BA commentards needed urgently
The world (well El Reg) needs to know whats going on at Britains Favourite failure prone airline.
Or are you all too busy trying to put the fire out?
British Airways suffered yet another IT failure, causing knock-on flight delays and cancellations for thousands of unhappy travellers*. An unspecified computer system crash has meant some of BA's fleet has been grounded for hours and counting – it seems to be largely an inbound flight issue. Long-haul flights appear to be have …
I love how the first thing BA consider doing is contacting Lufthansa and Amaedus to see if it's a problem with their systems. Sure, all airlines integrate with third parties but you can just imagine the people at the other end going... "No, no BA, it's *your* shitty old antiquated non-redundant poorly configured and not properly tested systems. Yet again".
BA delays aren't all bad; me and the wife took advantage of their recent "two business class flights for £2019" deal, paid most of it in Avios and less than £800 in cash - that's in total. We got 24 hours advance notification of a delay to our return from Vegas which gave us the chance to visit the Hoover Dam (well worth it geeks) and still have time for a few comp champagnes in the lounge before the flight.
A broken lie-flat bed for me was solved by having the empty one next to me in landing configuration and the one I was in in sleeping mode; bliss. The compo she got from BA for the various issues ended up being significantly more than she'd paid for the two flights originally.
I am well aware that this much good fortune will never happen to me again; don't hate me.
If you fly enough, "good fortune" becomes likely. Mrs Tim99 and I had a BA business class flight from Singapore to LHR where the entertainment system didn't work. We got £400 each compo, I hadn't the heart to tell them that both of us normally read, sleep, and eat on similar journeys; so we don't use their entertainment anyway...
"Personally, I love flying with BA. My employer pays for the fare - and has to accommodate my non or late appearance, and I pocket the compensation money. It's actually working out really well for me.
"
Making lemonade, are you?
Cheers.
The other thing to do is to book tickets way in advance on flights you know will fill up such as when there is a popular event somewhere. Hopefully, you know an airline with generous compensation. When they asked for people to give up their seats, but first to raise your hand, both ways. Bonus if it's a flight with a stop and you can give up your seat a couple of times and get a free trip each time.
Way back when I was in college, there was a list of these flights (back before the internet, but after the dinos died out) on paper. We'd use the tickets our folks would get us to come home for holidays and spend 2-3 days sleeping in airports just racking up free flights and calling collect to say there were "weather delays". When spring break rolled around, we'd be set. Summer holidays wouldn't be boring either.
At FCO I used to occasionally check on the whereabouts of one of HM Diplomatic Couriers.He one told me that his wife had once named him "The Harbinger of Doom", due to his uncanny ability to arrive in a country when it was peaceful and to leave it just as revolution or war broke out, which he did on a large number of occasions.
"... uncanny ability to arrive in a country when it was peaceful and to leave it just as revolution or war broke out, which he did on a large number of occasions."
I have friends who, at least for a while, were the same with anywhere they went on holiday. I came to the conclusion that the company the male friend worked for should have called "Universal Exports".