Flying Crumbs: British Airways during the pandemic

So what's the deal with British Airways? Even if you wanted to fly this year, the chances of flying anywhere with British Airways seemed low with their last-minute cancellations and changing of flight schedules that made flying with them impractical. 

Despite their attempts to get past customers flying with emails promising dream holidays, one suspects part of their poor summer performance is due to poor planning. With their endless reschedules and cancellations, it was as if they didn't want your money. It's a legacy carrier with not only planes and technology stuck in a time warp. Their attitudes to flying and getting people moving needs an update. 

Terminal Five at Heathrow this summer was a vast empty chasm. The shop hoardings are promising a better future, replacing the hordes of tourists. But whether this future will be with British Airways remains a wonder. Flying in the UK now is a kafkaesque experience with the ever-changing and expensive tests and form-filling. Add to this British Airways own processes and procedures you will need to have an awful lot of patience and perseverance.

First up is their app. If you found yourself with a booking made in late 2019, you'll find the history of the pandemic summed up in the BA app. Every cancellation is there in glorious history. The flight to Venice that never was. Or then the flight to Nice that was not to be. With so many hypothetical flights cancelled, rebooked or merged, it is hard to see your flight. A flight to Nice had six flights attached to the booking. Each with a different date and a different time. 

But even if you were sure when your flight was due to leave, there was always the last-minute cancellation. Sometimes BA would rebook you onto another flight, but it would be at an inconvenient time. But it comes around a month before you're due to fly. There's nobody to speak to anymore at BA, so your only option is to cancel the booking entirely. And try your luck with another airline. 

And finally, there's the company they partnered with, Verifly. Billed as something to make the journey smoother, it wasn't quite the experience most would expect. You complete complex tasks such as taking a profile photo from a certain angle to use the service. You also had to agree to give up all your data on the promise that you wouldn't need additional documents checked. But alas, Verifly didn't come up with their end of the bargain. Each attempt to use it did not prevent a manual check of the information. The best trick is to keep your documents to hand and add an extra half hour to stand at the check-in desk for someone to review them. 

Of course, if you did get on a flight with British Airways, you then had to understand your allocated group. You have to hand it to British Airways. They not only recreate the English class system for every flight but add the favourite pastime of queuing to give a layer of unnecessary complexity to the proceedings. Most airlines will have some form of priority and non-priority boarding. British Airways now has at least seven groups based on the last flight I had with them. I assume the groupings are as follows:

Group 1 - people who have flown way too much with British Airways. They have suffered enough and feel entitled to get a seat at the front of the plane.

Group 2 - people who have flown almost as much as group one. Or people who have paid four times what would be a reasonable price for the ticket to have a sandwich with the crusts cut off served on fine china.

Group 3 - people who have accidentally flown more than they realised in the past year but still are not prepared to pay an extra £80 for an upgrade for crustless sandwiches on a china plate (well, that was me). 

Group 4 - people who have paid more than necessary to sit in economy.

Group 5 - people who know how to stuff an overhead locker with hand luggage.

Group 6: people who wished they were flying Ryanair as at least they know where they stand.

Group 7 - people who cobbled together 18 months of vouchers from past British Airways cancellations to make it to the flight. 

Of course, when you make it onboard, the crew might be lovely, but nobody is in a rush to get moving. It is bad enough that they board late, but then another half an hour trying to find space in the overhead lockers as people in group four feel bewildered that there is no space as group five took all the space running ahead of everyone when boarding began. 

With all this extra time at hand, while you wait for everyone to get their act together, you can give your seat and surroundings a thorough cleaning with the complimentary wet wipe. I had time to remove the coffee stains and crumbs off my tray table several times over. Hint for the next cabin update: dark colours can hide the filthy habits of your passengers.

The pandemic may be a convenient excuse for legacy carriers and their current poor performance, but perhaps it also highlights how ill-prepared and irrelevant they are for the future. I've decided that I can do without the hassle, the Avios and the crumbs.