BA no longer the gold standard – I’m switching to BMI.

I was away on a training course this week in London. While the course itself was exceptional (more on this in a later post), British Airways was not.

 On the flight down, we took an extra 10 minutes to get away and experienced a further delay on approach. What really bothered me was the time it took to get my luggage. The passengers on the BA flight from Edinburgh reached the luggage hall and were joined by the passengers of a BA flight from Glasgow about 5 minutes later. Two sets of passengers of BMI flights from Glasgow and Edinburgh then joined us about 15 minutes later. Both sets of BMI passengers had there baggage and were on their way before a single BA customer had their baggage – Waiting an hour for baggage is not the sign of a gold standard carrier. These things happen and I had forgotten about them during the week as I was having a very productive week.

My flight back on Friday was dreadful. While I understand the weather could have an impact on operations, BA was unable to send the 1830, 1950 and 2100 flights off to Edinburgh before 2300. Earlier flights suffered similar delays. I discussed this in the BA lounge with one of my fellow passengers – she explained to me that a number of her colleagues had flown on BMI to Edinburgh and Glasgow and were home hours ago. The lounge was filled with colleagues, couples (including one with a new born baby), a rather loud stag party and Ming Campbell – it sounds like the start of a joke and I wish it was… My flight didn’t leave the gate until 2315, by the time I had my luggage in Edinburgh it had just passed 0100. The whole experience has left me feeling rather ****** off at BA – this was despite every BA staff member being very polite and courteous. 

 I’m not that fussed about the rights and wrongs of BA outsourcing parts of its operations or that they can’t seem to handle baggage; I’m interested in the customer experience. When I fly I want to get from point A to point B and I don’t want to hang around; I’m going to fly BMI from now on.