British Airways - missed flight due to baggage system failure

skyblues87

Bit of a strange one. Business class flight to Switzerland booked for yesterday morning.

Got to Heathrow T5 in time to find that zone A is completely closed, zone B is open.

In zone b only 2 desks staffed but for some reason there's 2 queues to each desk. So 4 queues, 2 staff. Was at one point told this was because it makes it easier to split the queue if they opened more desks but I suspect it was to stop the queue going out the building.

There was a BA staff member preventing people from joining the queue unless their flight time was approaching.

Eventually was allowed to join the queue which moved at a snails pace as it turned out the baggage system was not working correctly, including the conveyors not working at all.

Twice I queried with a member of staff that it was getting closer to my flight time and was told it would be fine and to wait in line.

Eventually got to the front of the queue to check my bags 40 minutes before my flight time. Got told rather abruptly this was too late and I was therefore classed as having missed my flight. I was told that because of the issues with the baggage system rather than them disappear on the conveyor once checked I would have to take them to a different area and potentially queue again.

I was told I could potentially be rebooked however since covid there are no staff at the airport to deal with this and that the only other flight was already overbooked. I was given a card with a website and phone number.

Phoned the number which just played a message saying they were too busy to take calls and to use the website. The website wouldn't let me make changes to my flight as I was checked in and by this point takeover was only a few minutes away.

So now I'm back at home. Incredibly stressed and about £2K down for a trip I'm not on!

I have travel insurance and will try a claim on that but reading through the terms of the insurance this seems to fall through the cracks. Can also try a claim with BA but past experience with that is it a heavily automated process that rejects anything but the bare minimum required by law.

Any thoughts or suggestions? No need to suggest not using BA again, I've already worked that one out!

skyblues87

Few more details, not sure that it makes much difference but just in case anyone is interested. It seems like the baggage system broke entirely and people heading out to the conference are in one of three groups.

1. the early flights either had the same issue as me or got on the flight but have a 50/50 chance their luggage was on the flight
2. the later flight got them there but with zero luggage on the plane, not a single person has their bags
3. flights cancelled outright. also, rather oddly, a lot of flights into Switzerland departing from other UK airports seem to have been delayed or cancelled yesterday and today which obviously doesn't help with trying to rebook

At the moment the people that seem to be making it out there are the ones booking new flights out of their own pocket. I've been there before with BA and got nothing back so very hesitant to do that. Its trying to balance how much I've potentially lost if I can't go at all against how much additional money, that I can't really afford, I'd have to pay to get things back on track.

Worried_fool

There is a group on Facebook called BA Complaints. The admins are extremely knowledgeable and have contacts within the airline, so might be able to help.