British Airways: A Masterclass in Mediocrity

We’ve just returned from holiday. And if you asked whether I’d go away again tomorrow, I’d say yes—not for sun or sea or spiritual replenishment, but because I’d need another holiday to recover from the one just gone. Not the destination. Madeira was, in a word, sublime. Mountains above clouds, sunsets like oil paintings, a sort of dignified warmth that didn’t singe the scalp. Even the famous wicker toboggan ride—lunacy in a linen hat—was delightful. No, the trouble wasn’t the island. It was the journey. And by “the journey,” I mean British Airways. Though if we’re being honest, British Airways has become more of a concept than a company—a sort of floating rumour of service with the occasional aircraft attached. We stayed overnight at Gatwick. Business class—our little indulgence. Not for the champagne, but in the faint hope someone might actually answer a question. At 6.25pm we arrived, to find a queue that could only be described as biblical. If Moses had parted these people, he’d have needed traffic lights. At the end of it all: British Airways. Or, as I now call them, Barely Attempts. A global baggage system failure, they said, trying to imply that everyone was struggling, when in fact only they were visibly disintegrating in real time. Tags being handwritten. Cases stacked like landfill. There was Davina McCall ahead of us in the queue, which was mildly reassuring. After all, they’re hardly going to let Davina’s luggage get lost, are they? Though I imagine she travels light—just mascara, abs, and the raw power of motivation. The system stuttered back into life just in time for our bags to be processed. We breathed a sigh of relief—prematurely. Because just as we settled into our seats, a chirpy email landed: “There’s a high likelihood your luggage will not arrive with you.” This is not what you want to hear when you’re in the air, particularly after watching a man pack his Speedos like they were royal regalia. Somehow, our bags did arrive. A miracle. But the carousel was surrounded by a Greek chorus of the bereft—entire families without underwear, tweeting their rage into the void while BA’s social media team posted chirpy photos of planes taking off somewhere else. Now, the return leg. A windstorm had blown up in Madeira—a known risk, given the airport is basically a cliff with ambition. Still, our flight was scheduled. We headed to the lounge where we learned—not from British Airways but from an app—that the incoming aircraft had been diverted to Tenerife. There was no announcement. Nothing from the BA desk. Nothing on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, semaphore, or carrier pigeon. Just the digital shrug of “More info at 20:30,” followed by silence at 20:30. And again at 21:00. And again at 21:30. Eventually, the airport—not British Airways, who were possibly all on break—told us to go to gate 15 to collect our bags. There, people ran, shoved, tripped over duty-free Toblerones in a desperate bid for a hotel voucher. We arrived at a sensible pace and were punished for it. “No more hotels,” said the man at the desk, with the empathy of a bollard. “No transport. Submit receipts.” Not so much customer service as Survivor: Madeira. We found a villa. €450. Plus €25 for the taxi. Plus €5 for toothpaste. Because British Airways had turned us from holidaymakers into refugees overnight. We’d packed our cases with care. They were now being frantically upended in a sparse, echoing villa so we could find clean pants and something less accusatory to sleep in. The next morning, our 11am flight had become a 2.30pm flight. BA didn’t tell us. They emailed. At 7am. For a business-class experience, this was starting to feel a lot like glamping at the edge of a nervous breakdown. At the airport, we found the same weary faces, all having arrived hours early. No one from BA had told them either. But they had given us €30 in Starbucks vouchers. Which is like handing out napkins during a shipwreck. We tried valiantly. Ham croissants, pastel de nata, iced lattes, biscuits. We still couldn’t spend it all. I had to top it up myself, just to feel I’d won. The gate came up. We descended. Then the gate disappeared again. Like Narnia—open one minute, gone the next. The plane hadn’t left Tenerife. British Airways, having long since stopped providing information, were now just issuing riddles. We finally boarded. Business Class, Group One. A special treat: we were loaded onto a coach that drove ten feet, stopped, and sat there for half an hour. The plane was being cleaned—heroically—by a cabin crew who clearly didn’t sign up for this, and who deserved knighthoods for showing up. Meanwhile, BA’s communication strategy continued: “No comment.” Or rather, a stream of bland messages from a revolving cast of invisible hands—Oliver, Wendy, Nikita, Melita—each one more useless than the last. None knew anything. None stayed long enough to care. Alex Cruz, the former CEO, once boasted he could run a luxury airline at the front and a budget one at the back. He failed at both, and now BA is just… beige. A legacy airline without the legacy. A Premier Inn of the skies—if Premier Inn had no towels, no Wi-Fi, and charged extra for the bed. We arrived home 27 hours late. €550 down. Emotionally bankrupt. If you’re thinking of flying British Airways for your next trip, my advice is simple: don’t. Book a donkey. Charter a canoe. Get a tramp steamer from Hull. Whatever you do, avoid this once-great national carrier now doing a very credible impersonation of Ryanair in a cravat. BA. Bloody Awful. And getting worse by the minute.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Birthday Homily by Me, for Me

Image
Well, here we are. Sixty-eight. Not one of your grandstanding ages. Not a nice, neat multiple of ten, not a coming-of-age, not an “over-the-hill”—though, let’s be honest, the hill is well and truly behind me now, and I’ve been strolling down the other side for a good while. But sixty-eight, I think, is a respectable sort of age. It’s solid. It’s lived-in. It’s like a comfortable old armchair—the stuffing’s gone a bit, but it still holds together, and when you sit in it, it feels like home. The thing about birthdays is that people expect you to look back. To tot it all up, weigh your successes against your failures, and see if you come out ahead. And I suppose at sixty-eight, I’m happy to say I do. Just about. There have been some personal lows—times when life gave me a bit of a kicking and didn’t even have the decency to let me get my breath back before the next one came along. But there have also been highs, and I find those tend to linger longer in the memory. At sixty-eight, the...
Read more

Bob-a-Job and the Art of Keeping Busy

Image
One of the more vivid memories of my childhood—apart from the time my mother tried to pass off a steamed sponge pudding as a birthday cake—is Bob-a-Job Week. It was a fixture of my existence as a Cub Scout, along with short trousers in winter and an unconvincing ability to tie knots. For those unfamiliar, a bob was a shilling (or twelve old pence, which, to anyone under forty, will sound like the sort of currency that required a wheelbarrow to transport). A job was exactly that—a task, a chore, an activity that adults could have quite easily done themselves but were instead willing to delegate to small boys in woggles for a negligible fee. The setup was simple: for one week in the school holidays, our Cub Pack would be set loose upon the village, clutching work cards, a sheaf of yellow stickers, and an earnest little speech from Akela about the virtues of public service. The aim was to secure as many Bob-a-Jobs as possible—anything from sweeping a garden path to washing a car or, i...
Read more

Faring well in February

Image
February has been a month of small victories. The fire has stayed in overnight. The canal hasn’t frozen. We have, against all odds, acquired houseplants. Winter on Scout, our widebeam boat, is not a matter of making do. It is, in fact, a very good life—one of warmth, ritual, and a steady supply of tea. We are not hardy survivalists, braving the elements with nothing but grit and a thermal vest. The fire, tended with the kind of care usually reserved for pedigree dogs, keeps the cabin warm, and the mornings—far from being the teeth-chattering ordeal some imagine—are quite pleasant. Brayden, braver of the two of us, is first up, stirring the embers and setting the kettle on, while I remain in bed, offering moral support from under the duvet. Outside, the world goes about its business. Ducks skid across the canal like poorly trained ice skaters. Dog-walkers in hats with bobbles stomp past, hands buried deep in pockets. Inside, we drink coffee and discuss whether the stove needs anoth...
Read more