Dispatches: The Trouble With British Airways…

T5C & T6

Yep
We need T5C built to take the T3 flights – there are other Flight Switches coming up though – one of these this week for the flights to and from Kolkata (Calcutta), Dhaka, Delhi, Chennai (Madras), Shanghai, Dubai, Boston, Calgary, Denver, Montreal and Seattle.
There have been plans for T6 in Waterside for well over a year now

…although T3 will continue to be a weak point as some flights are moving there due to lack of space in T5.

Lack of space in T5…the place has not even been open for a year, and yet already there is no more room!
Is this because the second satalite pier to T5 has not yet been constructed, or are those flights that are moving from T1 to T3 going to be permanently based there?

No doubt BA will soon be campaigning for Terminal 6 to be built?:D:diablo:

To be honest, I’ve never liked Channel 4 Documentaries.
Channel 4 is, imo, a televised version of the Sun Newspaper.

One of the compliants highlighted was the passenger travelling from Newcastle to Canada Via Gatwick
I thought this a bit strange as BA dont have any Canada flights form Gatwick then when BA couldnt arrange a flight to Canada for a least a week later I thought this was even stranger , It turns out the Passenger of BA,s wasnt In fact flying long haul with BA but Zoom
Now nowhere in the interview were we the viewers made a ware of this fact and were mislead by the programe

the old story , never let the facts get in the way of a good story , even if it isnt true

I Belive that a formal complaint has been raised by BA against Channel 4 and dispatches over this programe

In response to cloud9

This is another snippet taken from BA’s intranet site.

“BA gives detailed responses to C4 documentary

British Airways has criticised producers of a Channel 4 programme ahead of an hour-long Dispatches programme that will be broadcast at 8pm on Monday.

BA has not seen the content but the trailers suggest that it will be highly critical of the airline.

BA’s press office has provided detailed and robust answers to a wide range of allegations spanning five years, including baggage, the opening of Terminal 5 and price-fixing.

Head of corporate communications Julia Simpson said the production company had undermined the hard work of staff across the airline.

“Dispatches came to us in late September with some general allegations and then again last week with more specific points,” she said.

“It was clear that the show would be negative and the bulk of it had been filmed in the past few months without our knowledge.

“There is no doubt it’s been a tough time for BA. But when we’ve got it wrong we’ve said sorry and worked hard to put it right.

“It is disappointing that Channel 4 does not recognise that BA is one of the world’s great airlines. We are proud to fly the flag and look after more than 30 million customers a year. And it is disappointing that it wants to undermine the hard work of everyone across the airline this summer in getting Terminal 5 working so well.

“We have given very detailed answers to all the points raised and will continue to put pressure on Channel 4 to give our arguments air-time.”

As you can read my company was NOT given access to the program before it was aired therefore how can you defend yourself when you do not know completely what you are being accused of!!!

Agreeably, it is a bit of a Catch 22 scenario – BA want to streamline their business to maximise profits/reduce losses and an easy way to do that may be focusing all their long haul from one hub and drawing the passengers from the regions. However, to do this at an airport with severe capacity constraints and inferior infrastructure? Why don’t we pretend that there is more than one airport in the London area? And for the sake of argument, why don’t we say that it might be an idea that BA conducts long haul operations from more than one London airport to share the load? (I know they have/do, but I mean a true spread of services, not just a spattering) Just my opinion of course 🙂

Totally agree with you judas. They could of had a good selection of routes operating out of LGW as well as LHR, but it seems as though they chose to put all their eggs in one basket.

Also, it does make me wonder if the Open Skies deal that came into effect earlier on in the year has had much of an impact on passenger numbers travelling with BA, seeing as there is now even more choice in terms of number of flights out of LHR. I know for sure that CO are set to operate another flight to EWR due to increasing demand.

I have to agree with previous posters comments that it seemed to be a very one sided report !!

Whilst I respect that your entitled to your own opinion, I have to disagree with you and others that commented on the ‘one-sidedness’ of the reporting…BA had plenty of chances to be able to defend themselves; if they were that worried about how one-sided the program could of been reported, why didn’t Willie Walsh or someone from BA’s management offer to be interviewed by the program’s reporters or even speak out against the program before it was aired…rather than just issuing a stack of small and quite honestly feeble statements that were read-out throught the program, which attempted to answer some of the criticisms that were put forward!

The former Chief Executive, Sir Colin Marshall, was well-known for saying…’Promise what you are going to deliver; deliver what you promise’ and ‘The customer doesn’t expect everything will go right all the time; the big test is what you do when things go wrong.’…I think that somewhere down the line these messages have been lost/forgotten.

Is BAA not responsible for the maze of Luggage belts behind the scenes at LHR?
Isn’t it this system that cloggs up, misroutes bags and has workers who don’t give a damn?
BA is based at LHR, therefore, their baggage is at the mercy of said system. No wonder they suffer huge baggage issues.

LHRs baggage system is old, tired and needs a complete re-invention.
Last I knew, that was BAA’s responsibility. And we all know how reluctant BAA are at investing money.

If the above is true, then shoving all the blame for the lost and delayed luggage onto BA is just a matter of convenience and lazy reporting.

Sort of.

BAA are responsible for the hardware, but the workers are BA. BA very much is self handling at LHR.

As for BAA not investing in the baggage system, that is not entirely true. T5 has a state of the art system which loses very few bags and the central area will be similarly upgraded with massive investment during the construction of Heathrow East.

Baggage continues to be a problem after T5 opening, but the problems are almost entirely where baggage are being transferred between terminals. The problem will diminish almost entirely when the final long haul flights move from T4 to T5 later this year, although T3 will continue to be a weak point as some flights are moving there due to lack of space in T5.

From our intranet site

“BA hits out at one-sided documentary

Channel 4’s Dispatches programme has been criticised by corporate communications head Julia Simpson for its “one-sided attack on our airline”.

Julia has written to producers of the documentary to “complain about the shoddy level of journalism and the fact that the programme used a handful of old complaints to try to smear the reputation of an airline that carries 33 million customers a year”.

She went on: “The good news is that the programme has made barely any waves in the wider media, so I would not expect any noticeable impact on customer opinion.

“In fact, we received this review from a customer this morning: ‘I felt compelled to write to state that as a flyer with BA over many years, this programme was a poorly researched, cheap piece of tabloid journalism based on scant facts from a nano-minority of passengers and one that in my opinion does not in any way reflect my experience of BA. As a former journalist myself, I am aghast at how Channel 4 can permit such speculative tripe to be aired. I fly weekly with a variety of airlines and BA consistently outperforms other UK and international carriers’.”

See Thursday’s edition of BA News for more staff and customer reaction to the programme.”

After watching the prog myself this morning(ironic that a BA employee is using Virgin media V+ box to catch up isnt it!!!) I have to agree with previous posters comments that it seemed to be a very one sided report !!

Is BAA not responsible for the maze of Luggage belts behind the scenes at LHR?
Isn’t it this system that cloggs up, misroutes bags and has workers who don’t give a damn?
BA is based at LHR, therefore, their baggage is at the mercy of said system. No wonder they suffer huge baggage issues.

LHRs baggage system is old, tired and needs a complete re-invention.
Last I knew, that was BAA’s responsibility. And we all know how reluctant BAA are at investing money.

If the above is true, then shoving all the blame for the lost and delayed luggage onto BA is just a matter of convenience and lazy reporting.

Well said bmused55, I have to say I agree with you, lazy reporting as you say.

Its so very easy to knock B.A. when they were not given the opportunity to defend themselves face to face.

Sorry have to disagree with that, although i agree Heathrow is the main problem, that is by BA’s own doing. THEY chose to be a one airport airline!, if ,for example, American or United chose to only fly long distance from,say, New York for the entire US they would have the same issues. BA’s desire to be London Airways is what is causing them so much bother, not Heathrow’s fault that an airline wants to use it as it’s sole gateway airport.
There is lots of extra runway capacity available to BA, at Birmingham, Glasgow,Manchester,Cardiff,Newcastle,Belfast,Aberdeeen,Leeds etc… BA just choose not to use it.(Cue bleats about BA being a business and not here to pander the needs of the “countryfolk”… Shock Stat: Not only Londoners fly BA!!!)

This was along the lines of what I was thinking. Agreeably, it is a bit of a Catch 22 scenario – BA want to streamline their business to maximise profits/reduce losses and an easy way to do that may be focusing all their long haul from one hub and drawing the passengers from the regions. However, to do this at an airport with severe capacity constraints and inferior infrastructure? Why don’t we pretend that there is more than one airport in the London area? And for the sake of argument, why don’t we say that it might be an idea that BA conducts long haul operations from more than one London airport to share the load? (I know they have/do, but I mean a true spread of services, not just a spattering) Just my opinion of course 🙂

Although I didn’t see the programme, I will try and pick it up on the interweb on some catch up thing as this discussion sounds quite good! I’d like to see the webmaster save a transcript of this thread and send it in to Dispatches so they get a point of view from people who read/talk/breath about this kind of thing all day long!

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/03/28/230045/heathrow-terminal-5-it-an-essential-guide.htm

This is worth looking at…

Is BAA not responsible for the maze of Luggage belts behind the scenes at LHR?
Isn’t it this system that cloggs up, misroutes bags and has workers who don’t give a damn?
BA is based at LHR, therefore, their baggage is at the mercy of said system. No wonder they suffer huge baggage issues.

LHRs baggage system is old, tired and needs a complete re-invention.
Last I knew, that was BAA’s responsibility. And we all know how reluctant BAA are at investing money.

If the above is true, then shoving all the blame for the lost and delayed luggage onto BA is just a matter of convenience and lazy reporting.

That’s similar to what I was thinking. I’ve never heard of BA being self handling!

Paul

Is BAA not responsible for the maze of Luggage belts behind the scenes at LHR?
Isn’t it this system that cloggs up, misroutes bags and has workers who don’t give a damn?
BA is based at LHR, therefore, their baggage is at the mercy of said system. No wonder they suffer huge baggage issues.

LHRs baggage system is old, tired and needs a complete re-invention.
Last I knew, that was BAA’s responsibility. And we all know how reluctant BAA are at investing money.

If the above is true, then shoving all the blame for the lost and delayed luggage onto BA is just a matter of convenience and lazy reporting.

Even in the 90s, B.A was struggling along with all the other airlines to keep timekeeping in good order, I notice you have posted a few times regarding “London Airways”

I am sorry, but if you are referring to the amount of regional airports B.A. have pulled the plug on, I have to say they did it to cut costs, if B.A. were still flying out of places like the Isle of Man, Leeds/Bradford etc, they would not be around today.

In this day and age, with high fuel costs, you can not expect any airline to keep unprofitable routes open, so I do not agree with your comments, it is the fault of Heathrow…..4th biggest economy in the world and its main airport Heathrow is crammped, can we be proud of that ?

I feel alot of the problems of B.A. are Heathrow itself, B.A. would not need to cancel so many flights and have as many delays if there was extra runway capacity,

Sorry have to disagree with that, although i agree Heathrow is the main problem, that is by BA’s own doing. THEY chose to be a one airport airline!, if ,for example, American or United chose to only fly long distance from,say, New York for the entire US they would have the same issues. BA’s desire to be London Airways is what is causing them so much bother, not Heathrow’s fault that an airline wants to use it as it’s sole gateway airport.
There is lots of extra runway capacity available to BA, at Birmingham, Glasgow,Manchester,Cardiff,Newcastle,Belfast,Aberdeeen,Leeds etc… BA just choose not to use it.(Cue bleats about BA being a business and not here to pander the needs of the “countryfolk”… Shock Stat: Not only Londoners fly BA!!!)

The thing that amused me was there always seemed to be a Virgin Atlantic aircraft in the back of the various shots, even abroad.

Makes you wonder who put Dispatches up to doing a programe like this , :rolleyes::rolleyes:

The thing that amused me was there always seemed to be a Virgin Atlantic aircraft in the back of the various shots, even abroad.

I’m with kevin on this one, old stories rehashed and retold. As far as T5 is concerned, BAA were as much if not more to blame for what when on, and yet on the show very little was made of the BAA involvement.

As far as the cancelling of flights etc, the show was comparing BA with their major competitors at their home hubs, It was hardly a level playing field, when you consider the capacity available at FRA, CDG and AMS when compared to LHR.

what new news did this programe uncover nothing, it,s old news that we have allready heard and read about last Year from the Delays early in the year due to strikes and weather , the lost bags and the disater at T5
Show me something that we didnt all ready Know ,

as For T7 crash , were BA to blame for it , NO were the Pilots to Blame NO , so why shouldnt BA show off the crew who saved the lives off all on board, Did it tarnish BA,s Image ,I dont think it did

Did the other problems tarnish their image , YES , but I dont think BA need some reporter telling them something they all ready Know

One other Thing , when did BA get their chance to respond , If the story I hear is true Dispatches didnt even let BA see the programe so that the could respond properly ,
I look forward to the dispatches programe that lets BA Respond , though I wont hold my breath

Old troubles rehashed into nothing

So the crash of the B777, the dismal opening of T5, cancelled flights and lost baggage is all ‘old troubles’ is it, even though the airline faced all these troubles within the last 12 months…:confused:

…they aren’t helping themselves, and it’s bound to continue…

You took the words right out of mouth Northern_Git.

777 crashed for reasons entirely unattribuable to BA

Yes, whilst I agree that BA itself was not to blame for the crash of the B777, the incident will of no doubt had an impact on the airline’s reputation, which is what I think the program was suggesting. And also, I am not sure that parading the pilots and crew around as they did was a particularly responsible thing to do…more of a PR stunt to take the focus away from the crash itself!