[lpelham]

Below is an account of what happened on 2/1/2012 while we tried to board BA 163 from Heathrow Terminal 5 to Tel Aviv. The following is based on my notes at the scene as it happened, when the BA staff, despite two hours previously having checked our travel documents, issued us boarding passes and checked in our bags at the check-in desk, decided at the last gate just 20 minutes before the flight took off, that our family were not allowed to travel.

On 3/1/2011 at 8.55 pm we arrived in Terminal 5, BA check-in desk to board BA 163 to Tel Aviv. We checked in the bags and were issued boarding passes with which we proceeded towards Gate 47. Just before boarding the plane at the last desk where they carry out the final checks, BA’s desk attendant Tina Shah said that we could not travel on the flight that was about to leave. She said that our daughter Sara’s passport did not have 6 months’ validity (her passport expires on 29th of March).

We explained that we were sorry that we did not notice it and no one had pointed it out before and that the BA’s staff at the check in desk did not tell us anything about it and issued us boarding passes. We also explained and showed Tina Shah my husband’s work permit in Israel as a journalist and his long term B1 visa stamp on his passport. All the passports of the rest of the family were in perfect order with Israeli resident visa. We explained to her that we were residents in Israel and that it was very unlikely that they would turn away our resident daughter at the passport control just because her passport expired in 3 months time (March 29). I also said that I was ready to leave my credit card details as guarantee should the Israeli authorities turn my daughter back to the UK and hold BA responsible. We pleaded and pleaded with Tina Shah but she went on saying that she will not let us board the flight and that no airline would let our daughter fly, and called her supervisor. We had a bit of hope at this point that may be her manager would be kind enough not to break up the family so late at night and let my daughter fly considering we all have valid visas to Israel.

Never did we doubt during the whole process that we would all be prevented from flying to Israel, where we are based. I had somewhat resigned myself to the possibility that if my daughter was not allowed to fly, my husband would return to London with her and get an emergency passport while my 16 months old baby and I would continue our journey to Tel Aviv.

The manager, Jenny Robinson arrived at the scene but we hadn’t realized that she was the manager as she did not introduce herself to us, nor did she even acknowledge us standing there. I only realized who she was, when I saw that she started writing on the computer, ‘baggage offloading request’, and I panicked. I immediately said that my baby and I WILL fly as there was no point in all of us staying behind. Besides, our older son, who flew back a day earlier was by himself in Israel staying with friends and I had to get back so that he could be home.

Ms Shah said, ‘Are you sure the baby and you want to fly?’ To which I said, ‘Yes.’ At that point Ms Robinson turned to us - the first eye contact she made since appearing at the desk and said, maliciously,
‘No, none of you will be flying tonight.’
I said, ‘You can’t do that, because that would be illegal, to stop two passengers with valid passports and residency in Israel, from flying to Tel Aviv.’
She said, ‘I do not need a reason. BA can stop anyone they want from flying without explanation. Besides, no airline will let your family fly with your daughter with three months validity.
‘You must explain to me, Mrs Robinson,’ I said, exasperated and unsettled by panic, at the thought of being stranded at Terminal 5 at 11 pm with a one year old baby who’s baby food we had packed in our suitcase as we expected dinner on board. When I said that to her, Ms Robinson said that that was none of her concern and started to shut down computers after having processed 24 other passengers who were standing behind us. She asked the desk attendant to walk away with her.

We were in total shock. My daughter sat on the bench and broke down in tears. I was distressed at seeing my daughter in tears and fearing what would happen when my baby son woke and wanted food. I demanded that Ms Robinson explain why my baby and I were not allowed to board the flight that had just departed. She ignored me totally and told her colleagues again to pack up and follow her out of the building. Panic-stricken, I took our passports out again showing her that my daughter had entered only a month ago into Israel and the authorities had allowed her to enter with less than six months validity on her passport. I told her that there was no logic or legal basis behind her decision, which was offensive and for some unknown reason, vindictive. She did not even look at the passports and ignored us. She picked up the desk telephone and asked me to go away and leave her alone, while talking to someone on the line. I broke down in tears and pleaded, ‘Please acknowledge us and explain why you didn’t let me and my son fly.’

She now turned to me and said, ‘You shut up or I’ll call the police.’

I said again, ‘You must explain why you refused to acknowledge us and why you stopped me and my baby from flying.’
‘She said, ‘Shut up, the police will be here any minute.’

At this point I broke down and said that I should be the one to call the police, because you’ve just violated my passenger’s rights without giving me a reason.

Ms Robinson and her colleagues rushed away from the desk and towards the lift. We followed them, saying you can’t just leave us stranded here without telling us what we should do now. My husband and I and the children followed because we had no idea where our bags were. The terminal was deserted and we didn’t know what we should do.

We followed them to the lift and when we tried to enter the lift with the BA staff, they ran to the corner of the building and none of them would say to us where we were supposed to be, now that the flight had left and we had no bags, no explanation as to what we should do next. I was devastated.

We waited for the police and when they came, they heard both sides of the story and said that they would help us to find an amicable solution and that that was their job.

I reiterated that I would like to hear first from Ms Robinson why she didn’t let me and my son fly. The police said that it was none their business, their job was to help us find a way to get out of this amicably.

At last at 11.40 pm, someone who introduced himself as the Customer Services manager and the head of Terminal 5, arrived. He did not have a name pinned on him, nor did he carry any business cards with him. However, our hearts again leapt in hope that perhaps finally we would be given an explanation behind the BA staff’s shockingly malicious and inexplicably abusive behaviour towards a family travelling with young children.

The Customer Services manager, before even hearing our side of the story, said that it was the policy of the British Airways that if one person of a group was not eligible to fly, then the entire party was to be banned from travelling. I challenged him that he was contradicting his own colleague, Tina Shah, who actually asked me whether I was sure that I wanted to fly with my baby to which I answered positively. When I said this to him, he said that he was Tina’s supervisor and that what he had just said, was the policy of the British Airways, which obviously means that his staff were not properly trained and gave contradictory information to the passengers, including issuing boarding passes after having checked their documents, only to contradict it two hours later.

In utter despair we felt at that point that we were two helpless passengers stranded in Terminal 5 with two children including a baby and the whole BA staff were against us. There were no fellow passengers there to vindicate our plight and what we were going through. They could just fabricate whatever they wanted and there wasn’t a person who was not a member of the BA, who could play a neutral party to assess the trauma that the BA staff were inflicting on a young family.

The manager said that he was not responsible for whatever happens to us. He said we were being abusive, when we tried to explain that using the words, ‘shut up’ by a BA staff to an innocent passenger is hardly non-abusive. We also said that if we were causing any trouble the police officers would have taken action us, which they didn’t. We tried to explain that at no point had we said anything to the BA staff which was remotely abusive. I admit that our collective emotion probably showed our helplessness, exasperation and despair at the mistreatment that we were totally unprepared for. On the other hand, the BA staff had not even acknowledged the very fact that we were standing there as a family with a baby and a child and visibly stressed by their refusal to let me and my baby board the flight.

We have asked under the Data Protection Act the CCTV footage of the whole incident which would clearly show how a family was persistently, verbally and psychologically abused by the BA staff. And how they walked away from the scene leaving a distressed family stranded in deserted Terminal 5.

The manager remained, what seemed out of a nightmarish film, fixed on his decision without even hearing our plea that he won’t do anything for us, which included,

a. He won’t find us accommodation for the night so that the children can have a bed to sleep in.

b. Won’t provide an alternative flight to fly me and my baby to Israel.

c. Won’t provide food for the baby and our child.

d. Will permanently prevent us from flying the British Airways.


The manager pointed to a man, I assumed some security personnel, and said that he would take us to where our bags were and that that was all, the BA was not obliged to do anything about what happened to us and what may still happen to us during the night ahead as our home was 2-hours drive away in Wiltshire and we had no transport to go there so late at night.

We were exhausted, hungry and devastated. One of the police officers, Martin, said that there was nothing that can be done and the best advice he could give us was for us to go to a hotel and fly the next day with a different airline and take it up with BA’s customer relations at a later date.

The officers also said that we should go to a 24-hour TESCO to get food and nappies and other essentials for the baby. I was not sure whether they were being serious that they really expected us to go out in the cold at midnight with a baby in a buggy to look for a 24-hour shop miles away without an address so that we could feed and clothe my family when the BA had stopped us from flying home without a reason. It was out of a dark tragi-comedy.

At exactly 12 midnight we arrived at the baggage counter, the escort had vanished before the passport control and to our dismay we discovered that there were no bags waiting for us.

The woman behind the counter said the belt had stopped at 10 pm and that it was impossible for her to locate our bags until the following morning.

It was beyond belief, we stood there shell-shocked. Everything was macabre and we were cold and afraid as we didn’t know what we should do next.

We told the baggage staff that we had just been sent to the counter by the head of terminal 5 and that he confirmed us that the bags were there for us to pick up. I had packed all the baby food in my suitcase. In this living nightmare the thought of walking out into the rain after midnight looking for a 24-hour TESCO only exacerbated the panic and despair that we were in.

The baggage staff said that their manager, ‘Daljit’ just called them to inform them that we could not have the bags tonight and that we should contact the BA in the morning. We saw him just 5 minutes ago when he had advised his security staff to escort us to the baggage counter so that we could pick up our luggage.

Lost and confused, we left the airport at 12.30 and took a bus to Premier Inn Hotel. The children went to bed hungry and exhausted. Just when I managed to put the baby to sleep after giving him some breadsticks that I had in my hand bag, soaked in water, we were woken by a call on my husband’s Israeli mobile.

At 1.20 in the morning the BA staff called, woke us to say that they had located our bags but said they could do nothing to further assist to return the bags.

My husband remained calm and said that our baby was miserable and that it was the BA’s responsibility to bring the bags to us to the hotel. He said that it was incredible that the BA called at 1.20 in the morning to say that they said that they found our luggage, but won’t deliver it. My husband said that the hotel was only 2 kilometers away and that we had at this hour no transport to go and fetch the bags. They still refused to bring the bags to us.
Even if we detach ourselves from the events, would any reputable organization ever call and wake up anyone at 1.20 am just to tell them that they can’t help them?

The next morning we arrived at the EL AL desk in Terminal 1 and explained everything to them, which they listened with disbelief. When they saw our passports they said that they were all in order for entry to Israel, even after my husband showed them the 29th March expiry date on my daughter’s passport.

We booked our flights on EL AL, Israel’s national carrier, to fly back today, at 14.20. The EL AL staff said that since we have been living in Israel for 6 years on my husband’s valid work visa, they had no problems in letting us fly. On arrival, they issued my daughter a three-month visa.

I am writing this on board EL AL with a very friendly and efficient crew.


UPDATE: 3/1/2012
2300 Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport.


We arrived and went through passport control. Our bags were not there. The baggage desk at Ben Gurion airport said that the BA failed to deliver the baggage to Terminal 1 despite the fact we notified the BA baggage department in the morning and spoke to Mr Bukhar who took down our new flight booking details and said that he was making sure the bags would be delivered onto our EL AL flight.

At Ben Gurion, we had to fill in lost baggage forms and by the time we came home in Jerusalem, it was 1 am. Our daughter has school tomorrow and the baby is truly miserable.

UPDATE 4/1/2012

Called this morning and then again in the afternoon Ben Gurion Airport’s Baggage Claim department and was told that our bags were still in Terminal 5 with BA, they were not delivered to EL AL until 16.30 PM (14.30 GMT).

My daughter has no clothes for school, the baby needs his things my husband is without computers as he packed his chargers in the suitcase.

We have no warm clothes or toiletries.

[jimworcs]

This sounds like an absolute horror story, but I suspect there may be more to this than meets the eye. You should file a complaint with the CAA. The address is here:

Send your complaint to:
Passenger complaints
Civil Aviation Authority
CAA House
45-59 Kingsway
London
WC2B 6TE
Or call: 020 7240 6061.

However, you should first of all attempt to resolve the issue with BA. You might want to strip down the key elements of your complaint. The simple fact of having one of the party having a passport which expires in less than 6 months is sufficient reason to deny that person boarding and in this case one of the parents. Airlines can be fined huge sums for failing to ensure entrants have proper documentation and the guidelines on both the website and the Foreign Office advise against travelling on a passport with less than six months validity. Therefore, you have no complaint about this particular action.

Where you may have a legitimate complaint is

a. the way you were subsequently treated and
b. the refusal to allow some of the party to travel.

Let's start with b. This is more complicated with families than it seems. The airline may take the view, particularly on the Tel Aviv route, that the baggage being paired with the passenger rules would be violated if the family were broken up, as it is unlikely that each bag was linked to a specific adult and child. For this reason, they may well operate a policy that the whole family must be denied travel if any one of the party does so. There has actually been a case on the LHR to Tel Aviv route, where a fiancee attempted to murder his girlfriend and the rest of the plane by packing a bomb in his fiancee's case and not travelling with her.

So then we get to their treatment of you, which sounds callous and heartless. It is not unusual for people to make mistakes such as yours. Often the airlines will book the passengers on the following days flights, so that you can organise an emergency replacement passport. However, in this case, you were banned from the airline permanently and the police were called. Are you sure you didn't argue your case a bit too vigorously? Could your emotional response to the situation have stepped over the line?

If it did not, you are pursuing the right remedy. Use Data Protection Act to request copies of the CCTV. You must request this in writing and send £10 to cover costs. You may also request a copy of the police report into the incident. If you did not behave unreasonably, BA have treated you very harshly and I think you should take it further. It is rare to be permanently banned from an airline... you should demand to know why.

[lpelham]

Thanks for your response - you are probably right, that I should streamline the issues and stick with b., as you've suggested. But I don't completely agree. Here are the reasons:

a. they refused to offer me any alternative, or let me fly, and just took our names off the computer, offloaded our bags without telling us (which I saw on the screen by looking over their shoulders), and just walked away. So they do have to account for their behaviour.

b. they were negligent in not notifying us at check-in when they scanned the passports, which would have allowed us to make alternatives, and

c. your point about the security of bags is wrong because i. the bomb was discovered prior to departure, ii. all the bags had passed through security and iii. we all intended to fly, rather than jump ship as in the case of the El Al bomber.

d. my daughter flew with us the following day on the same passport with EL AL (who could be more security obsessed than Israel's national carrier?), who found it difficult to comprehend the BA staff's callous behaviour towards a young family.

The terminal 5 police were there actually till the end, long after the BA crew had left the building, advising me to go to a hotel and to a 24 hour TESCO (!) to get food for the children. It was midnight. I didn't find them at all sympathetic, in fact they were having a laugh with the BA staff - the CCTV footage would prove that. Also, if my emotions were too offensive, I would have been cautioned or arrested, none of these happened. The police just came and said they couldn't overrule the BA's decision.

[lpelham]

UPDATE: 5/1/2012
11.09 Jerusalem

Three of our four bags have arrived on the third day. My daughter's bag with all her clothes and school books is still missing. She went to school for the second time this morning without books. Her little work laptop is also in her suitcase. And all her Christmas presents.

[jimworcs]

We may not agree on this, but ...

a. they refused to offer me any alternative, or let me fly, and just took our names off the computer, offloaded our bags without telling us (which I saw on the screen by looking over their shoulders), and just walked away. So they do have to account for their behaviour.

I agree. I say in my post they do need to account for their behaviour. Unless they have a reason, their conduct is outrageous.nthis is why I asked the question as to whether there were any other reasons.

b. they were negligent in not notifying us at check-in when they scanned the passports, which would have allowed us to make alternatives

An error was made by BA at check in, in not noticing the passport expiry date. You had also made the same error, in booking the tickets and not checking the expiry dates of the passport.

c. your point about the security of bags is wrong because i. the bomb was discovered prior to departure, ii. all the bags had passed through security and iii. we all intended to fly, rather than jump ship as in the case of the El Al bomber.

My point regarding security is not wrong. When a family group check in luggage, the pairing rules apply. Your intent to fly is irrelevant. I have a friend who is a captain, who offloaded a passenger who was abusive to a FA on a flight from Spain. He had no discretion whatsoever in company SOPS but to also offload their companion and their cases. I simply offer it as a possible explanation for the policy, not to suggest is fair.

d. my daughter flew with us the following day on the same passport with EL AL (who could be more security obsessed than Israel's national carrier?), who found it difficult to comprehend the BA staff's callous behaviour towards a young family.

The fact that El Al were willing to take the risk is irrelevant. Airline policies diifer significantly. It is often the case that the national airline will have lines of communication with immigration authorities for example that other carriers may not have.

Believe or not, I am on your side. It sounds to me like you were badly treated... But complaining is an art. If you take a moderate approach, which acknowledges some of the complexities and nuances of this case you are far more likely to get a remedy. A lifelong ban is a very severe sanction and can impact you for years to come.

I know you have interpreted their suggestion of going to Tesco to get food for the baby as an example of heartlessness. I am not sure this is was the intent. You complain you had no food for the kids. There is in fact a 24 hr Tesco not far from the airport, no more than 10 minutes by taxi. This may just have been a practical solution the one of your concerns, but came across in your heightened emotional stare as callous.

The police actions don't necessarily substantiate your point that yiur own actions were blameless. I am not saying they were or were not, only that you should assess if this could be a factor. The airport police deal with people in situations like this every day. People behave differently when they are stressed and upset and the police ave a wide lattitude of discretion. Their lack of action doesnt imply you were blameless.

[lpelham]

Hi there,

Thank you for your long reply. You don't have to defend which side you are on! We, customers, should be supportive of each other when we are mistreated by big organisations like the BA.
This kind of malicious action is unacceptable from Britain's national carrier.
Meanwhile my daughter sleeps a fourth night without her case.

[Gromit801]

ALL of this would have been avoided, had the OP had all their travel documentation in order before leaving for the airport. It's the passenger's responsibility, not the airline's (or anyone else's) to make sure they have all their papers in order before the flight.

[jimworcs]

The BA website has a specific passport and visa link to a company called Visa Central. This provides a free database of visa and passport requirements for each country. For British citizen's travelling to Israel there is no visa requirement but the first requirement in the passport section is there must be six months remaining validity on the passport. So, BA can certainly put the ball back in the OP's court on the initial error. The part which needs to be addressed however is why BA appear to have taken a very harsh line with this family.

I have personal experience of losing my passport on my way to the airport with my son for a BA flight. We missed our flight of course, and made a mad dash to Liverpool to pick up an emergency passport, but we were rebooked on a later flight without penalty. There was no need for BA to treat this family so badly, even if they were within their rights to deny boarding. Why were they not offered the chance to rebook to the following day, even with a change fee? Why were they banned from future flights?

It seems very harsh.

[mac]

Write to the CEO.
Email: keith.x.williams@ba.com

His Boss.
Email: willie.walsh@ba.com

Customer Services Director
Email: silla.maizey@ba.com

You wont actually get an answer from them...

Instead you will get an 'almost' automated reply from Customer Services, brimming with platitudes and 'appease customer speak'.

Copy it and resend it to the emails above, requesting a proper reply...

Good Luck

[anonymouscomments]

Ok maybe the staff were harsh yes. But

A) travel documents are YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY
not British Airways.


B) British airways receive a fine if they let you travel when you dont have correct documents which is thousands of pounds for each person.
Therefore they have to take a fairly hard line on such matters.


C) British airways are not liable if you are refused entry etc.
Really you put yourself in that situation due to youre own incompetence.
The fact that you were showing work permits etc for yoursel
or saying they cant split up a family because of that shows
how much you dont know.