Software glitch hits Heathrow T4 baggage system Heathrow's Terminal 4 was yesterday hit by a software glitch which affected its baggage-handling capacity, the knock-on effect of which means that some passengers travelling have been told to leave any hold baggage at home. BAA's website currently offers: "The Teminal 4 baggage system is temporarily experiencing a reduction in …
That they can't handle baggage means there'll be less baggage for them to lose so it'll up their performance figures. There had to be an upside to this.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown of lost/delayed baggage by passenger class and route so that passengers may make more thoroughly informed choices when not flying with BA.
@David: what did you expect? There are far less Business and First passengers.
@Anon: No, they are not security cleared.
The people I feel sorry for are the people who HAVE flown half way around the world and expect to xfer onto a BA flight that leaves from T4 to complete the trip..... ooops!
I was at T4 yesterday but luckily using KLM. The BA announements were like an anti-advertisement for the airline: sod off if you're not biz class and rebook online at home, ta muchly. Now if T5 kicks off with a few glitches, there's your clue on how well it'll be handled.
Screwing transfer passengers should see all that business finallly clear off to CDG and AMS. No need for a third runway.
It's all security related. For your safety, of course.
First, no liquids in the cabin
Next, no solids in the hold.
Soon, it will be no people inside the aircraft. You just pay, turn up at the airport, queue for a while and return home.
Or board an aircraft wearing an orange jumpsuit...
What if those circumstances included travelling in first or club?
BA makes all of its money from the expensive cabins, unlike some US airlines where business & first are mostly used as free upgrades for frequent fliers. The plebs like us in the back are only there to cover the costs of our seat. It's either luck or deliberate re-tooling of the system that means that premium passengers still travel with bags. Either way it's good business sense not to piss off the customers who are the core of your market.
Worldwide air travel at £100s a ticket is a modern miracle. There is a tradeoff between price and service which never existed before deregulation: you can go to places on holiday every year that 30 years ago would have been a once in a lifetime trip. If you pay the same as before deregulation you get a much, much better service; if you pay the bottom rate you get there but the trip is a bit uncomfortable. Choose.
Nobody is forcing you to travel in the back: you could pay more for a better seat, pick another carrier, work for a better company with business class travel as a perk, or just buy a caravan and go on holiday in the Yorkshire Dales instead of Tenerife.
I would save your anger for the muppets in government and at BAA who are really responsible for making air travel miserable. Those endless security lines, humiliating searches and pointless restrictions on liquids are nothing to do with the airline.
Sick vulture because it's not flying.
I have to say , I have seen so many airports around the world, and no where not even in the African bush, have I come across so much incompetence and inflexibility!!!
BAA claims to be an international business, but they certainly have absolutely no clue of crisis planning!
Being a consultant, I would say that any essential system has to be duplicated as far as possible! What sort of business continuity planning is this, when there is a high possibility, that one system can take down nearly my entire operations!!!
BA could be seen as the equal to incompetence!
I have flown with many airlines throughout my life and have had good as well as bad experience with pretty much every airline!
It just seems to be BA that I have had only poor experience with! considering that they are the largest airline in the world, their service is no better than any budget airline!
How on earth, can you expect passengers to fly "without" luggage on a long haul flight! This just shows, that BA do not take their passengers seriously!
What about the people wanting to go on holliday, and that have their hotels paid for already etc.
Because they can't take their luggage, they have to cancel their holidays??
My goodness, the entire PR team of BA should be fired, as well as the management and replaced with some capable and competent people!
I have flown BA six times end every time it was a disaster! Most business people I know, have on average one negative issue to say about BA per return flight!
I have one return flight per week to Germany. I couldn't handle the stress of flying if I where to fly with them...
All BA needed to do here was turn round to BAA and tell 'em that if they couldn't organise the bags themselves, they could shove their security restrictions where the sun shineth until such time as they could. Then apologise a bit and inform everyone that they were going to have to take their own bags to the gate.
The Government would go apoplectic, but that would just be funny.....
Frankly I think the airlines should just have stopped using UK airports until such time as the government gets rid of all these daft restrictions.
Then released a statement explaining that the reason they are withdrawing from UK airports and relocating to CDG and AMS is due to the majority of politicians in govt being unable to take a threat in proportion and making it impossible to operate in the UK
Wonder how fast the govt would have dropped the liquids ban and did something sensible like for example focusing their searches onto those likely to try something stupid i.e. not my grandparents for example and perhaps look at realistic possibilities?
Then again they probably wouldnt give a monkeys as it would be "green" and best for the environment.
Bloody losers.....IF Scotland ever becomes independent, England can do as they please with Pope brown and his bunch of red and blue cronies. Self serving wasters
Perhaps once the green nazis fully take control they can use Heathrow as a prison for anyone they deem an eco criminal aka "normal"
They've simply realised that for all those folks they allow to check in bags they're going to be paying out more in penalties for lost luggage than they're going to take in on the ticket prices. I'm sure they pass much of that cost onto the baggage handler, but then have to eat the rest.
Add that up for all of the flights from T4 and it's much easier just to declare that all your passengers can't fly and then make a claim for lost earnings (actual plus future potential) to BAA. They've figured that a few annoyed tourists won't hurt them long-term.
I've used a lot of airports worldwide, and I have to say, Heathrow is by far the worst!
The queues are terrible, the staff are retarded and the delays are ridiculous. And please - no one say its because of its size. Both Schiphol and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson are as big and they are a cake-walk in comparison.
ps. You can always spot the frequent flyers / plane buffs - they refer to places like Paris and Amsterdam airports as 'CDG' and 'AMS'.
Paris, as its got a better airport.
That's the last straw. Lukily I booked my Japan flights in May with Virgin but had to break the habit of using BA.
@Tim: It's one thing if BA were upfront about the restriction when booking the flight - another thing to find out when you have turned up with your cases, spent money on accomodation and reserved precious annual leave with work.
"It's one thing if BA were upfront about the restriction when booking the flight - another thing to find out when you have turned up with your cases, spent money on accomodation and reserved precious annual leave with work."
Absolutely, as I'm about to find out!
What I meant was (jokingly), turn up and BA could do the decent thing and just upgrade us :-)
Obviously isn't going to happen, despite all those empty seats now because no one's going to get on the plane without luggage for a long haul!
It's okay for BA to say that you can rebook a flight at a later date, but there's every chance your holiday company will not cooperate and rebook. You could also find yourself SOOL when claiming on insurance.
And remember, Terminal 4 is the *nice* terminal at LHR. The other three are even less fit for purpose.
Let them send your bags, counter to counter, on another carrier, at *THEIR* expense. Then you just collect them at the counter at the distination airport; or better still have them courrier them to your final destination. You get to your hotel, etc; and the bags are waiting for you.
Hah. Better for them to sodomize their passengers.
to Heathrow.
In my experience its just crap, and I simply can't see any good reason to make that place bigger. Even avoiding the obvious aspect of 'greenness', and how the gov claims to want to reduce carbon emissions, its just such an awful design of a place and such a pain to use.
My choice for any transfers is Amsterdam, as the Dutch seem to know how to run a big airport effectively.
Nearly ten years ago, after many disastrous experiences with BA and British airports, I switched all my intercontinental and European travel to KLM , and I continue to find them (and the airport at Amsterdam) more helpful, reliable and pleasant. However, this month after a complex journey with my wife through South-East Asia and Australia in Business Class,, we were obliged to switch our return journey (to Oslo) to travel through terminal 4 and BA. Alas, they were as bad as ever:
a. All our luggage was lost at Terminal 4 (and most of it still is, three days later)
b. The main BA lounge at Terminal 4 was out of action "for technical reasons"
c. The BA staff for the London-Oslo flight turned up at the gate only at the moment the plane should have left and then spent their time laughing with each other. Only when passengers insisted on getting information did one of them take up a microphone and explain that there would be half an hour's delay (which soon became an hour).
People who comment that economy class passengers get especially bad treatment are probably correct, but business class passengers have no reason to like BAA or BA either. Who on earth dared to choose the slogan "The world's favourite airline?" or to claim that Heathrow was the world's most popular airport?
Graham Dukes
Oslo
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