British Airways is getting strange

Frank, I can tell you one possible scenario for the delayed baggage. The man behind me at the luggage claim office last week had his bag miss our flight. The big challenge he was having was that the claim tabs he received didn’t have his name on them, but someone else’s name. Bag drop had evidently switched the luggage tags.

Unfortunately their service has been getting progressively worse for quite some time now. Sorry about your bad experience- I hope the person whose baggage was delayed eventually received it!

The strange thing is that I didn't check any luggage. I only had carry on.

I agree that British Airways has truly gone downhill. Their IT people must be grammar school age, their gate agents I think have trouble deciding if they should work for the airline or become prison guards, and customer service is a four letter word.

Here's an interesting fact....did you know that KLM serves more cities in the UK than British Airways? In some cities KLM offers better long haul service than BA. And that's why they are doing it.

I've been using up my Avios on BA and I have enough for almost one more short haul flight. Then I will start flying the alternatives.

I didn't know that about KLM!

For long haul alternatives, I've been using Virgin now pretty much every time I fly to the US and find they have better service. For cities in Africa if I want a direct flight it's usually only BA (tho they have also been cutting back on their Africa destinations for years now). For Asia there are lots of alternatives. Within Europe, I usually fly easyJet.

Ok, not to airline bash, but I am usually someone who either books business using miles - or flies whatever option is cheapest. For this trip, I ended up with DFW - LHR legs on British (booked via AA). That flight was the most miserable one I have been on in a decade. The plane was old, TEENY tiny seats, and just pretty miserable. My return next week is also BA and if it is the same, then I am done and willing to pay more or take slightly worse routing to not have to fly them.

Of course, that has nothing to do with what you experienced…..

I had been using my Avios to fly across the pond but that stopped when BA fees for using Avios came to about half of the actual fare. I swtiched to short haul and the number of points needed for those flghts was pretty low.

It also bugs me that even if you are flying business, you have to pay extra--sometimes over 100 GBP--to choose a seat more than 24 hours before departure. Most other airlines include the seat selection in their price.

The last time I flew BA, it was such a bad experience that I will do everything I can to avoid flying them.

I live 15 miles from DFW airport so I fly American a lot and they are really wedded to British Airways. I’ve been lucky so far with no big issues but family members have had horror stories about dealing with the gate agents when cancellations occur. Now I see it’s not unusual.

Thanks for the heads up. We've been fortunate with our BA flights, although have only had one in recent years. We took business pods with airmiles for our Denver-Heathrow leg in '24. Since we were in pods, we didn't worry about reserving seats ($200?) to get placed next to each other. I think we did have a delayed luggage return (waited maybe an hour?) arriving in US---some of the plane luggage storage wouldn't open and I think they said they needed to call in for "engineering help". So, half the flight got their luggage, half of us sat on the floor waiting...

"did you know that KLM serves more cities in the UK than British Airways?" - yes, it's been like that for many years. BA are known round here as London Airways because from most UK airports that's the only place they will take you! My cousin lives near Ann Arbor, his father lived 35 miles from Manchester Airport, his in-laws 20 miles from Cardiff Airport - he always flys Detroit-Amsterdam with KLM connections. And Icelandic or Aer Lingus might also be worth looking at for connections....

I'm not here to defend British Air, rather to report personal experiences. Post Covid we have traveled BA from Seattle to Heathrow & beyond 6 times & have two additional trips this year. All trips have been business class using mostly Avios points. An additional trip was via American Airlines .... Seattle to Philadelphia and beyond. We found BA far superior to our experience on AA. Two BA issues to report, all with positive outcomes; 1) On one return flight, my seat did not function to the lay flat position. To compensate BA awarded me sufficient Avios points to cover a full roundtrip business class ticket on a future flight. Can't ask for more. 2) A connecting flight out of Geneva was delayed due to mechanical issues. We arrived at Heathrow just in time to catch our return flight & wondered about our checked bags. Before departing Heathrow I received a text message from BA advising that our bags did not make the flight, however they were in their possession and would be on the next flight to Seattle. I rec'd continual updates via texts as to the location of our bags in the adventure of getting back to us. Ultimately ..... one day after landing in Seattle our bags were returned to us via a personal carrier to our hotel. I call this excellent service and we will continue to fly BA.

I have never flown British Airways, so I can't speak for them, but I will tell you that I love flying KLM. The agents can be a little abrupt sometimes, but I think it's just in the name of getting their work done, rather than being rude. Every time I've needed help, they've been more than happy to assist me. My bags have always gotten to where they're supposed to be, and they even got me re-booked on a new flight in 15-20 minutes after my Delta-operated flight was cancelled at the last minute.

I have nothing but good things to say about KLM, and I will continue to fly with them as much as possible. In fact, I transferred all my Chase points over to Flying Blue last year, as FB was offering an additional 30% more points if you did. And their points never expire, as long as you meet certain criteria, one of which is using their Flying Blue credit card occasionally, which I do.

I forgot to mention.....in the email I got from BA about my "delayed" bag, they wrote "we aim to provide a response within 10 days."

Ten days? Could you imagine if I really did have a delayed bag and it was the beginning of a trip?

So far, I've had decent flights with BA and their partners--both internationally and to/from the UK and the continent. My only flight cancellation (thus far) was a time when they grounded many flights (the Oslo-bound engine catching on fire at Heathrow in, I think, May 2013). I will say, though, that their website frightens me at times because it looks and acts beta. Each time I buy I ticket, I worry that it "didn't go through" and it seems like there's a wait for confirmation that's nerve-wracking. But, in general, they've been okay.

We just returned from a trip where we flew KLM premium economy from San Francisco to Barcelona (via Amsterdam) and returned on BA premium economy from Lisbon to San Francisco (via Heathrow). The KLM experience was superior in every way to BA - better seats, better meals, better entertainment, better amenity kit.
In January I flew business class to Switzerland on BA and even for business class they would not allow me to select my seat more than 24 hours in advance without paying for the privilege.

I'm done with BA too.

UPDATE

So I heard from BA. It wasn't about a delayed bag. It was about the bad experience I had with my flight earlier this week. I'm guessing the Cabin Crew put in a notice.

The email I got was the typical we're sorry. blah, blah, blah...and we'll use this to help improve our service.

Help improve their service? Who are they kidding.

This was my response:

I didn't contact you. I'm guessing the cabin crew put in some kind of report.

I decided not to contact anyone because poor customer service by British Airways gate agents has become standard practice. It's been like that for years. I shouldn't have been surprised when they just ignored me.

I have a frozen shoulder. My flight was on a remote stand and would entail a bus and stairs. While I can handle my luggage on a jet bridge, having to carry it up a flight of stairs, I knew, would cause me pain. So I asked for help. From two different people. But I was ignored. One did say that I would get priority boarding which I knew because I was in Club Europe. But priority boarding just means boarding the bus first. It keeps boarding until its full.

BA cabin crews are usually good. The spilling of the champagne was an accident. It just took my anger, and pain from carrying the luggage, to a higher level.

I vented and left it at that. You and I both know nothing is going to be done, no improvements are going to be made, and things wills stay the same. Poor service, a horrible BA app and website that doesn't work half the time, and nickel and diming by BA is what management seems to want. (Paying for a long haul business class ticket and then demanding over 100 GBP more just to choose a seat? Seriously?)

While I appreciate the apology, all the rest is just talk. The type of talk you want to put boots on before you wade through it.

British Airways used to be the "Queen of the Skies." Now it needs to work hard to catch up to Ryanair.

I appreciate you taking the time to get in touch...bu....I'm using up my Avios and then fly British Airways only if I have no other choice.

update #2

BA responded to my email from the above post. They missed the point of everything and went on to explain that this year they plan to do quite a bit to better the customer experience. All technoloogical in nature on the planes but nothing about better service or IT.

But he did offer a 100 GBP voucher. I accepted it but neither asked for anything nor did I expect anything.

We’ve had bad experiences on BA in 2003 and multiple bad experiences with BA in 2023.

British Arrogance on board in 2003. And incompetence in dealing with our 24 hour flight delay and our right to compensation in 2023. https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/france/departure-from-cdg-a-cautionary-tale-for-british-airways-travelers