British Airways - not impressed

[SS2.]

So, there we were on Thursday night having just driven up, 5 of us settling in nicely at The Copthorne Hotel at Gatwick about to enjoy a few drinks and an overpriced meal when the Mrs receives an out-of-the-blue text from BA saying that our Friday morning flight to Malaga had been cancelled.

Cue one very hurried call to BA and we're advised that French air-traffic has meant the flight has been pulled and the soonest they could now fly us out would be Sunday night, which might even be pushed back to Monday morning.

Give EasyJet a quick call and ask whether their flights were suffering the same disruption - nope, not aware of any issues to Spain. Exactly the same with RyanAir.

Mrs calls BA back and questions the ATC angle, gets revised answer - actually, it's because we don't have availability of planes. FFS.

I'm already on the laptop by now and have managed to book 5 seats on the early Friday flight to Malaga out of Southampton - far better for us, because that's where we live.

Re-load the bags in the car and re-visit the M25 & A3 (again).

Pretty hacked off with BA, to be fair - not so much because of the cancelled flights (meh, these things happen and we still arrived on time, and now I'm typing this post from the patio of a stunning villa on the outskirts of Mijas, the sun is shining and the views over the Costa del Sol are magnificent), but because of the manner it which it was announced (by text) and the fact they then proceeded to lie about the reasons.

I know BA is not the flagship it once was (I tend to avoid their long haul flights these days), but have things really slipped so badly for 'the world's favourite airline' that this is how they are now behaving ?

[SS2.]

recordman said:

Make sure you make a claim for the five of you under EUR261.

This will help:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-exe...

Cheers for that, was aware there some form of compensation regulation which covers this sort of issue - will have a look at taking things further when we get back to Blighty.

Sheepshanks said:

The worst thing was the attitude of the BA staff I spoke to - they absolutely couldn't have given a toss.

Agreed - their 'solution' to us being delayed for 3 days was that we should simply go home, move the villa booking, the hire cars, the return dates to work, etc.

Very poor.

[SS2.]

recordman said:

Make sure you make a claim for the five of you under EUR261.

Back in Blighty now and a claim has been submitted to BA.

Will update as and when anything happens.

[SS2.]

SS2. said:

recordman said:

Make sure you make a claim for the five of you under EUR261.

Back in Blighty now and a claim has been submitted to BA.

Will update as and when anything happens.

They've just paid a total of €2000 compensation by bank transfer - €400 for each passenger travelling.

No quibbles, no arguing, no hassle.