So, first up came the threat of a strike. Now, a customer of mine, who is due to fly to Florida for a cruise, has been informed that she cannot fly because her flight is overbooked. Despite it having been booked months ago. Couple this with BA's pathetic and grumpy service on board the plane and generally shocking and effing useless customer service in general and it becomes no surprise whatsoever that BA is losing $470m a year. In my opinion, the sooner BA go bankrupt the better.
Add to that the fact that BA have sole use of Terminal 5, that is, OUR tax money went to building facilities for a PRIVATE company and I HATE BA. I pray they go out of business but sadly they probably won't because the government will end up giving yet more of our taxpayer money to BA in order to prop them up.
I have flown with BA 3 times in my life. Only 3 because EVERYTIME I hated it. Surly staff who all look like they are beyond retirement age, poor food, extremely sporadic refreshments (and don't try asking for a drink unless they are bringing around the drinks trolley, you won't get one).
Add to that, it should be against the law to overbook flights. If you have paid for a flight then you should get that flight.
Charlie think your trying for the grumpy vote.
As to your experance with BA, I can say I had the same with Virgin, awful servce, over booking, lost bags etc... yet I only had 1 bad Flight with BA.. is any better than another?
At least Virgin don't get a massive amount of taxpayers money spent on building a Terminal exclusively for them. BA did. Why couldn't Willie Walsh have spent some of their own money on building it? Oh yeh, BA no longer have any money.
Other airlines are bad, but they don't charge the premium prices that BA do.
You keep saying fund by tax payer.. first off it airports that build terminals not airlines, secondly it was funded by the British Airports Authority (BAA) which is a private Spanish company?
I can see you have something massively against BA. As a travel agent their not my "favorite airline". But that much worse then rest of the market, NO. That more expensive... well there on the same systems as all the others...so again no.
It is the staff at Heathrow that have a lot to answer for (I flown BA from Gatwick and they are great staff). They act like there airline royalty and deserve so much more than any other crew..so surprise with these high loses and crap service the Chairman try's to do something about it. Any other action would seem criminal in compression.
As far as I was aware, Terminal 5 was built under a private/public partnership, though I am having difficulty finding anywhere that tells me exactly how much tax money went into it so I am willing to admit that I am wrong on that.
Have never flown BA from LGW, so couldn't comment on that. As for your suggestion that I have an axe to grind against BA - absolutely. I'm not grown up enough to not hold grudges against companies and BA rubbed me up the wrong way too often. Everytime I flew with them (always from LHR, so maybe I was silly to do so) I was treated like I wasn't worthy of their service. I have flown good and bad airlines (though most seem to be somewhere in the middle) but BA is the only one to have managed to treat me like a piece of excrement stuck to their shoe. Not once, but three times.
I know that their are good and bad experiences, but in my life I have never encountered a company (apart from BT) who are so consistently shocking. That is why I cannot stand BA. People can moan about Ryanair, but at least they are honest about their ways of business and don't claim to be the number 1 airline in the world.
O/T - The overbooking issue is a seperate crime that the whole industry is guilty of, and is the major thing about this industry that makes me sick. Is it really that difficult, once all the seats are sold, to not sell any more? I don't go into the off licence to buy some beer, pay and then get told that I can't have my money back but if I hang around they will get a delivery in the next few hours and I can take some then.
If BA went out of business tomorrow, would I celebrate despite all the work it would entail for me? Yes, yes and yes once more.