there are calls for Cruz to resign but he seems to think it is nothing to with him.

Yet another example of a former LCC exec being appointed CEO of a full service carrier and then destroyingeverything that made it good.

 

[katiebell]

BA and IAG CEOs, Alex Cruz and Willie 'Slasher' Walsh, just don't get it. in recent (this week) media reports WW is busy blaming a single engineer for the chaos. Both mouth platitudes about "sympathy' for affected pax and concentrating on getting the BA flying again. Neither accept responsibility for the failure despite being the ones easrning mega-quids and making decisions about these sorts of things.

Both fail to acknowledge that the real problems are:
1 no effective back up plan to get pax flying. What does this say about BA's contingency and back up plans for other (safety-critical) aspects of the business
2 complete inablity to meet thier obligations to pax: e.g the requirement to provide water and food not met; no arrangements for accomodation for pax not able to fly the same day; no provision to transport pax to/from accomodation; no re-booking on next flight (regardless of carrier); no automatic rebooking of pax whose flight was cancelled (despite this being on the website). In additio0n no information provided to keep us informed and a complete disdain when we were told to leave the airport immediately. The call centre in India was not properly informed and refused to rebook us because our ticket was issued by Qantas and they would only rebook BA tickets (again despite the BA website stating they would rebook us if they cancelled our flight).

Loyalty/OWE status counted for absolutely nothing. No priority and no assistance.

The IAG & BA exec do not understand thier pax or what we look for when booking a ticket.

This is an utter and unacceptable fail for BA. My recommendation is to book BFOD/most convenient option and forget about OW 'benefits': they do not exist when it really counts.

Skytrax should downgrade them from 4 to 2 stars and not 3.

In short: do not expect BA to do anything if our flight is disrupted...

 

[whatmeworry]

Any AFF's caught up in the IT glitch should seek compensation.

[h=2]EU compensation [/h] Under European guidelines all passengers flying from EU airports or flying into EU airports are entitled to claim compensation if their flight has been delayed by more than three hours. This varies from €250 (£220) for flights under 1,500km, such as London to Paris, to a maximum of €600 (£520) for delays of more than four hours to flights to destinations more than 3,500km away, such as London to New York.





Read more



These amounts are reduced by 50% if BA is able to offer an alternative flight. It must ensure these flights arrive within a certain time frame depending on how far you are travelling. For instance, if you are flying London to Paris the airline must find a flight that arrives within two hours of your original scheduled time. Delays can be no longer than three hours for all flights within the EU of more than 1,500km and for all other flights between 1,500km and 3,500km, and four hours for all other flights.
To claim under the EU regulations, fill in the form on BA’s website. Some companies such as Resolver offer free complaints and compensation claiming services.

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...faces-100m-compensation-bill-over-it-meltdown
https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/legal/flight-cancellation-compensation