flyermatthew

In case anybody's missed it, LHR melted down today due to snow. BA had to cancel over 100 flights, and the place was a total zoo:

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...h2dfzLbVPHsCkQ

My fun started when departure plus 20 hours, when AA 66 landed late at LHR. Our captain said that he'd never seen anything like it, which made me realize we were in for a long day. I "made" my connection to Glasgow and was waiting for a gate to be assigned when the board noted that the flight was canceled.

My first thought was to head for the T5 lounge for rebooking assistance. However, the T5 lounges do not have customer assistance desks. (Seems like kind of an oversight to me, since that's a good way to assist the high-value BA and oneworld pax, and the T1 lounge I used last month during an LHR misconnect was quite valuable.)

The lounge sent me to the customer service desk in the terminal airside. The customer service desk said that I needed to reclaim my checked bag and clear customs, then rebook landside.

At baggage reclaim, BA staff can't locate the bags that were going to be transferred on to the flight. After queuing at the baggage customer service desk, I am told that my bag has been "reflighted" (transferred to the next flight) but I have not, and that I need to go landside to fix up the ticket.

(Every time I have had bad things happen on AA, somebody rebooks me -- though I don't know whether it is automatic or human driven. Why doesn't BA have a similar service?)

Landside, the rebooking queues are all quite amazing. I choose the shortest one in the BA first-class area. Even so, the four people ahead of me take an hour to get through, in part because only one rep on duty actually knows how to rebook passengers. When I get to the front of the line, the BA rep refuses to put me up in a hotel for the night when there are three more flights later in the day, and then proceeds to scold me for trying to rebook on to the next flight with my bags when it is about to close. She complains and tells me that my expectations are unreasonably high while grudgingly rebooking me and my two companions. She then orders us to run for the gate.

Which we do, only to find out that the flight has been canceled. At this point, I hope that the day is enough of a meltdown that they've started some sort of triage in the lounge and I can avoid going landside again.

That, apparently, would make sense. (Is BA's goal to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that LHR is only a connection point used by the criminally insane?) So, landside we go again. There are two rebooking queues, both of which are now so large they have apparently overflowed all of the queue barriers that BAA has on hand. A BA staff person tells me that I can choose either one, but there isn't any priority line for BA or oneworld elites. The line is so long, I ask him for a cot because I have been going on 24 hours without a bed. He thinks I am joking.

I ignore his instructions and go back to the first-class area. On the way, I overhear a rumor that the main customer service line can be measured in hours.

The good news is that when I started dozing off in line, somebody finally decided to give me a hotel voucher after eight hours at Heathrow. She also provides toiletry kits, and checks us in for the 7 am flight the next day, and issues boarding passes. Since she noticed we couldn't stay awake any longer, she is clearly new to BA customer service standards. I won't name her for fear that BA will sack her for actually helping passengers.

As we leave the terminal, we notice that all flights for the next two hours are in a state of purgatory where BA won't cancel them, but it won't open them for check-in either. The rebooking queues are even longer. I hear rumors that they are now six hours long, since what is happening is that people are getting out of the rebooking queue, going airside, seeing their flight be canceled, and then having to get back in the rebooking queue.

Here's hoping that tomorrow brings something better.

JJeffrey

Ick, that sounds absolutely horrid...what a way to begin a trip to Europe. Did you get your bags, or are they sitting (hopefully) somewhere at LHR waiting for the 7am flight? Good luck tomorrow nevertheless.

I have to do the opposite transfer BA to AA T5-T3 next week, I originally booked it as I was excited to see the new T5, but now I'm absolutely dreading it.

studio76

Regardless, British Airways ground service is currently amongst the worst in the world. Request a print out from BA confirming the reason for the cancellation. If it was not weather (but rather BA unable to properly operate T5) then be sure to file an EU compensation claim against BA.

spanishflea

Did you go to the Guest Services Centre within the Lounge? They have been extremely helpful in dealing with my requests on my few T5 visits so far. I would be surprised if they were unable to rebook you in a weather situation like today?

flyermatthew

BA handed me a letter on the first cancellation. They are blaming everything on the weather and ATC, thus, they do not owe compensation. Their inability to operate T5 made a bad situation worse, but the EU compensation rules don't (unfortunately!) have a rule requiring partial compensation for Aggravated Incompetence by Ground Staff.

vasantn

In other news:

Snow and ORD don't mix
Snow and DFW don't mix

oklAAhoma

I think I'm starting to detect a pattern here. Forgive me if I'm jumping too early to this conclusion, but it seems that quite possibily, it might just be the case that snow causes problems at many airports.

Drew11m

I was on AA 66 that arrived on 6 April to the snow covered LHR. It was a ugly experience today.

Once arriving after sitting on the link taxiway for an hour after landing, we left to find one single gate agent with connecting information, who directed me and a colleague to Terminal 5 for our BA connector to Bahrain/Doha. It normally goes out of 4. With a shortened connection time of an hour, we hoofed it to the buses and off to Terminal 5 where the board told us just how wrong the gate agent was. So we ran to the buses to Terminal 4, where the security queue did not move for at least 15 minutes.

Finally convincing a BA agent the flight was final boarding, we got through the line and literally ran the entire way from security to Gate 25, which is about as far as you can get. The entire time the board was showing ontime.
I get there, and barely make it, and then once the doors are closed, we are told we are waiting for a de-icer. One hour became two, then three, then finally we were airborne after 4 hours. Total chaos at Heathrow today.

BA flight crew did a great job keeping everyone relatively placated despite the delays. AA did a nice job from ORD as always

flyermatthew

Yes, even HEL. The difference is that HEL has lots of snow removal and deicing equipment, and the AY ground staff is used to dealing with snow-related disruptions.

As a previous poster pointed out, the problem may have started with snow, but the room-temperature IQ staff at BA turned what would have been ugly but manageable (see ORD from October through April) into a headline-making day. Whenever my travel has been disrupted in the past decade on AA, UA, or NW, the worst-case scenario was that I would get to the front of the line or to the next available flight and find out that I was already standing by/rebooked on the later flight. (As I moved from AAdvantage cardboard up to EXP, I had more tools for making rebooking happen faster and taking control of the process, but even as a lowly non-status member, AA was doing something.) When I'd get to the front of the line, I'd be told about my new itinerary, and it was a matter of printing boarding passes. At T5 today, the rebooking agents had to figure everything out, which requires a lot more time to service the line. I would have thought that at their major hub, BA could have put some rebooking agents in a back room and set them to work during an emergency?

flyermatthew

I was told customer service != rebooking, even though I used the guest service center in the T1 terraces lounge for rebooking last month when the snowstorm hit Athens.

Throughout T5, BA has clearly separated ticketing desks from customer service desks, though it's not clear to me what the difference in services between the two is. The only thing readily apparent was that all us pax needed to be in the ticketing line to get rebooked, and fewer agents know how to handle the somewhat more complicated computer work of rebooking.

oklAAhoma

That seems a reasonable expectation to me.

flyermatthew

It's easy to placate passengers if their flight actually happens.

Those of us left behind were probably a bit more implacable.

skywalkerLAX

How awful !

Not a friend of BA anyways but it will definetely take a while until I even think about checking out T5.

I rather stay at the VS Clubhouse connecting on LH to/from main europe.

spanishflea

Who told you this though? The people behind the Guest Services Desk themselves or the front desk staff?

The biggest problem with T5 at the moment is that the majority of staff are just as confused as the passengers, as clearly evidenced in this case and in the case of Drew11m

graraps

The rules may not have a rule "requiring compensation for aggravated incompetence by ground staff", but "weather and ATC" are not good enough reasons for an airline to avoid giving out compensation.
The onus is on the airline to prove that they couldn't have taken preventive steps and, as the snow had been forecast days ago and they obviously didn't take any preventive steps (or their operations wouldn't be as badly affected), I should imagine you're entitled to full compensation. They're just trying to fob you off, and you make it seem like they've already succeeded!