Question for any VA cabin crew

I'm going to be totally blunt now, the crew more than anything probably didn't care, they're not going to do anything for passengers because they won't have wanted to. It's not their job and to them you will have just been passengers on yet another flight.
I know this probably isn't the nicest thing to hear, but I'm afraid that's the way the cookie crumbles.

[Darren Wheeler]

Oh boy....

Tin hats on...

Some years ago i had the good fortune to be on a VS200 that diverted to Kaohsiung (on staff ticket). To be honest it wasn't handled much differently other than the crew had minimum rest & operated the flight to HKG the next morning. The crew were accomodated in a seperate hotel to the pax for obvious reasons.

With regards the crew on the BA flight, read up on the union rules for diverted flights & you'll see why they didn't operate the next day!!!

I think one of the major differences for VS is that they don't have such a large fleet & need to get the aircraft back into serice, hence they don't abandon the aircraft at diversion airfields in quite the same way as BA.

quote:Originally posted by dpscrest
I honestly cannot imagine the pax being treated like this by VA. Then again I may be wrong. Sorry for the rant


The 'liquid' terror alert in August 2006 kicked off the day before we were due to fly back from Orlando with VA. When we checked in, we were told our flight which was due to depart early evening was now scheduled to leave around 3am the next morning.

After check-in, we were left to our own devices and did not see anyone from VA at all until the cabin crew turned up for the flight about 30 minutes before departure, which ended up as a 4am departure. We were fortunate as the opening hours of the Delta Lounge were extended to midnight but after that we had to join the rest of the passengers in the departure lounge for the last 4 hours.

Some of the passengers spent some of those 10+ hours tearing up paper and using that to spell out what they thought of VA's customer service across the floor of the departure lounge.

Whilst I sympathise with your position dpscrest because I know I wouldn't have wanted to be put through that I do think your attitude towards the crew is misguided.

Putting aside the legal requirements for one moment, you have to remember the flight crew have just completed their working day, a long day at that! They may well need to work the next day.

I don't confess to be an expert on flying an aeroplane, but I think you can add to the above the increased workload on the flight deck from making the decision and altering the course / fuel calculations for a unfamiliar diversion airport. I'm sure thats par of the course for crew but equally likely it wouldn't have been easy!

Put yourself in the crew's shoes for one minute, after such a long flight are you really going to want to face your 300 passengers who are angry at not being home when you know that there should be specifically trained ground staff present to deal with the situation? No, you like 99% of the human race would take the bus back to your hotel.

The cock up here is the lack of ground staff for which BA should be blamed. Blaming the crew is misguided and unfair!

Steve

[honey lamb]

quote:Originally posted by Lizz
I'm going to be totally blunt now, the crew more than anything probably didn't care, they're not going to do anything for passengers because they won't have wanted to. It's not their job and to them you will have just been passengers on yet another flight.
I know this probably isn't the nicest thing to hear, but I'm afraid that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Lizz, in case you don't know crew rest, which is a legal requirement starts from 'blocks on' so they would not have been in a position to help from that point alone. In any case what crew do and what ground staff do are two different things. In addition crew would be unfamiliar with ground operations especially in a strange airport.

Finally I find it strange that you who are ground staff should berate crew who have already worked a long-haul flight for not caring when you yourself said earlier that you probably would have walked away if faced with 300 irate passengers.

[honey lamb]

quote:Originally posted by steveb
Whilst I sympathise with your position dpscrest because I know I wouldn't have wanted to be put through that I do think your attitude towards the crew is misguided.

Putting aside the legal requirements for one moment, you have to remember the flight crew have just completed their working day, a long day at that! They may well need to work the next day.

I don't confess to be an expert on flying an aeroplane, but I think you can add to the above the increased workload on the flight deck from making the decision and altering the course / fuel calculations for a unfamiliar diversion airport. I'm sure thats par of the course for crew but equally likely it wouldn't have been easy!

Put yourself in the crew's shoes for one minute, after such a long flight are you really going to want to face your 300 passengers who are angry at not being home when you know that there should be specifically trained ground staff present to deal with the situation? No, you like 99% of the human race would take the bus back to your hotel.

The cock up here is the lack of ground staff for which BA should be blamed. Blaming the crew is misguided and unfair!

Steve


[y]

Thanks for all the comments. My iniial thread started out with asking if VA would have handled this any different from BA. Denzil makes some good points and if the author of the 'the crew may have had specific instructions not to get involved' note was correct then I appologise for my comments about the BA crew. However I suspect there was no such instructions given to the crew, more, as Lizz suggested they basically couldnt care less - wasnt their problem.

iffores1 seems to think waiting 2 hours for a bus to take you to a hotel in the small hours of the morning isnt soi bad. Even after an initial 12+ hour delay and a 10 hour flight. I wouldnt like to travel on any airline he/she ever runs!

From reading the majority of stuff about this thread it does seem (PLEASE DONT GET REVVED UP) that the majority of posters are not looking at this through the eyes of the paying customer, the end user.

In the end it was a really bad experience and sadly it seems that many here dont think it would have been too different if it would have been with VA. Does this stop me booking with BA in the future?? Sadly not.

quote:Originally posted by dpscrest
Thanks for all the comments. My iniial thread started out with asking if VA would have handled this any different from BA


I'd be interested if anyone was on any of the VS planes that diverted as a result of the weather too. At least they were to the UK but didn't pax who were on planes that landed at BHX get bussed back to Gatwick?

quote:Originally posted by dpscrest
iffores1 seems to think waiting 2 hours for a bus to take you to a hotel in the small hours of the morning isnt soi bad. Even after an initial 12+ hour delay and a 10 hour flight. I wouldnt like to travel on any airline he/she ever runs!


It seems BA royally cocked up in MAD, diverting there might have been a sensible idea given an expectation that BA could rely on their soon to be merging parter for support. Seems that wasn't quickly forthcoming.

quote:Originally posted by dpscrest
From reading the majority of stuff about this thread it does seem (PLEASE DONT GET REVVED UP) that the majority of posters are not looking at this through the eyes of the paying customer, the end user.

In the end it was a really bad experience and sadly it seems that many here dont think it would have been too different if it would have been with VA. Does this stop me booking with BA in the future?? Sadly not.


I see it was a really bad experience. However you didn't help keep it to this theme by veering off with questions about the crew. Now that the role of ground staff is clearer, you should be able to direct your ir appropriately.

You are obviously very unhappy (and to be honest we all would be if it happened to us) at how BA handled the delays etc so I do hope you are taking it up with them in a calm and measured way.

In your OP you asked

quote: My question is what would Virgin had done in this situation??

If you were hoping that v-flyers would be able to provide you with some 'killer' evidence of what VS would have done in the same situation so you could say to BA 'well Virgin would have done X, Y and Z and you did not' then you were mistaken.

Only VS would know what it would do in any given situation and even then that would change on a day by day basis, and given the recent weather probbaly on an hour by hour basis.

Even if we did have chapter and verse from a VS operational manual for you, quoting it at BA would have got you very short shrift.

I'm guessing that their attitude internally (though they would phrase it differently in a response to you)would probably be on the lines of 'we dont honestly care what VS, LH, KLM, UA, AA, NZ etc would have done in the same situation'.

We are looking at what happned to you as the 'paying customer' and many of the comemnts reflect that but we can also see it from the airlines perspective of having hundreds of planes delayed or diverted though no fault of their own, with tens of thousands of (annoyed and angry) pax on those planes and the hundreds of flight crew that operate them working extra hours and then being out of place for their next duty periods.

Good luck with yoru complaint to BA and let us know what response you get. We really would be interested to know what they say to you.

cheers, cant be bothered to complain to ba it will get me nowhere, plus im sure they have bigger issues than mine to deal with.

i do appreciate that there isnt a printed standard answer in a manual that deals with my specific situation, i just wondered what was the general opinion of how VA staff would have dealt with it.

i think from the posts that its clear.

Dpscrest

Your whole BA experience in this instance has been a disaster albeit probably more down to weather delays and diversions which is out of their control.
You feel that the crew should have stayed with you or at least a represenative of the crew. Let me tell you that this would not happen with any airline, BA,VS or other. I am sorry if this is not want you want to hear but it is fact.

To have 1 ground crew member for Iberia deal with 300+ pax is wrong, full stop. The BA station mgr is responsible for BA flights and their duty alone whether they like it or not to deal with diversion and associated problems. This is where the failure is.

From the info you have provided I can only guess that you arrived late evening, 10pm plus.
The logistics of trying to find 200+ hotel rooms and 6/7 coaches does take time, especially as from what you say the BA team were AWOL, although I suspect they were quite busy trying to find you a bed for the night.

I have witnessed first hand many times pax suffering diversions having to sleep in the terminal and having to fend for themselves.

You mention 12hr delay before the flight. How did BA handle that situ. Was accomodation, food etc, provided? Was communication good or bad, were you kept upto date with info on what was happening?

Please take your complaint up with BA and do let us know how you get on.

I do not run an airline, but if I did it would probably be the best airline in the world[;)]

Iain

Iain,

You are right we arrived at MAD about 11pm lcl.

To answer your question BA gave no prior notice of the initial delay (12hr)in MIA. I found out on their web site. I then spent about an hour on hold to their call centre to ascertain some information. I was told that even though the five of us were travelling CW we should check in by 1845 HRS lcl eve though at time of calling the delayed departure time was now 0710HRS lcl next day. The call centre said if I failed to show up for check in at this time they would consider me a no show and I would lose my seats.

I spoke to my travel agent and they said this was nonsense so I didnt bother to check in until 0500LCL on the day of the flight. I wasnt offered any hotel accomodation or food etc.

On arrival to MAD, I got fed up waiting and decided after a few hours to make our own way to a hotel and pay for it myself. I also made my own way back from MAD and got a friend on the flight to collect my bags. I have no doubt that by not waiting around even longer etc i have waived any rights to compensaion, so frankly cant see the point of complaining.

Slinky - 'I'd be interested if anyone was on any of the VS planes that diverted as a result of the weather too. At least they were to the UK but didn't pax who were on planes that landed at BHX get bussed back to Gatwick?'

Hey Slinky, I was on the Vegas that diverted to Prestwick and then to Manchester. Three of our other aircraft went to Birmingham. No chance of domestic flights for passengers as LGW closed all day and LHR also suffering massive delays. Only alternative was for passengers to be bussed down to LGW.
The groundstaff were great, and had ordered buses which were waiting for pax airside and they had also arranged sandwiches for passenegers to collect as they left the a/c to take on the buses with them.

DPSCREST - Our crew weren't allowed off the a/c until two hours after the pax dismbarked, as ops were trying to work out what to do with us (hotac or buses to LGW). So as I said before the crew are at the mercy of the groundstaff and their own ops, we cant simply decide we're going to get off and go wandering around the terminal. Even if the BA crew had wanted to go and help the passengers they wouldn't have been allowed to. When we did get off we were escorted through the terminal by groundstaff, you're not left to your own devices at an unfamiliar airport.
Your situation at Madrid sounds like a total nightmare, but as I understand it, it was 11pm at night and BA groundstaff had already gone home. It might not have been possible for BA to actually get any of their own staff to the airport, so the poor Iberia lady may have been the only option. As for the buses, again its late at night so arranging buses for that many people would probably mean calling drivers at home and getting them to come into work, so again this is going to take time.
Last week was a nightmare for a lot of people, when you consider how many flights diverted and terminated at other airports, the logistics of trying to gat pax / planes and crew to where they needed to be must have been horrendous, and I can only praise out own staff at Manchester for doing such a great job. I'm surprised BA diverted into Madrid where they surely knew they would have limited resources and groundstaff but maybe it was the only option ATC gave them. All in all not a nice experience for you DPSCREST, and even worse that you were stuck in a foreign country.

thanks for that.

by the way i had a friend on vs6 on either 6 or 7 jan who was diverted into birmingham. they waited only 90 mins and were bussed to lhr.

[Scrooge]

quote:Originally posted by dpscrest
thanks for that.

by the way i had a friend on vs6 on either 6 or 7 jan who was diverted into Birmingham. they waited only 90 mins and were bussed to lhr.


Well that works, though I am guessing that busing you all to LHR would of sucked [:p]

[honey lamb]

quote:Originally posted by dpscrest
thanks for that.

by the way i had a friend on vs6 on either 6 or 7 jan who was diverted into birmingham. they waited only 90 mins and were bussed to lhr.

They only waited 90 minutes, you waited 2 hours. When I went to school that equated to half an hour's difference - not much in the great scheme of things. [:?]

you should have been an accountant. what a genuis you are!

clearly no point in postining on here with stupid comments like that. Yes virgin got passengers on the busses within 90 minutes. They also had their cases and were back at lhr 90 mins later.

On the other hand i was already delayed 12 hours, had a 10 hour flight, no bags and many hours later arrived at hotel. O and by the way it was another 15 hours PLUS before BA got all the pax to lhr.

Comments???

quote:Originally posted by dpscrest
Comments???



Whilst I wouldn't normally get involved in a thread like this, you've asked for comments, so here goes.

In your opening thread you asked :- 'My question is what would Virgin had done in this situation??' and one of your gripes seems to be that no crew stayed at the airport.

It has been explained many times, that

a: it isn't the crews job to look after passengers once disembarked. Its the ground crews job. (the same in any company - each department has its own responsibilitys)

b: arriving diverting into Madrid at 11pm was always going to cause problems with buses, hotels, bags etc. There is just not the same amount of staff about at that time of night to deal with problems.

c: don't think anyone is disagreeing with your thoughts that BA didn't handle the situation well

d: no one here (probably including the many crew that frequent this board) know what Virgin would do in the same situation

We all realise how frustrated and annoyed that you feel, but you yourself have said a few times that complaining isn't worthwhile to BA, so why continue with this thread - its turning into a 'dog with a bone thread'

Unless you vent your feelings to BA, the same situation is likely to happen again until they get their procedures changed - more and more people will be disadvantaged - just like you and your family, so like many others, I urge you to put your comments to BA to respond.

Just my opinion - of course we are all entitled to our own.

David

quote:Originally posted by David

Unless you vent your feelings to BA, the same situation is likely to happen again until they get their procedures changed - more and more people will be disadvantaged - just like you and your family, so like many others, I urge you to put your comments to BA to respond.

David


My thoughts exactly David - well said and put far more tactfully than I would have said!

The OP wanted to vent off frustration at BA and did it on here (and to a degree thats fine) but is not prepared to complain to BA - the only people who can give the OP any sort of proper answer or compensation.

I guess its the classic British Disease - moan and moan and moan about a problem (ond only give part of the information in the first place) to anyone but the people who caused the problems in the first place!

quote:

Originally posted by dpscrest

you should have been an accountant. what a genuis you are!
clearly no point in postining on here with stupid comments like that

yet you find it acceptable to make equally stupid posts?. whats sauce for the goose etc !

Missing the point. I'm no more looking for any compensation than I am likely to get any, I was simply seeking to understand from people wh frequent this board, in particular VA cabin crew if VA might have handled he situation.

The thread then went off at tangents (albeit by things raised by me) - so sorry - shoot me!!!!! I thought one of the points of this website was share and discuss experiences. Unbelievable.

My this has got out of hand (as is often the case!!!).

BA have a funny way of dealing with situations, seen flights recently diverted into Glasgow, Prestwick & Newcastle that the pax were offloaded to hotels with no cases etc. Some of the flights didn't then leave for a further 24 hours, i think they have weird & wonderful union rules that prevent them operating (that is further to flight hour restrictions). Also look at the amount of UK internal flights cancelled, can they really all be justified if BMi are still operating their flights!!! As has been said by hundreds recently 'is it any wonder BA don't make any money'!!!

[Decker]

I was given to believe that all the BA canx were because they only have something like 2 de-icing machines for all of T5?

To be fair to BA at around the time of our ETA at EGLL they were continually switching runways, closing one, brushing one etc. I know this because my firm literally just about managed to operate in and out of there at that time. They must have had a stack of diversions elsewhere in UK and even places such as AMS and I guess because of the time of day there may also have been issue of hotel rooms.

Irony is I flew back into STN (nearest airport to me) next day and saw a few BA 744's which had been diverted. I was gutted!

quote:Originally posted by dpscrest
.
Irony is I flew back into STN (nearest airport to me) next day and saw a few BA 744's which had been diverted. I was gutted!


They were probably full of passengers originally bound for Spain...[:)]

BA were still diverting LGW flights to STN last week. I saw a very disconsolate BA group in the terminal on my arrival there last Thursday evening. Given that BA has no presence at STN, I wonder who ended up dealing with them? At least they only had hopefully a short-ish coach trip ahead of them, though I did hear that the standard STN-LGW coach was taking 5 hours to do the trip.

Paul