British Airways
reviews and complaints

Good day,

I seldom have the opportunity to fly with British Airways. However, this past Sunday upon my return flight from Cape town - 6410 my service experience from this airlines in flight crew was aweful.

I slept through most of the flight but woke up to the airhotess arguing with one of the passengers. The passenger was complaining about how loud they where taking throughout the flight. The Airhostess [Lucy and Beverly] shouted at the passenger that he should send an email if the service was not up to his standards. Then as soon as he walked away she spoke very loudly so most passengers could hear: 'this thing that the customer is always right is crap' and if that was not bad enough when the gentleman approached her she turned her back on him and said Í wasn't talking to you - you can write an email.' Sadly this behaviour ruined my trip. Not only was their behaviour utterly rude, but very disrespectful.

You would expect this from a low paying airline, but not from British Airways.

I am in the service industry myself, but his was ridiculous. They where so rude I would not employ them to wash toilets in case I had guests that might interact with them.

Really not impressed...

Nadia van Vuuren
[protected]

I had to face discrimination and racisim in my flight back to Kuwait from Heathrow (London) on 30th June 2013. When i asked the crew member that i need veg. meal and she said sorry sir but its finished and i was just sitting in 3rd row from where she started distributing the meals, so i just had juice and water but in next row when a lady argued on same topic, so the same crew member gave her the veg. meal which really shocked me that how can an Airline of this standard have staff/crew members who are racist and donot bother about the passengers on flight.I want someone to please forward this complaint in any newspaper in U.K.Because this is not acceptable that a member of an airline like British Airways decide to give meals on passengers color and race.
This is not acceptable at all, i am preparing to take legal action against British Airways but need someone to forward this news to any british newspaper aswell.

Yesterday, my husband and I flew back from London to Newark on British Airways. This was part of a longer trip from Hungary. Our flight from Heathrow was full of high school students on a holiday. They seemed to be unsupervised. My husband and I were in the middle section with three seats. Four students sat in the three seats behind us. They moved about constantly and frequently kicked the back of my seat. When I asked the girl behind me to stop kicking she made a face and said my backrest was too close. At that time she had her feet on her seat and her knees against my backrest. When I complained to the stewardess she said there was nothing she could do. The plane was full. Why were four students allowed to spend the entire trip in three seats? I think the stewardess should have had the students return to normal seating. She could have asked the chaperone to take my seat. I wonder how long they would have put up with the kicking. I have arthritis and for me the entire trip was miserable. High schools students know how to act better and should be held responsible.

I searched for flights to washington as specified in the image attached below,
It showed on usaflights.co.in that we can get the return flight tickets @ Rs. 43860 as on the specified dates
but when we proceeded for the booking and payment, it wasnt getting executed Why ?
I want the tickets @ the price mentioned in the photo proof...
Why are they asking for extra money, Reply as soon as possible...
Shall i assume that British Airways is also a fraud company ?

I booked two tickets through the British Airways web site. Unfortunately I had to cancel one of the tickets so I called within 24 hours to cancel. The customer service representative told me he couldn't do anything because the system was down.

I called back later only to be told I was outside the 24 hour period to cancel my ticket. I explained what had happened but two BA representatives told me there was nothing they could do so I couldn't cancel the ticket and had to absorb the loss. The representatives were also extremely rude and condescending.

I am looking for an apology and a refund on my cancelled ticket.

At my recent flight from Milan to Toronto at Pearson Airport I was informed that my luggage was left back in Milan. During my stay in Toronto the online page never changed "tracking continues" but to my surprised after 4 days I was called by an agent confirming my luggage by identifying the contents!? To my relief the luggage was found and was going to be sent the day after. That day never came when I was in Toronto! On my return 7 days after I contacted the customer service at Heathrow Airport as it was my stopover destination. They said that the luggage was at the airport (never sent to Toronto!) and will be sent back with the next flight (!) to my Milan address. It has been 3 days and there is no news from my luggage. Are they messing with me! I feel lucky because I was visiting my family but all week I had to go around with the same outfit...now I want my stuff back !

We went through the complaints procedure after horrendous flights to and from the USA. On the return journey we upgraded from economy hoping to have a quiet relaxing back to the UK. The seat in front of me collapsed when the passenger reclined and fell onto me. I picked a window seat hoping to sleep but then had to move to an aisle seat with trollies and all and sundry walking backwards and forwards. There were other problems as well which were all documented in the complaint. Unfortunately BA do not take complaints seriously and the only compensation was vouchers for their online shop or flight vouchers. We accepted the flight vouchers only to find that they picked an airport on the other side of the country from where we live for the flights to start from. Being disabled we pick our holiday destinations including flights very carefully but obviously slipped up on this one. I expect we were a subject of great merriment in the BA office.

Below is a letter I wrote to British Airways about 4 weeks ago. After a weekly follow up, I have still not heard back from them. I wish none of this on you so I thought I would share my story to help you really think about using BA again.

"To whom it may concern,

My wife and I recently flew from London to Singapore (Flight BA 0011) on our immigration flight to Australia and I was very disappointed in the experience we received from British Airways.

There was a series of issues which left us shocked from an airline of your class and calibre. I work in advertising and I know from your marketing that the BA brand stands for heritage and quality. This was not what we experienced.

Below is the series of events that took place on this one flight:
1) Our travel agent, who booked our flights, confirmed that BA does not allow extra baggage for those who are immigrating. This was fine because our TA (travel agent) was informed that it would cost an extra £34 for an extra 23 kgs and another £34 for a set of golf clubs; and this would have to be booked by ourselves closer to the time.
My wife and I were happy to cover this additional cost.
A week before we flew, we called up BA to confirm our additional 2 items of baggage that we wanted to take with us on our flight and pay £68. It was here that we were informed that the £34 refers to only one leg of the flight and that we would have to pay additional fees (estimated AUS$120 per item of additional luggage) with Quantas for the 2nd leg of our flight.
With this new news, we contacted out TA who in turn contacted her BA contact who also informed that this was now the case and we would have to cover both legs which at this point went from £68 to roughly £224 ( this is an estimated cost). This significant increase in expense was not something we had expected and as we were immigrating, we did not have the option of leaving these items in the UK.
We decided to contact our shipping company and get a quote from them for air freight of these items as we were unsure that the eventually cost of taking these items may increase. We were quoted £350.
At this time, we had lost confidence in the process and also with the knowledge that airlines are famous for being very unpredictable in additional baggage costs, we decided that we had to go for the guaranteed cost of £350.

To summarise, BA informed our TA that 2 x additional luggage would cost £68, in the end we had to pay £350 to guarantee a fixed price.

2) We arrived at the terminal and joined the queue and were in good time. Because of the long queue, I decided to use the self-service check in. This worked fine and the slip came out, but said that no seats were able to be given. I asked one of your CS people what this meant to which he replied "sorry, but our plane in overbooked and would you be able to stay in a hotel tonight and fly on the next available flight?". Obviously, as we were immigrating and not taking a holiday where we could afford to take an extra day off, I replied to say that this was not an option for us and we needed to be on the flight.
Thankfully, he was able to find some seats which allowed us to fly to Singapore.

3) We took off on our 12hr night flight and were quickly served dinner, however by the time we received ours, the chicken based meal had finished and we were forced to eat the veggie pasta. Neither my wife nor I are fans of veggie dishes, but we were left with no choice to eat pasta.

4) During dinner, we attempted to start to use our inflight entertainment and watch a movie however ours and the seats in front of us had no working entertainment. Eventually it became clear that there was about 15 seats with this same issue.
The stewardess said that there was an issue and they would quickly reset the system and it would be working shortly. 20 minutes later, we enquired to why it was still not working and was told to give it time. Dinner was cleared away and the lights dimmed, we still had no entertainment.
Another enquiry to the stewardess resulted in that the engineer was looking into it.
Now, about 2hrs into our flight, and with no proactive efforts about informing us about the inflight entertainment, the cabin lights were switched off for the night and to "please kindly use your reading light if you wish to continue reading".
In addition to our inflight entertainment not working, neither was our reading light or our call button. I have never been able to sleep on planes and had bought a book from duty free that was going to last me the flight. Now, I was not able to read it nor was I able to call the stewardess and ask for an update using the call button. On top of this, the lady sitting on our aisle seat got comfortable and fell asleep which hindered us even more as we could not get out.
I was now being forced to sit on a 12hr night flight with no entertainment, reading light or ability to ask for a drink of water. This experience was similar to what I imagine an inmate must feel like in prison after lights out, except he had the comfort of a bed while I had a cramped, uncomfortable seat! I had to suck it up.

5) Shortly before our decent, the Head Steward came thought and apologised to all the passengers who had experienced these issues and offered £50 compensation each.
Just to put this into context, we were being offered £4.16 for every hour we were forced to sit in the dark without any form of entertainment, a reading light, or even being able to ask for a drink. A person working in London cleaning public toilets on minimum wage gets more than £4.16 per hour.

6) 3 weeks later, my wife receives her vouchers in the post to spend on the BA duty free website. To add insult to injury, she has only been sent £30 instead of the £50 she was told she would receive. My vouchers have still not arrived, "they must be in the post".

As you can see, our experience on "the world's favourite airline" was definitely not enjoyable.

I am pretty laid back and tend to let most things slide because the world is not perfect and sometimes things go wrong. But this was not one thing, it was not two things, it was a series of poor, unprofessional instances that should not have happened. And to be given £30 (or the £50 you promised each) compensation for this is not acceptable in my book, or nor would it be acceptable in yours if this was your experience.

This was meant to be the beginning our new lives and we paid extra for the comfort and quality of flying with BA, someone that installs trust and with a heritage that you are above and beyond.

I'm sorry BA, but this is not acceptable. I am writing to you to share this with you in the attempt that you do not let this happen to other passengers and also to re-negotiate your poor attempt at compensation for this experience.

My wife and I were seated in 43 J and 43 K, (I think those were our seats, I am not quite sure) but you will have a record of it. We flew on Friday 29th June at 8.30pm. Flight number BA0011.

I look forward to a quick reply and resolution to this as we would like to move on and put his behind us.

Kind Regards

PS - On a side note, when I woke up on that Friday morning, my wife proudly walked into our room to show me that she was 2 weeks pregnant with our first child. We were both over the moon and so happy, this was going to be the start of a great new life.
Sadly, she mis-carried the day after we landed. I guess the flight and moving was too much. "

british airways flight was delayed and BA staff over a 3hr and 21min back and forth on the phone refused to assist in any way to change my ongoing flights. I ended up having to pay Aer Lingus to change my ongoing flights. The BA flight was 4 hours delayed which meant I would miss my ongoing Aer Lingus flight. What followed was over 3 hours of BA sayng we can't help and contatc Aer Lingus. Aer Lingus saying that BA is causing the delay to my itinerary and they have to change the ongoing flights to ensure I reach my destination. I finally gave up and asked Aer Lingus to change my ongoing flights and I would pay. Aer Lingus were great and waived the change fee and I only had to pay the fare difference for catching a later flight. I will never fly with BA again. Anyone but BA going forward.

Re : Miu Yee Emily, So, BA ref.: 343JUQ

I would like to complain against The British Airways customer support staff " NIRMALA" who is a customer service staff at British Airways counter at Heathrow Airport terminal 5 on 11th June, 2012.

The incident happened on 11th June, 2012 at Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 British Airways customer service counter at 8:00pm.

After calls to Britsh Airways customer service and I had been declined to offer help to change date of flight, I drove and showed up in Heathrow airport terminal 5 and handed in my ticket with BA reference no. and asked help from the customer service staff "Nirmala". I requested her to change my flight to 14th June, 2012 and I can pay the penalty GBP 100 and asked them to reissue a new ticket for me.

The working attitude of Ms Nirmala was very rude against me and she said few of their BA customer service staffs had explained to me on the phone that they could not change flight for me. She said that she was sitting at the counter there not to listen to me talking my flight changing date. Although I have explained to her that the Hong Kong ticket agent had closed and it was midnight in Hong Kong. And the flight that I want to cancel was BA027 on 11th June, and was going depart UK 2 hours after. She said this was my responsibility to find help from Hong Kong ticket agent to issue ticket for me and none of the British Airways business.

She told me that British Airways could not help and told me to aboard the flight at that time or this ticket would be voided.

After repeated request for help, she refused and insisted that she could not help. Lastly, I asked her to cancel my flight on 11th June BA27 22:00. And also asked her to book a seat for me at 14th June BA27 22:00 and left Heathrow Airport in very disappointed to British Airways.

How can British Airways Airlines offer such a bad service to their customer ? Why they cannot offer better services as other airlines, eg. Cathay and Virgin.

I have experience to change flight in UK from Virgin and Cathay Pacific Airways. The customer service of Cathay Pacific and Virgin Airlines are very friendly to help after keying in my ticket reference no. and easy to change flight on phone by paying penalty GBP 100. Immediately the customer can give me the solution on phone.

I am very disappointed to British Airways Airlines and I shall tell my friends not to consider taking BA as their wishing airlines list.

Emily

As a normal Business Class passenger without a Loyalty Card or with a Loyalty card (Executive Club) with low Status (Blue ) - British Airways only allows seating on their HIGHEST prices not their Discounted prices. While I understand this for economy Class, , I DONT for Business Class. Anyone who is paying today's fares should have access to their preference if available being Aisle or Window. British Airways don't want to make their product fully available to anyone but their Frequent Flyers. They trap their Frequent flyer by little room to use their miles so it is a very smart way of collecting high yield by use of force in the way explained earlier. It is a Disgrace for an Airline who used to Fly to Serve! I hope to see the end of this airline one day as it is New Age Imperialism that makes an airline like this too big for it's boots and a disgusting attitude toward travel agents too. Better On a Camel is better than this Bloody Awful English Airline.

Back in August 2011, I made a group travel booking (10 people), with British Airways (London-Las Vegas), for June 2012, for which I paid a 10% deposit (the remaining amount is due 26 March 2012).

The company then required that I booked the other leg of the trip (Lisbon-London) separately, seen that "only" 9 of us are completing that leg and the group bookings are for 10+ people. (I did so, and straight away paid 100% of the cost of those flights).

On 11 Mar 2012, one of the group members had to cancel.
We contacted BA and informed them of the cancellation, assuming that the passenger, as per the terms & conditions, would loose its own deposit.
They informed us that, seen that we would not be 10 anymore, but 9, we would lose ALL the deposits, so our best option would be to find a replacement passenger.
We weren't happy with this obligation, but we managed to find another passenger to join the group.
They now seem to have processed the name change, for the LON-VEG flight only, but refuse to do the same name change in the LIS-LON flight.

I understand that the conditions for a regular booking (non-group booking) don't allow name changes.
However, seen that this is a group of 10, that both flights are, in the end, part of the same trip, and that the name change is only required because BA themselves asked us to find a replacement, I strongly believe that BA should make an exception (which they can make, as long as they decide to).
I have tried contacting BA in several ways (groups department, reservations, customer service, Lisbon airport office) and none of these helped me or even accepted an escalation to a manager.
This is meaningless for the company, but a big customer dissatisfaction issue for me.
I'd like to see someone look at this holistically and feel that I'm treated as a person/passenger/customer, not just a booking reference.

In case this is not resolved, I am now looking at competitors options and considering cancelling this with BA (10, 000 £ business loss), plus never traveling with BA (which I do, at least 3 times a year), plus advising the approximately 50 guests, that are traveling LON-LIS this summer, for an event I'm organizing, to use another airline.

regards

Had two tickets issued Nassau-London Heathrow unfortunately owing to the demise of a close relative had to change departure date to attend funeral. advanced the flight by 6-days. Requested BA should refund the cost of issuing new tickets nothing more, two tickets under US$400.00. Their response basically offering condolences and no refund.

I traveled on 23rd Dec 2012 through British Airways from London Heathrow to New Delhi from flight No BA0143.
I am Pure Vegetarian Hindu person. I preferred Hindu Vegetarian meal in the itenary.
But the crew member rudely just put non vegetarian meal on my seat and did not inform me.
Fortunately I checked that it is non vegetarian meal, so I asked to change it. But crew staff told me that there is not any type of veg food available in the flight.
When I raised complaint through their customer relations they even did not give any compensation for that. I was feeling hungry for 12 hours. I did not get any food since morning in London till late night in Delhi.

My husband checked our bank account on Friday morning, before we were due to leave town. A little while later, deciding to pay a bill before we left, he logged in again. Imagine our horror to discover that someone in LONDON used our debit card to buy airline tickets in excess of $1100! As it was still a "pending" transaction, Chase bank told us to call British Airways to stop the charge. They were the rudest, most ignorant, disrespectful idiots I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with. Did you know that without the flight number, they can't/won't fix any problems? Since I did not purchase the ticket, how would I have the flight number? I also have proof I was NOT in London to purchase the tickets! I was at work in Oklahoma City! So now I have to wait, while someone is trying to destroy my credit.

having loaded our overhead lockers and taken our seats the BA stewardess decided to move around stuff in the overhead lockers - against our suggestion she put wine bottles in first then a bag she did the opposite, when the plane took off from Singapore to London the wine fell out
and struck me on the head cutting my head open, lots of blood and mess -- stewards were great i suppose realising the trouble they could be in, however no upgrade or anything mentioned, i did not even receive a report or any thing once id left the plane --disgraceful

From BRITISH AIRWAYS PROMO
Reply-to [protected]@hotmail.com
Date Fri, Aug 22, 2008
Subject ANNOUNCEMENT OF OUR WINNERS (BRITISH AIRWAYS)
mailed-by googlemail.com

CONGRATULATIONS!

This is to inform you that your e-mail address which was picked through a wheel of fortune selection won a total prize of £350, 000.00 (Three hundred and Fifty Thousand Pounds Sterling)

This is in preparation to boost our popularity and to ascertain your huge turn-out and support for this Airways and to Help us become the world best and most popular Airline.

This is a legitimate Company and your e-mail provider supplies us with e-mail addresses of their subscribers which we randomly select two (2) e-mail addresses monthly.

To claim this prize,

Fill and send to our officer with the details below to start your claim process.

Full name:
Winning email:
Occupation:
Country:
Telephone number:
Age:
Sex:
Home address:

Officer's Name: Mr. Mike Cook.
E-Mail: [protected]@hotmail.com
Phone number: +[protected](forwarding number)

Regards,
Dr. Christopher Gate.

British Airways, along with Chase Credit Card Company has misled the American Public with false advertising for their credit card. Here is the evidence:

1. www.chase.com/britishairways is the URL for the credit card that British Airways is advertising.

2. A few months ago, their advertisement stated that if you subscribe to the card (which costs $95 a year); and spend a $ 5000 in 2 months - you would be entitled to a free ticket worth 25, 000 miles.

3. I subscribed to the card and spent the required amount of money. I received an email from Chase informing me that I am now entitled to this ticket.

4. My girlfriend did the same thing and subscribed to her own card.

5. When we went to procure the "free" ticket, we were horrified to find out that BA had added $ 528.84 for taxes and 'fees'.

6. An economy class ticket on BA to London from Washington Dulles travelling in November 2011, was being quoted at approx. $ 720 on various websites including their British Airways. Those included all fees and taxes.

7. This then meant that the "free" ticket's value for getting their card, was actually less than $ 200 and after you deduct the cost of the card at $ 95 - the actual value of their ‘free’ ticket was $ 105.

8. In order to then 'select' a seat, which is normally standard for all airlines at no additional cost (including BA on their site) – because this was a ‘free’ ticket I had to pay an additional $ 60 for the seat!
9. So, the net savings for the "free" ticket that BA was advertising ended up at a whopping $ 45!

If there was ever a false advertising and an intentional misleading of the public - this is a great example. This is a rip off and they need to be stopped.

Our issues center on Heathrow Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 transits, lost luggage, rushing long distances and poor assistance with wheelchair/special needs.

From our experience, we are concerned that the Olympics in 2012 will be a shambles, for anybody transiting through Heathrow. Our holiday was ruined by the fact that our baggage did not make the flight on both legs of our journey. BA should not permit bookings with less than a two hour transit, especially with baggage transfers through Terminals 3 and 5. On the onward journey, our schedule gave us an hour and a half to get to the Terminal 5 gate for Rome, but the flight was delayed by 10 minutes and there were additional delays in getting to the aerobridge due to congestion, which effectively left us with less than an hour to get there, including waiting for the bus, train and walking long distances. (I had contacted the cabin crew an hour prior to landing to see if we could move nearer to the front for landing, but they assured us that we'd have plenty of time.)

I literally had to run to make the next flight. My wife could not run for medical reasons, and I had to ask the ground crew to wait for her. The amount of walking involved was unrealistic after a long-haul flight of this kind. To make matters worse, our baggage did not make it to Rome, and as a result, we had to wait in the airport for the next flight, which was effectively a 3 hour delay. This meant that we missed our excursions for the day.

We wanted to avoid the same experience on the return trip. We had planned a short break in Singapore and we wanted to avoid our baggage being delayed again, so we tried to call BA. It was impossible to get through on several occasions. We contacted our travel Agents, Flight Center who told us that BA would not change the Aberdeen flight to an earlier flight without paying about 210 Pounds Sterling from memory, as 90 minutes was considered sufficient time for the transfer. We decided to take the chance, but ordered a wheelchair for my wife to avoid the stress (she has cancer) of a repeat rush between the terminals. The check-in staff at Aberdeen Airport were very helpful. They advised us that we would be met at Heathrow with a wheelchair and they even gave us a seat near the front to avoid delays in getting off the flight. While we were booking in our baggage, the check-in person told us that there was an alarm that stated that our baggage could only be checked through to Heathrow because the transit time was too short. She made a phone call and was told to check it through to Singapore anyway. We told her that we had made every effort to get an earlier flight, but was advised that we had plenty of time.

We got to Heathrow exactly on schedule but there was nobody to meet us. We walked to the information desk near the gate and they advised us to wait at the seats for a wheel chair, explaining how tight our connection was. 12 minutes later, one of the air hostesses came up to us and gave us a wheel chair and told us to hurry or we'd miss our flight. The attendant at the customer service desk told us that he had phoned through to Terminal 3 and that there would be somebody waiting for us. When we got to Terminal 3, we checked at the Special Assistance desk after getting off the bus. Nobody knew about us, and they had to organise a wheel chair. This took another 8 minutes. By the time we got through security, we only just made our flight, only 5 minutes before the scheduled departure time.

When we got to Singapore, we waited for our baggage. It hadn't made it (no surprises there) and we contacted the lost baggage department. They were extremely efficient. Apparently, this is a daily issue with Heathrow, and there were approximately 12 people with the same problem. It appeared that most (possibly all) had transited through Heathrow. They assured us that our bags would arrive the next morning. They actually arrived at our hotel room at 10:30pm the following night, and we had two nights in Singapore, so effectively we had them for the day we were checking out. My wife has a fuller figure, and it's almost impossible to get swim-wear for her in Singapore, especially with the 35 pounds we were given. We booked in to the Marina Sands Hotel, and one of the attractions was the infinity edge swimming pool on the roof. My wife never got to use that because of the baggage delays and the fact that she slept in on the final day.

So we're really not very happy with BA at the moment. The service on the flight was also mediocre. The highlight was the last leg to Australia, and the service was much better on this leg. It was a Qantas code share.

To end on a positive note, BA's coffee improved dramatically between the outgoing and return flights. On the outgoing flight, it tasted a bit like a mild detergent solution. It was the worst beverage described as coffee that I'd ever drunk.