Friday 24 December 2010

Merry Christmas from BAA (Not)


Thanks to British Airways and BAA, the Sticker household will have a much diminished Christmas.

The reason for this is simple; presents were being transported to Vancouver by our girls. Then the snow (Although not a great deal by all accounts) hit Heathrow. Luggage had already been checked in, containing presents for friends and relatives over here. Luggage was supposed to follow a day after our girls arrived. Enquiries at Vancouver Airport found no cases. The following two days brought the news that the cases in question were, apparently, due to stay in Heathrow. Then the cases were supposed to be in Vancouver, where they had not, according to staff, arrived. Repeated visits to Vancouver Airport seeking said have proved fruitless. Considerable expenses (Extra travel, Ferry journeys, working time lost) have been incurred. Lawyers are to be consulted.

To date (late Christmas Eve) there has been a complete lack of presence of any presents. With BA's record of luggage tracking we have no expectation of ever seeing them again. We had hoped for better, thinking that the bad old days of 'Thiefrow' were long past. This appears not to be so. The luggage tracking system for checked baggage appears to be just as inefficient as it ever was, despite bar coded luggage tags and sufficient computing power to control a multitude of space flights. Under the circumstances, it would seem that to expect efficiency from Heathrow, BAA and British Airways would seem to be the triumph of hope over experience.

Mrs S is bitterly disappointed, as is Sister in law, our girls, and the rest of our disparate little clan.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sure your Christmas will be complete knowing that the man in charge at Heathrow has an annual salary worth TWICE the amount spent on snowing clearing equipment this year.
Having flown from Heathrow many times and in fact working there for many years I no longer go anywhere near it after my last nightmare of a trip to America.
Most organizations in the UK now have grossly overpaid managers with incredibly bad customer service.
Anyway, hope it sorts itself out for you and yours. Merry Xmas.

selsey.steve said...

Ferrovial owns 56pc of BAA, while Quebec's state pension fund has 26pc and the Singapore government's sovereign wealth fund holds the remainder. Ferrovial made over £1billion from the airport last year. The company owes mega-money to the Spanish banks and Government and continues to squeeze as much as it can from its performing assets.
Spending on any form of improvement or extra equipment does not feature in their business plan! Quebec and Singapore couldn't give a monkey's as long as the cash keeps coming in; neither entity has any fiscal incentive to spend any money on Heathrow.

Related Posts with Thumbnails