British Airways in Chaos
People rant about British train operating companies, including on occasions me. But no failures, cockups or mismanagement by the likes of Virgin or Connex approaches the scale of the chaos that's engulfed British Airways at Heathrow the fast four days, when the checkout staff and baggage handlers walked out in a dispute over working practices. 100,000 passengers were left stranded, some for more than four days. Fights broke out in the departure lounges.
Patrick Crozier writes in a comment on Transport Blog that it's all because of a small change of the law making it harder for companies to sack strikers. But it takes two to make an industrial dispute; I suspect much more of the blame lies at the feet of heavy-handed management.
In the end, it's the customer who suffers. How many of those 100,000 will never fly BA again? The whole think makes me wonder if British Airways are going the way of Pan Am (Remember them?)
Posted by TimHall at July 22, 2003 09:57 PM | TrackBackI flew on British Airways on 24 August and they forced me to check in all my hand luggage. At my arrival in Paris, all my luggage, suitcase and hand luggage, went missing. The staff was very uncooperative and there was not even a BA staff there. Hundreds of people had their luggage missing and they could not care less. One week has passed and I still do not have any news from my luggage. My faxes and emails do not get any replies and phone calls are not answered. I have essential items in these luggage including some which can not be replaced with money (original degrees, personal values etc...). I have already had to spend in excess of �1,000 to replace clothes, toiletries, mobile phone charger, electronic equipments etc... The management of this crisis by BA is catastrophic. They could not care less about their fare-paying passengers. I strongly advise anybody against flying British Airways as this issue is far from resolved.
Posted by: Christophe Descrimes on August 30, 2006 11:35 AM