British Airways disappointment.

Acremead

It's when things go wrong that you really find out what an organisation's made of.

I was in Italy on Sunday evening when I got a text at 8.45pm from BA telling me they'd cancelled my flight next afternoon back to the UK and telling me to ring a number in Italy or one in the UK or access the web-site.

We went on the web-site which helpfully gave a list of alternative flights from two nearby airports. I chose one and clicked through to the next page to make the booking, but the page was not accessible because of a “temporary” fault. Tried ringing the numbers given, both of which were to offices which close at 6pm. Tried the web-site for another two hours on and off. The “temporary” fault was still there at 9 the next morning. Thus no way of re-booking. I had to guess which of two airports might have spare London bound seats and make my way over there to re-book in person, thus missing half a day's sight-seeing.

In the way of things (weather in this instance) it's a feature of airline travel that flights do have to get cancelled. But if they are going to have to “dump” customers at less than 24 hours notice why don't they have robust systems in place to help customers re-book? Why no 24 hour help-line? Why insult customers by inviting them to ring a number which BA must have known had not been staffed for the previous three hours? Why do they not have someone from IT on stand-by to fix 'temporary' faults in less than twelve hours?

All questions I shall be asking BA, though not hopeful of anything other than the usual corporate b.s. answer along the lines of “we are sorry we failed to meet your expectations on this occasion”.

System

From an IT point of view they can only fix something if its reported. There's a chance nobody had noticed on a Sunday evening the page was down, especially if all staff had gone home at 6pm.

Azari

It's extremely bad that a company such as BA which is certainly a 24 hour a day operation (even if they are not flying during the UK night they will be flying elsewhere around the world) do not have a 24 hour service for dealing with problems that they have caused (possibly through no actual fault of their own) and which might have very major repercussions for a lot (several planes full) of people.

From what you have said it sounds as if possibly hundreds of passengers may have each lost many hours of their business day/ holiday (and some flying to the UK might have missed meetings).

And then there is the understandable worry of being stuck in foreign parts now knowing when you will be able to return.

I sincerely hope this was some sort of glitch and that "we've all gone home for the next 12 hours" is not the standard response when they strand people through cancelled flights.

Acremead

goater78 wrote: »

From an IT point of view they can only fix something if its reported. There's a chance nobody had noticed on a Sunday evening the page was down, especially if all staff had gone home at 6pm.

Yes, I very much appreciate that. If they'd had a 24/7 help-line I would have reported it.

Not an IT person myself but I would have thought that on a web-site as complex as that they should be able to devise some kind of self-diagnostic routine? Something which would automatically alert them to faults before a hapless punter comes up against them.

System

Acremead wrote: »

Yes, I very much appreciate that. If they'd had a 24/7 help-line I would have reported it.

Not an IT person myself but I would have thought that on a web-site as complex as that they should be able to devise some kind of self-diagnostic routine? Something which would automatically alert them to faults before a hapless punter comes up against them.

Yes they should have something monitoring it. But it does depend why it was down. I would imagine Sunday evenings are a very quiet time so they may have deliberately had it down while they did an upgrade. It could therefore have been a scheduled outage.

Of course this doesn't help you at all!

Acremead

goater78 wrote: »

I would imagine Sunday evenings are a very quiet time

A reasonable assumption for most industries but last Sunday BA was cancelling a significant number of flights, due to the threat of bad weather. So I suppose in an ideal world they should really have had staff monitoring the web-site in anticipation of extra traffic associated with that.

Acremead

UPDATE: Today got a satisfactory response which has gone a long way to restoring my faith in BA. Basically I've been given enough 'air miles' to fly free next time I go to Italy. I do take their assurance seriously that they will take "measures to prevent similar problems in the future" as they have made changes in response to criticisms before.

Thank you for writing back to us. I am concerned to learn that you did not receive effective support from our end to rebook as your flight to London Heathrow was cancelled. I am sorry that you could not rebook online. It must have been frustrating after you had logged in to find the service was not available at that moment [nor for 12 hours afterwards!]. I recognise this is not the kind of service you should experience while travelling with British Airways. Please accept my sincere apologies.

We know ba.com is very important to our customers – it is a very convenient way of finding information and booking tickets. Our web support team work around the clock to make sure ba.com is always available. Your comments outlining your own experience will be very helpful, as we can use them to continue improving the site.

By way of an apology, I have added 10,000 Avios points to your Executive Club account. Please accept them with my compliments. Subject to availability, you can put your Avios towards future bookings, or use them to upgrade your travel class when you fly with us again. They can also be used for hotels and car hire. For further information, please visit ba.com/executiveclub.

We are determined to provide the highest possible level of service to our customers. This includes your contact with us before and after you travel, as well as during your journey. We have a senior manager responsible for customer experience. Your feedback is vital to us because it means they can identify which areas must be improved as a priority.

We're sorry for what has happened and can promise you that we take a serious view of this whole episode. We are taking measures to prevent similar problems in the future. I very much hope you will allow us to demonstrate the British Airways service at its best in the near future.

Azari

Thanks for the update.

paddyrg

Kudos to BA - imagine how the story would end with a certain Irish airline - you'd end up paying extra fees to be sure, and then fees on the fees for failing to plan ahead for their website being down ;-)

knightstyle

Well done BA, we were upgraded when a BA flight was cancelled as a goodwill gesture. Means we will use them again.

Acremead

knightstyle wrote: »

Well done BA, we were upgraded when a BA flight was cancelled as a goodwill gesture. Means we will use them again.

Yes- I did ask if there was a chance of an upgrade on the re-booked flight, but first class (or whatever they call it) was already fully booked on that flight.