V-Flyer

This was my first BA flight for a couple of years, and was a last minute "urgent" business flight - I found out on Monday lunchtime that I *HAD* to be in Budapest on Tuesday morning.

So a bit of a panic for the company travel agent - LH were on strike that day, and the only option going out was the last BA flight; I was too far from Luton to get onto the Wizzair flight.

Slightly surprised it was departing from T3, but no big deal.

Dropped off by taxi, and go to do the self service checkin. Plenty of machines; surprised that it printed the slip for the bag to check in, and then went to the Club Europe bag drop - where it all started to go wrong.

The CE bag drop queue was at the extreme left hand side of the row of desks, but there were no desks open at that end. So the Economy passengers were simply moving to the next free desk, which was basically in front of them, even though those desks were showing as "Club Europe/Gold" bag drop - and the staff were making no efforts to sort this. The economy bag drops were at the exteme right...

After a couple of minutes I suggested to the people in front that they move down to the bag drop desk, but for some reason they didn't want to, so in the end I moved down and jumped onto the next free CE/gold desk - and commented on the queueing layout problem, to get no response. Oh well...

Off to the BA lounge in T3 which was very quiet, with plenty of space and some snacks but nothing substantial.

Off to the gate, where we were going to be bussed out. Skipped the big queue by using the "CE" entrance, and had the boarding card scanned with no comments.

Then the fun started - boarding was announced, and the scrum began. No priority boarding; people are squeezed onto the bus, which waits a few minutes and then moves; arrive at the plane and we wait for about 10 minutes - no information, and no air conditioning either.

Eventually allowed to board, where the pilot apologises for a "small technical problem which has now been repaired"

Boarding completes, and we then wait about 20 minutes before we push back about 35 mins late.

Standard BA CE flight; service was quite good; food a bit skimpy.

Arrive about 10 mins late; through immigration OK, and then wait for the luggage. And wait... when it does come through there is no priority order, and mine was one of the last out.

So onto the long taxi queue and eventually make it to the hotel.

So BA didn't handle the checkin or boarding at all well.

Since this was a last minute flight it cost over £600 one way, and the ground experience was on a par with Ryanair.

Oh dear......sounds like carnage and something you would expect from a low cost carrier (except it was far from low cost )

I think in some aspects, the Ryanair experience would have been better. They at least, police their lines!

Wow, sounds like a less than stellar performance from BA on the ground.

At least on board service was up to standard, food portions do tend to leave you wanting more, assuming food is edible in the first place that is

Cheers for posting