Report: British Airways

Carrigman

My wife and I flew to San Francisco from Cork via London with BA recently. As I had booked the entire trip on the BA website our luggage was checked through to SFO at Cork. However, when we arrived at SFO there was no sign of our bags. Together with about another 25 disgruntled customers we had to report our loss to the BA desk at SFO. It was annoying in that we had to buy toiletries and the like and was worrying in that we did not know when or if the bags would be found. In the event,my wife's bag arrived at our hotel the following night (at 1am) and mine arrived the following day. We were promised up to $100 compensation ($50 each) by BA once we produced receipts at the check in desk on the return leg.

When we claimed the compensation at the check in desk we were provided with a $100 BA debit card which we used to extract cash from an ATM. There was no need to produce any receipts.

Our seats were 50A and 50B at the back of the aircraft (World Traveller class - basic economy) and I had booked these online the day before our return trip. When we arrived at the ticket check just before we boarded the aircraft the girl advised us that there had been a seating change and we were now allocated 12A and 12B - two of the best seats: plenty of leg room as there were no seats in front of us and in the World Traveller Plus section too boot! This was a very pleasant surprise especially as we had not requested any preferential treatment due to the temporary baggage loss.

Many thanks to BA for this excellent customer service.

Our bags were also checked through to Cork at SFO but this time they arrived with us. In future though I will be very wary of checking bags all the way through to the final destination when there is more than one leg to the journey. At the very least I will be careful to bring a change of clothing and toiletries in my carry on bag.

BuffyBot

Sounds like you did quite well out of it - everything seemed to go relatively to plan, and a nice upgrade to boot!

Trust me, much worse missing bag stories are out there

Thanks for the report though!

SlummyMummy

Have flown with BA quite a few times in lots of different classes (though never first..I live in hope !!) and I have to say that I've only had one not so great experience with them.. even at that they quickly put the situation to rights to our satisfaction.

Would be interested to hear other peoples experience of checking luggage straight through when using a connecting flight; I'm always quite weary of this but its a pain having to collect and recheck in? Parents flying from Cork to Heathrow and then onto Bangkok with us in Feb and dont know what advice to give them about checking in their luggage?

Davidth88

Guys , does no one here watch/read the BBC news ?

Basically LHR ( Heathrow ) and esp BA has become a black hole for luggage !

They have admitted that their luggage systems have broken down completely , they have resorted to flying aircraft to the US full of lost luggage ( ie no passengers ). ( Ill find the links and post them soon )

Now some of this was due to horrible weather ( fog )last Christmas , and the security stuff last summer. But lots of it ( I am guessing ) may be because BA have underinvested in terminal 4 in the lead up to moving lock stock an barrel to T5.

Now until recently I would always have tried to fly BA ( I have friends who work for them , and I like the beer their serve ) but LHR is such a horrible place now with the stupid over the top security ( with attached permalines ) and almost gaurenteed delays that I am now going through anywhere else ( recently Birmingham, Paris and Amsterdam ).

BA remain a great airline ( all be it point to point for now ) but until they sort out LHR ...... don't bother ! ( That may be when T5 is open )

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6949008.stm

Carawaystick

I got delayed by 24 hours flying LHR to Mumbai and by 36 hours flying back with BA in Nov/Dec 2003.

DIF Chick

Flew BA 009 from LHR to BKK just this Christmas (22nd Dec). Flight was delayed just over an hour, no explanation as to why this was.

Flew back on the 12th Jan with BA flight 010 from BKK to LHR and this flight was delayed for 4 hours. Flight was inbound from Sydney and there was a malfunction on one of the doors which took 3 hours to repair.My boyfriend and I received a meal voucher for 350 baht which is c.a €7 (5.5 sterling?).

On both flights my entertaintment system wasnt working properly (had to be reset by the cabin crew) and worst of all the a/c was out of whack too.

Extremely hot and uncomfortable but I agree on the good beer comment:D

We had a connecting flight in LHR (aerlingus to Dublin there and back) and opted to pick up the luggage in LHR and re-checking it again. It's not a guarantee for your luggage showing up at the right place but it's worked for us so far.

oscarBravo

I'd always check it straight through. At least if it doesn't show up, the airline have the responsibility of getting it to you.

Nightmare scenario: you've decided not to check through, and it doesn't show up at the intermediate airport. You're waiting for it to arrive, while watching the clock on your outbound flight. At what point do you give up and run for the gate? How much fun will you have filing a claim for lost luggage at a foreign airport? Heathrow is bad enough; imagine having to do so in Thailand?

An interesting wrinkle on this: when we checked our luggage in at Santiago airport, they put my name on both bags. This led to confusion in Paris, when Annemette presented herself for boarding to Dublin - they actually questioned her as to why she was travelling from Chile to Ireland without checked-in luggage.