British Airways to cancel flights

Sabena_690 · Post by **Sabena_690** » 09 Sep 2004, 10:46

Hi all,

British Airways is cancelling a number of flights, starting this month on September 13th, till December.

Also BRU has been affected.

This is the reason given:
To improve our operational performance during the next few months we have amended our schedules.

There will be some reductions on a small number of our routes which have a large number of daily flights from London. The cancelled flights represent only 0.5% of our Heathrow flying operation this year.

Amending our schedule now is a prudent precautionary measure which relieves pressure on our flying programme and allows us to provide our customers with a more robust flight schedule during the next three months.

These changes have been made to ensure we minimise the inconvenience to our customers.

We would like to apologise to those customers who have been affected.

More information can be found over here:
http://www.britishairways.com/travel/fl ... rce=fltops

This is a quote of the September cancellations:

All destinations except European and Domestic flights

LHR - JFK BA113 Daily 13Sep - 30Sep

JFK - LHR BA116 Daily 13Sep - 30Sep

LHR - LAX BA279 Mon/Wed/Sat 13Sep - 29Sep

LAX - LHR BA278 Mon/Wed/Sat 13Sep - 29Sep

LHR - NBO BA065 Tue 14Sep - 28Sep

NBO - LHR BA064 Tue 14Sep - 28Sep

LHR - HKG BA031 Thu 16Sep - 30Sep

HKG - LHR BA032 Sat 18Sep - 25Sep

European and domestic flights

LHR - EDI BA1432 Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri 13Sep - 30Sep

EDI - LHR BA1439 Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri 13Sep - 30Sep

LHR - MAN BA1392 Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri 13Sep - 30Sep

MAN - LHR BA1395 Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri 13Sep - 30Sep

LHR - GLA BA1488 Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri 13Sep - 30Sep

GLA - LHR BA1495 Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri 13Sep - 30Sep

LHR - ARN BA784 Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri 13Sep - 30Sep

ARN - LHR BA773 Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri 13Sep - 30Sep

LHR - ARN BA775 Sat 13Sep - 30Sep

LHR - ARN BA780 Sat 13Sep - 18Sep

ARN - LHR BA781 Sat 13Sep - 30Sep

LHR - ARN BA782 Sat 25Sep

ARN - LHR BA783 Sat 25Sep

LHR - FRA BA906 Mon/Tue 13Sep - 30Sep

FRA - LHR BA907 Mon/Tue 13Sep - 30Sep

LHR - FRA BA908 Wed/Fri 13Sep - 30Sep

FRA - LHR BA909 Wed/Fri 13Sep - 30Sep

LHR - MUC BA954 Daily excl Sat 13Sep - 30Sep

MUC - LHR BA955 Daily excl Sat 13Sep - 30Sep

LHR - AMS BA426 Daily excl Sun 17Sep - 30Sep

AMS - LHR BA427 Daily 17Sep - 30Sep

LHR - AMS BA442 Sat 17Sep - 30Sep

LHR - CPH BA816 Daily 17Sep - 30Sep

CPH - LHR BA817 Daily 17Sep - 30Sep

LHR - BRU BA400 Daily excl Sat 17Sep - 30Sep

BRU - LHR BA401 Daily excl Sat 17Sep - 30Sep

The quoted BA400/401 is operated by an A319, and has the following schedule:
BA 400 LHR BRU 1745 1955
BA 401 BRU LHR 2045 2105

It is not sure yet whether BRU will also be affected from October till December.

Although that it is now already known that BA400/401 will not operated between September 13 and September 30, it's amazing to see that this flight is still available for booking.

Regards
Frederic

chunk · Post by **chunk** » 09 Sep 2004, 11:01

This airline is pure comedy....unless you have to fly on em of course! I flew ABZ - LHR last Thursday on BMI (good flight by the way) and about a quarter of the passengers on the plane were BA passengers from a cancelled flight due to leave half an hour before. ANother 25 customers gone....

vflies · Post by **vflies** » 09 Sep 2004, 12:15

Is this once again because they lack the required staff or because those services actually loose money?

VFlies

pegasus · Post by **pegasus** » 09 Sep 2004, 12:25

BA400/401 for october cancelled until the 15th,
rgds
PGT

Sabena_690 · Post by **Sabena_690** » 09 Sep 2004, 13:37

Thanks for the update PGT! BA was going to announce this this evening...

@Vflies: it is rumoured that maintenance issues may have something to do with it, not sure whether it's true or not though.

@chunk: why is this airline pure comedy? I agree that the cancellations due to staff shortage were shameful, but those problems should now be over.

En contraire: BA gave an immediate solution to the pax of the cancelled ABZ-LHR, by booking them on BMI, with only 30 minutes delay. Don't forget that the perfect moment to judge about an airline is when something goes wrong.

Frederic

chunk · Post by **chunk** » 09 Sep 2004, 14:55

Not quite. The BA 'perfect solution' only seemed to cover those passengers that had paid full fare for their tickets.....that sums up their attitude to economy passengers quite nicely. Their customer service - particularly to economy passengers is appalling. To have to cancel flights at a days notice because they had fired too many staff is inexcusable.

Actually they would be comedy if they weren't so bad. People in our company make a point of not flying them - sometimes to do with cost but more often due to reliablility and the small matter of them being based out of one of the world's worst airports. There are many companies in the ABZ area taking the same approach and are using KL / AF or BMI / Star alliance carriers.

Sabena_690 · Post by **Sabena_690** » 09 Sep 2004, 19:41

The BA 'perfect solution' only seemed to cover those passengers that had paid full fare for their tickets.....

Can you accomodate 120 stranded pax on a BA flight into a BMI flight were maybe 70 seats were available? People with full-fare Y-tickets and OneWorld silver/gold members obviously got priority.

To have to cancel flights at a days notice because they had fired too many staff is inexcusable.

'BA have fired too many staff' was a nice excuse from the unions. Honnestly, I would doubt it whether this was the truth or not.

Have you seen how much £ somebody will get when they are not on sick-leave for x number of days in a year time? A huge problem within BA apparently is the fact that way too much people are way too regularly on sick-leave.

Strange that some people 'hate' an airline while other people 'love' them. It all depends on what you expect I guess.

Frederic

Avro · Post by **Avro** » 09 Sep 2004, 20:20

Thanks for the info Fred.

Chris

SN30952 · Post by **SN30952** » 09 Sep 2004, 21:12

Sabena_690 wrote:
The BA 'perfect solution' ..
Can you accomodate 120 stranded pax on a BA flight into a BMI flight were maybe 70 seats were available? People with full-fare Y-tickets and OneWorld silver/gold members obviously got priority.
To have to cancel flights at a days notice because they had fired too many staff is inexcusable.
'BA have fired too many staff' was a nice excuse from the unions. Honnestly, I would doubt it whether this was the truth or not.
Have you seen how much £ somebody will get when they are not on sick-leave for x number of days in a year time? A huge problem within BA apparently is the fact that way too much people are way too regularly on sick-leave.
Strange that some people 'hate' an airline while other people 'love' them. It all depends on what you expect I guess. Frederic

Strange thing when an employer has to pay an employee for COMING to work. Usually somebody gets paid for the work (s)he does. Now (s)he gets a bonus to show up, in fact. There must be something very rotten in the work relation @ BA.

And also there must be something very rotten in the customer relation @BA. That BA-management dismay will pay off soon: as BA is talking European consolidation, now it will have a huge amount to invest in that, the staff of targeted airline(s) should be aware of the fact that if they will get absorbed in a consolidation with BA their work relations are in jeopardy too. The best thing is to oppose to that and get organized with their unions.

"OneWorld silver/gold members obviously got priority." The only ones to care about that are of course the members. Nothing seems to have changed in the British Impire, there were and there are second class people. The British always were master in dividing people and opposing them.
But the EU has rules, and passengers are protected against these practices, aren't they. So denied people not paying the full ticket get compensations, so they can buy their ticket on the competition full fare! British disembarked passengers will have to thank EU for that!

chunk · Post by **chunk** » 10 Sep 2004, 10:51

Well given that the BMI flight wasn't full even with those BA passengers on it accomodation wasn;t the problem. There were certainly more spare seats so why did some BA passengers have to wait until the next BA flight? Cos they were in the cheap seats thats why!!

Actually do a search and you will see that Eddington admitted they screwed up and cut back too far - the number of sick days taken by staff shows they still have that public sector mentality in certain areas also. The union have also been made to look like a bunch of jokers here but insisting that the sick day clause was wrong....not when it is being abused it ain't.

Sabena_690 · Post by **Sabena_690** » 10 Sep 2004, 14:35

@chunk: sorry, but how do you know that the BA pax on that flight were ONLY full-fare pax? Did you talk to all pax to find out? Or did you ask this to a supervisor? Or did BA make an announcement that 'all pax with a full fare ticket are allowed to board the BMI flight'?

In case that the BA flight wasn't full (the BD flight was quite empty also apparently), it's normal that still a few seats were left.

I'm not defending BA, just asking more questions about something that sounds very illogical.

Frederic

chunk · Post by **chunk** » 10 Sep 2004, 15:35

The woman sat next to me was with her two kids and au pair and she said that she only got on the BMI flight because they had paid for full fare tickets ( 600 Euro!!) and were thus refundable. There were several others in the departure lounge at ABZ making phone calls on their mobiles to say they were going to be late 'cos BA had cancelled their flight. In other words if you didn;t have a refundable element on your ticket BA made you wait.

I don;t see that as acceptable service and is something I have not experienced in 23 years of frequent flying. If a flight has ever been cancelled that I have been on the airline concerned compensates you or makes other arrangements. On a short flight such as ABZ - LHR they should be putting as many people as poss on flights at the time requested given the number of people that are only flying down for a days business.