Blue lips in Amsterdam!

How lucky - the first job of the year involves a trip to Amsterdam with flights on....yes, you've guessed it.....British Airways.

Relieved that the flight is leaving at all I head to Heathrow on Thursday afternoon. A short stop in the lounge and we are loaded onto the plane only 30 minutes late.

We sit on the runway for a further hour before taking off and arriving in Amsterdam, a cold but still functioning city, about two hours late. My delay is as nothing compared to that of my colleague Marianne, who gets on the 6pm flight at Heathrow to be told they will leave at 6.40pm. When having sat on the runway for five hours, with no information from the BA staff(Bloody Arrogant) she finally arrives at our hotel at 3am.

We spend the day teaching Dutch law students the rudiments of presentation techniques only to receive a text message mid afternoon that our return flight has been cancelled. Strange as we have had no further snow, and neither has Heathrow.

We mange to arrange a transfer onto an earlier flight which has been delayed for 90 minutes and finish our work early - the Dutch can be surprisingly accommodating as well as dull - and head off to the airport. After the sort of sprint for the gate that could give a 52 year old man a heart attack, we find ourselves being checked onto the delayed 16.45 at 18.10. this plane funnily is a 777 so in business class we have flat beds for a forty five minute flight to London.

Then the truth dawns.

There was no need to cancel the 7.30 flight, but as BA had some passengers from Wednesday who were still stuck in Amsterdam, they decided to consolidate the 16.45 and the 19.3o flights by running them as one at 18.00 for their own convenience - certainly not for anyone else's.

In Business we normally get a meal on the return flight. No such luck. A BA sandwich (Bloody Awful) was all that was given. When questioned we were told, "We were only expecting three people on this flight in business - no wonder the crew are going on strike - they don't have a bloody clue as to what is going on.

On every announcement Captain Overpaid tells us what a magnificent aircraft we are flying in - no really, and how it should be on its way to saudi Arabia at this very moment. Quite Frankly I wish it was. I 'd sooner have been sat in a tin can with a meal, than this sandwich filled palace of luxury.

The whole incident is just further evidence of the fact that BA is a joke. The sooner the crew strike and bring the airline down the better. Out of the ashes we might get a national carrier that knows what it is - either a budget airline, or a full service scheduled carrier that offers a quality service. Either would do as long as one knows what one is paying for and what one can expect. A too oft delayed monolith staffed by rude, arrogant, uncaring and quite often ugly people does not deserve to be anyones favourite airline