Why are British Airways cancelling so many flights?

[cathyj77]

I’m honestly at the point of swearing off them for life. Just back from holiday (no thanks to them) and on the way out, our flight was cancelled when we were at the airport with no apology, explanation or decent alternative given. Had to spend loads on replacement flights or lose the holiday. Will now start the fight for compensation which I’m sure won’t even touch the sides of the extra flights we had to pay for.

this is the third BA flight I’ve had cancelled this year at very short notice. Others were for work so mattered less and I got replacement flights easily at no cost.

What is going on with BA? From social media, I can see I’m not alone and they seem to just be regularly cancelling several flights a day with zero notice. Why??

Summer holidays have been a thing in law since the 1930s. Some companies just seem unable to plan for them, or overstretch. If there was a government that cared about customer services, there are some services where there could be a simple penalty for failure.

In BAs case the number of flight slots reduced, say for at least 12 months.

Short of staff by the looks of it. They used covid as an opportunity to fire and rehire, they did it to get rid of 'legacy' staff who were on golden pensions and enhanced perks.

Unfortunately for them when they realised the mess they created they begged really good experienced people to come back (why would they when they got amazing payouts?!) so had to resort to hiring inexperienced juniors at low salaries to fill the roles. DH used to work for them so knows all the in and outs of what they did.

Our flight this morning was cancelled 10 minutes before we were leaving the house at 4am !
We're rebooked tonight but so frustrating as from a different airport and lots of cost involved.
The compensation and refund page on the website isn't working either!
I rang the emergency number on the text and was told they were too busy to take the call.

Not happy as we are losing a whole day and had stuff booked for tonight.

Oh I agree! However some flights are sold up to a year in advance and I guess they assumed they'd have the staff in place by then.

BA are supposedly short of crew (especially pilots), but anybody thinking delays/cancellations/crew shortages are unique to them hasn't been watching the goings on at outfits like Easyjet.

Not sure claims about BA having an particularly old fleet really stacks up to much examination, their long haul fleet is pretty much on a par with the rest of the industry - Some of the 777's are getting on but also some very new ones in service or on order, and they have a fair few newish 787s & A350s. As far as short haul goes quite a few fresh out of the box 320neos.

As@DaphneDeloresMoreheadRidesOn says there were lots of weather related problems for many airlines across the UK and Europe last night due to a large area of Thunderstorms, that will have had a knock on effect on todays schedules....

I'm sure you're right @notimagain about other airlines suffering similarly, I think I just tend to travel more with BA so have noticed it a lot in the last year. And also that I (wrongly, it seems) expect more from BA than Easyjet or Ryanair. They are/were supposed to be a good non-budget airline. But maybe that just doesn't mean anything anymore...

People expect cheap fares and I'm afraid it means there's been a bit of a race to the bottom.....

TBF if you are canny with your choices BA can at times beat both Easy and Ryanair on prices or what you actually get for your money, but yes, service has suffered.

(Sir) Ian Rankin tweeted today that he'd booked business class with BA and been bumped to economy - you might not sympathise with that, but you might sympathise with the fact that despite you not getting what you've paid considerably more for, you don't get an automatic refund and have to apply for it. He said he booked in February too.

I booked flights in June for a trip in September and the outward flight was cancelled in July, fortunately I was able to book alternatives without issue. I flew with them in May and didn't have any problems but in December they cancelled our outward flight too - that time we were already sitting in the departure lounge but they did book us onto the next flight and we did get to our destination the same day.

They (or their baggage handlers) are terrible for losing bags, too. When we go away we are only taking hand luggage even though we're away for 10 days.

Generally someone needs to take companies to task over customer service - not just the airlines, but all of them.

There should be strict rules on contact methods, response times and times for a substantive response. I think any email should be responded to the same day if received before noon, and the next day if afterwards. And that should be a substantive, sensible response. No bots or automated "we'll reply in 17 days" nonsense. And there should be far more use of automatic refunds.

I also think a lot of airlines look at their bookings a week or so before and consider if they can amalgamate flights.

Also, if you go to the Channel Islands you might find you get bumped onto a different flight because they are flying a sports team and want the space for them. It has happened twice to us - we were told the plane was cancelled, put on a different flight, and then saw that the original had gone and then saw there was a sports event. Admittedly their planes are much smaller.

I don't think airlines should be able to move you at will - often you book a certain time for a reason (I don't like arriving in places late at night, or it might be because you need to get a train to your onwards destination by a certain time) so you absolutely should be able to cancel if you don't like the new time and not only if it's more than 12 hours away or whatever the rule is.

@enchantedsquirrelwood

I also think a lot of airlines look at their bookings a week or so before and consider if they can amalgamate flights.

EU261 was meant to dissuade airlines from doing that, certainly at less than two weeks out.

@enchantedsquirrelwood I completely agree - I needed those flights to be at that time, once they were cancelled, we therefore needed to book alternative flights that cost thousands of pounds. I'd be more relaxed about changes with cheap flights but I can't think of any other arena of business/customer services where you pay several thousands of pounds for an item that you may never receive. It's just unimaginable. 'Oh you spent 3 grand on this sofa but sorry, we've sent you a different one'. Companies would go out of business, as airlines deserve to if they carry on like this.

And yes, I saw Ian Rankin tweeting and I did feel sorry for him! Again, he'd paid for business class - that's what he should have got.

Ah well maybe they do it 15 days before then.

I agree with you all re changing times. I spend ages pouring over options when I’m flying. I live near ish Gatwick and Heathrow so I look at flight times, cost, different carriers etc. So for example, I flew to Edinburgh on BA because EasyJet only offered flights very early in the day or late. I hate leaving the house early for flights so I would stay at the airport, but this negated any savings flying EasyJet.

Equally, we’re only going for the weekend so I didn’t want to arrive late as that’s a whole day gone.

So it’s not like I’ve just chosen the flight I want on a whim - time has gone into choosing the time and cost and location that most suits me. If I’ve paid for Heathrow, I’ve normally booked parking too which isn’t always refundable, so it’s no good changing me to Gatwick at the last moment.

It’s so annoying that a company can just randomly decide not to sell you the product that you’ve already paid for or try to fundamentally change it. Youve nearly always added extras like parking, accommodation or activities so it’s not like you can normally just cancel penalty free.

It's less about crewing issues this year and more about aircraft / engineering. There aren't enough engineers, so when an aircraft needs servicing, it's in for longer than normal. Knock on effect over a summer is that there's aircraft sat in hangars unable to fly.

They've already cut flights from the winter schedule to try to "catch up" ahead of next summer. But there's no magic wand to help right now 😕

Bugger I’ve sworn off easyJet after this summer’s chaos and was going to fly BA next year ! The alternative is Austrian airlines but their on board luggage size is too small. I was hoping BA would be better .
who is good for European trips then?

Interesting, thanks..

I thought that had been foreseen and was supposed to have been addressed to at least some extent by some of the wet leasing that has been going on and will continue over winter....I guess the plan hasn't quite worked.

That seems really quick! We’re 8 weeks and counting on our claim from our cancelled flight home in June…received a confirmation of receipt and not a dickie bird since then.

There’s a lot to be said for Ryanair. At least I know I’m paying for basics!

All the airlines are having problems, there's a variety of reasons but mostly it's scheduling more flights than they have capacity to cope with if anything goes wrong - so if everything goes to plan all is well but a pilot going sick, a minor plane breakage or issues loading a plane has knock on effects causing cancellations

@Taylorscat

Drive! So much more reliable

Austria is very doable especially if you're se U.K. based. Take an early train then stop overnight in Germany

Problem of course is how much spare capacity (spare aircraft, crew etc) does an airline need to have for the bad days....and will the public support the ticket prices needed to support that spare capacity? Answers on a post card....

From word on the street it certainly appears one airline Chief Ops Officer has been wildly optimistic when it came to the Summer schedule.... generate a plan that relies on every turn being both on time and optimal, no flex at all, and you have a season long problem....................

OTOH shorter term I'm still hearing accounts of how much disruption the thunderstorms caused on Thursday - I'm not sure you could ever have had enough spare capacity to keep schedules for the next 24-48 hours intact in those circumstances.

I've had a nightmare with BA too. Last year, return flight got cancelled. It was a bit annoying but I was put in a hotel overnight free of charge and able to get on a flight 24 hours later.

This year - a 2 and a half hour delay on the flight out because they drove the jetty into the side of the plane and needed to check that it was safe to take off. I'd rather they spent 2 and a half hours.checking the plane over than take off in a damaged plane but it would have been nice if they hadn't banged it in the first place. I had the worry that the raxi driver that the tour company had arranged to pick me up from the airport wouldn't have waited. Luckily he had. I didn't land until nearly midnight. Didn't reach my accomodation until half 2 in the morning. On the way back, we got on the plane, due to take off at quarter past 9. At 13 minutes past, they told us there was an issue with the engine and we had to wait an hour and a half while they found another plane to take us home. Again, I don't want to take off in a plane with an engine problem, but surely they didn't notice this issue just two minutes before take off was supposed to happen? And to top it off, I picked my suitcase up from baggage reclaim and found it was damaged. This was a long haul flight that cost me £1500. Right now, I don't feel like flying with British Airways ever again.

@notimagain

The wet leasing is mainly LGW. Doesn't help issues at LHR. And because they are now run as separate companies, you can't just move planes/crew around to suit.

There's also been delays in new aircraft being delivered. That mainly impacted the start of the season. And an IT outage in May. Strikes and threats of strikes, both here and elsewhere (ATC strikes in France? Planes have to find a different route, it's longer, there's delays, eventually you have to take a flight out of the day to catch up).

On their own, each issue is annoying. All in the space of a few months, and it gives the impression that the airline can't plan very well. Instead the reality is an entire team who's job it is to move aircraft and crew around to minimise the impact of daily issues.

@WhatsitWiggle

The wet leasing is mainly LGW. Doesn't help issues at LHR.

I thought there was a wet lease planned from Finnair to cover LHR? Maybe not (also rumours of an Air Belgium A330 for winter 23/24.

(ATC strikes in France?

Not one at a scale that's made national or local news here. I gather somebody UK side seems to have set that particular hare running on Thursday night, maybe to CTA ("if in doubt, blame the French."). There were some big en-route delays over parts of France Thursday PM onwards (mostly the northern ATC sectors) simply due thunderstorms.

*Planes have to find a different route, it's longer, there's delays.

Yep done/been involved in a bit of that. 😉