[geosynch]

I've sent the following to BA and have heard zip. After reading this forum, I suspect I never will hear from them. Well, they'll never hear from me again, either!

During the delay that ensued, we meet many, many other BA passengers who suffered in a similar fashion. This is the national airline of Britain? Pathetic....

geosynch

My British Air flight from SFO to LHR was cancelled on Dec 17 due to weather. I was to continue on to CAI for a three week holiday.

Although weather is obviously outside the airlines control, the debacle that followed was within the airlines control. After many false starts and misadventures, we finally did make it to Cairo, but four days late. My late arrival in Cairo not only cost me four days of holiday time, a Nile river cruise that we were too late in arriving for departure, but also cost me an additional $US 200 per person in re-booking fees with the Egyptian ground handler.

The following details the corporate and human errors by British Air that caused stress and financial burden on our party.

1. For over three days, it was impossible to reach British Air by phone. Had we been able to get through to British Air for reticketing and to work out some of the human error made by certain British Air representatives, it is possible we could have arrived at our destination after one day’s delay, not four. This is simply inexcusable lack of resource planning by British Air.
2. It is impossible to reticket on the British Air website, despite the e-mailed cancellation notice statement otherwise. Had this been possible, we could have arrived at our destination after one day’s delay, not four. This is simply inexcusable lack of resource planning by British Air
3. Human errors made by British Air representatives at SFO on Dec 17 basically cost us an additional three day’s time.
a. After hours of failed attempts to reach British Air by phone, I drove to SFO to talk to a ticket agent. Our family of four was rebooked from SFO to CAI via LAX (on American Airlines) and CDG (on Air France) leaving on Dec 18.
b. After arriving in LAX on Dec 18 Air France refused to honor the tickets due to two errors. First, our connecting flight from CDG to CAI departed three hours after the flight from LAX arrived in CDG. Second, the tickets that British Airlines had reserved for us on Air France was for business class, even though we originally had coach tickets.
c. Now stuck in LA we returned to the LAX British Air counter but by this time LHR had been closed for 24 hours and there was simply no way we could resume our trip to Cairo until the 21st.

Again, I understand the original problem was outside of British Air’s control, but corporate and human errors magnified the problem far beyond weather. I expect to be compensated in some way for the loss of four days, the river cruise and the rebooking fees incurred by our Egyptian tour operator.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

[jimworcs]

The response of airlines to the storms of this winter was utterly inadequate, both in the UK and the US, when the storms hit the east coast. The airlines have shut down their customer services and sought to shift booking towards the internet. This is fine for routine situations, but is utterly inadquate when there is a crisis. This leads to people being stranded and left utterly helpless.

BA claim that they had developed a system which allowed people to rebook via the internet. It didn't work when the demand was so huge. They need systems which allow for exceptional demand in a crisis and they don't have them. There are similar complaints all over the web when the storms hit the east coast and airlines left passengers stranded for days.

In your case, you are entitled to compensation. US based airlines have a "get out of jail free" card, of being able to blame the weather. All consequential damages are not then their responsibility. However, as you booked on an EU based airline which travelled via Europe, you have some remedy via EU261/2004. This does not allow the airline to escape it's obligations entirely and blame the weather.

However, a note of caution. Your have a legitimate complaint that BA failed to properly rebook your tickets to Cairo and this resulted in losses for you. You may not be able to make the case that the airline would have been able to rebook you the following day if they were not so incompetent. In fact, this storm came at one of the busiest times of the year and so many airlines were fully booked. The scale of the disruption was such that the chances of availability on other routes was slim. Do you realise that CDG and FRA and AMS also closed during this storm and as a result there were literally hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded. Availability was severely limited. I do not think you will receive the lost booking fee's... these are more likely to be covered by your travel insurance. I assume you had some, as it would be bonkers to travel to Eygpt without insurance!