One more thing to note, in 2022 when British Airways managed to lose our cases, one turned up at Tampa after 5 days and they phoned me to collect, they refused to deliver. I was told at the time that wouldn’t happen again. I had been tracking my AirTag this time and the case was moved from Heathrow to Miami on 2 July and then up to Tampa the same evening. The location seemed to suggest it was at the American Airlines bag desk on the blue side. My case had my V-Flyer tag (“Upper Class Tastes, Economy Pockets”) with my name, my email, my phone number. Nobody contacted me. The British Airways online service still showed it as lost (and indeed as of today, is still shown as lost). So on 5 July I jumped in the car and drove the 140 mile round trip, taking three hours out of my holiday, to pick up my own case. On arrival at the American desk, spoke to the same chap from previously, he had no answer as to why they’re unable to deliver cases. Indeed he said as they couldn’t identify THE FULLY TAGGED CASE it was due to be sent to Texas for disposal.
Back to the flight home. Managed check-in for the first flight to London using my wife’s phone but we were unable to check in for the last leg online. Left the very excellent Beach Club and as we had a bit of time, spent a few hours in Busch Gardens but the fun was curtailed by an earlier than usual thunderstorm. Left at 2pm to be back in plenty of time, filled up the car near the airport.
Got to the BA check-in desk where we explained we were unable to check in for the final leg and they explained that is because we were on standby. They put a family of 4 travelling overnight transatlantic on standby. Especially galling given what they did to us on the way out. You would think somebody would look at a list of passengers to bump and say, yeah perhaps not these ones.
As with Heathrow on the way out, the Tampa desk managed to make a complete pigs ear of our boarding passes which meant we were unable to get through the security gate, had to head back to the desk for them to have another go. Tampa airport is very nice and efficient, popped into the local sports team shop then all too soon it was time to get on the plane. We had row 41ABC D and luckily despite a 90% full flight, nobody shared the middle row with me, so my wife and I spread out and gave the kids some space too.
Food choices this time was chicken or vegetarian Thai green curry. I had the curry which was very good, the rest of the family the chicken which seemed alright. Had a few BrewDogs too. Watched the rest of Ghostbusters, managed a few hours sleep (like 2), breakfast offerings were better than previous with a warm roll and “bacon”.
Landed on time at Gatwick 8.30am, we were told that as we were on standby we were to collect our bags and head for the check in. Waited at baggage reclaim. And waited. And waited. AirTags showed they had been moved to the domestic pier waiting our next flight. So we had to walk out without our bags and went to check-in, which was rammed. Spoke to a member of staff and she directed us to the business/first check-in area. The member of staff there confirmed we were on standby but couldn’t do anything until 10.20am then they’d figure out if there was space for us on the plane. So we waited. At 10.40am a manager came out and said they couldn’t accommodate us so we were to pick up our bags and move over to Heathrow for a 8pm flight. Best they can do. As we had no other choice, I had to leave my family sitting and go airside with a member of staff to pick up the cases. Once airside, I had to wait for over an hour for somebody to bring them back from the gate. We finally left Gatwick at 1pm having waited a grand total of 9 hours for bags over the two times we were there.
