Can we all stop flying BA?

[AppleBottomJeans]

Whenever there’s an airline strike it seems to be BA staff. The most recent of which seems greedy. Can we all just choose different airlines and let the airline that was in decades gone by a British standard carrier sink?

I stopped flying BA many years ago after we flew to China with them. BA 'helpfully' didn't load our luggage, on the basis that we'd rather arrive on time than with our luggage. They did this to 114 passengers, who then had to queue up for 2+ hours to report lost luggage with confused Chinese staff at 5 am in Beijing. No BA help of course. Have you ever tried to buy clothes that fit in China? Or tried to enjoy sightseeing in the clothes you travelled for 12 hours in?

They used to be my carrier of choice. Never again.

I've just booked a transatlantic flight. We deliberately didn't book BA as I didn't want to risk them ruining our long awaited trip.

I stopped flying them after taking a daytime Trans-Atlantic flight where they turned off all the lights for 8 hours of it and treated us all like school children who needed a nap. Plus Heathrow deserves its own circle of Hell - lumping British/EU nationals into the same queue, which is endless due to never having enough staff on, if there are any under 18s is ridiculous. The immigration staff there are rude AF, too.

I avoid BA if I possibly can. They have a major IT fail every year plus a strike plus I hear nothing but horror stories about their service when things go wrong

I support striking pilots.

Strike action is very difficult to take these days in any event: it requires a 50% turnout on the ballot and significant strength of feeling, plus sometimes years of negotiation, to get to that point. These are not 'glorified taxi drivers', as I've elsewhere seen it put. They are highly trained professionals who are entitled to be paid what they're worth. If there is anger over the strikes they should be redirected at greedy employers, or employers who are subjecting their staff to unacceptable working conditions.

FWIW I stopped flying BA some time ago for entirely different reasons. Their service is inadequate, and not for nothing have they earned the thoroughly justified reputation of having the rudest cabin crew in the skies.

It’s always been my airline of choice. Recently the BA short haul service has become like a low cost airline (but not necessarily for low coat prices) and the customer service poor. DH and I have just had our flight cancelled for a much needed, planned for short break in September. We don’t have the flexibility with our other commitments to accept a rebooking two days later which is what BA offered us. We’ve rebooked with easyJet, never my airline of choice up til now. It’s more expensive as we booked early with BA and used Avios. My irritation with BA doesn’t fail to recognise the validity of the pilot’s case and the resultant strike action. But it may well affect where I book in the future.

And if your workplace doesn’t have union representation you should be fighting for it, not criticising the actions of those who do. Yes striking is inconvenient, but that’s the whole point; if you remove employees’ right to strike then you remove any real leverage for change.

Well said.

YABU, no need to fly at all, terrible for the environment, but typical of the selfish.
I hope they all strike and after brexit hope it becomes unaffordable to fly.

I'm interested to hear the stories about terrible service/rude staff on BA - We always used to fly Singapore airlines/Qantas but recently I've had 2 experiences of BA which were both very good (business class though)

NB the 'cattle market' airlines have also earned their poor reputation - Ryanair is one I'll never fly with again - which makes life pretty difficult when they've monopolized so many of the short-haul routes. SAS I know can be hit and miss, but I've had nothing but good experiences with them. I was also very pleasantly surprised by Jet2.

Lol ok I’ll cancel my holiday then.

Yes striking is inconvenient, but that’s the whole point; if you remove employees’ right to strike then you remove any real leverage for change.

Absolutely. The shortened layover time is a particular worry for me. I don't want to be flown home by people in the flight deck who are tired and insufficiently rested, thanks.

Nope, not going to happen. I like BA and enjoy flying with them.

It happens on all airlines though, it's just we hear about BA more because it's British. The only airlines that don't have strike issues are ones that are backed by Middle Eastern oligarchs, they don't allow unions! We pay less for tickets today than 20 years ago (taxes aside) and rightly the staff are annoyed by the erosion of their terms and conditions. Air France messed up my DD's school trip due to strikes for instance. I have sympathy for the pilots, but ba won't exist unless they can keep their costs in line with their discount competitors

As part of your whinge is that it's not a "British standard carrier" any more, whatever that is/was, then YABVU to ask people to take action which could contribute to many thousands of people in Britain losing their jobs.

Maybe focus your annoyance onto the BA management instead?

@RelaisBlu

I mostly fly BA economy and it's as good as any other. The worst flight I've been on ever was virgin, it was like a package tour flight ... that said I'm on a package flight next week but I have very low expectations!

The airline industry is currently pretty fucked.
No one is making enough money innit any more as they all try to compete and survive the Budget airline model, which is slowly failing.
As airline try harder and harder to cut costs to passengers alot the staff are facing being asked to do more the same or less = strike action, low staff morale blah de blah. Whether we agree with the staff or not that is simply how it is.
Most airlines are, have been or will be striking. And even when they aren't... ground operational staff and Air Traffic Controllers all over the world are as the cost cutting continues. It's only a matter of time before the Budget no frills bubble bursts and in some ways it will be a good thing because the "once good" airlines won't feel the need to compete.

*FOR LESS not or less!!

Yeah ok, I’ll also just cancel my trip to the US next month then.
Get a grip.

Can we all agree not to be so stupid

TIA

BA is just RyanAir with an RP accent

BA is just RyanAir with an RP accent

You must fly some super secret version of Ryan Air then.

Well if you change to Virgin, you can look forward to an overbooked flight with them sending you an email the day before asking if you can take a different flight. And you can look forward to flying on a plane absolutely rammed full of people squashed in like sardines.

BA is just RyanAir with an RP accent

Yes. That's the only difference.

Only BA go directly to the island where my family live, on the whole they give a decent service. Plus I also agree that they should be treating their staff better.