How will T5 fiasco affect BA Net Promoter Score?
I’m just off to buy some new knickers. I know this is supposed to be a professional blog but it’s pertinent to the situation I find myself in.
Last night I arrived in Vancouver having been on the first flight to this wonderful city out of the new Terminal 5 (T5). You’ve already read the news so I won’t bore you with the details. BA check-in staff were talking openly to us about walking out, baggage handlers were only to be pitied they looked so downtrodden, security men stopped us taking photos of the gleaming, impressive building and no-one involved in getting us onto that plane had the faintest idea about why the system wasn’t working. They’d had no training.
We sat on the tarmac for 2 hours and our wonderful Captain fought valiantly not to take off before our luggage was loaded. It never arrived so we left, the plane humming with stories of other BA flight disasters. The weary staff did their best to hide their shame and embarrassment to make us all comfortable. The T5 branded chocolates may have seemed like a great branding idea at the time but they went down like a lead balloon. Our stewardess just wanted to “flush these damn things down the bog”. Oh dear.
At this point BA’s Net Promoter Score was heading south faster than its stockprice. A member of my party, who flies internationally on a regular basis, says she will “never, ever, ever fly BA again”. As Willie Walsh says – it was not BA’s finest hour. But at this point I thought at least they had a number of touch points to start reversing the negativity. The first was the potential for the land crew waiting for us to help people with their onward journeys. I pictured an army of a dozen uniformed BA staff helping parents with 3 month old children to sort out buggy replacements, to take details of where our luggage should go, whilst warmly reassuring us (through conversations) that all would be well. We were met at the gate by one person who asked us to read a photocopied letter signed by “UK Customer Relations” (no sign of Willie). The letter announced that it hoped to return our luggage within 3 days and that we were entitled to “£35 to cover essential items such as socks, stockings, toiletries, shirts and blouses.” Was this written in 1959 when people still wore stockings and could buy 3 days worth of clothing and toiletries (let alone ski gear) for £35?? This was the straw that broke the camels back after a 13hr+ journey. One of my companions, usually a measured and calm influence in my life, gripped that sheet of paper until her knuckles went white and muttered about taking BA to the cleaners.
According to research by Keller Fay, each of us is likely to generate on average 62 conversations about this incident. Extend this to the 416 other passengers on board that’s 25,792 potentially negative conversations just relating to our flight. Now extend that to the 70 flights that were cancelled at T5 on Thursday and Friday and you get the picture!
Douglas McNeill, a transport analyst at Blue Oar Securities said he believed the financial impact of T5’s ‘teething problems’ on BA would be negligible. He’s missing the point. It’s not just the compensation claims that will cost BA, he’s not considered the huge impact of negative word of mouth that will be amplified across the Internet at breakneck speed.BA needs to start having conversations with passengers now – not fob us off with photocopied letters that ask us not to call them and clog up their phone systems. Imagine how much more personal it would have felt to have also been given access to a blog keeping us up to date with what was happening?
So here I am, in my hotel room, no clothes, no ski gear, no toiletries, off to see if Peacocks exists in Vancouver. Keep you posted as to when the luggage arrives!
Andrew, Geneva:
I couldn’t agree more. Last summer my partner and I flew from London to Calgary and Vancouver to London with BA. Both ways they lost our luggage and both ways were not even connecting flights.
BA’s flight from Heathrow to Calgary is a daily flight – just one-a-day. When we arrived I would say there were about 80 passengers out of 200 who had no luggage. All these people queuing to receive the insulting letter and the disgraceful 35 quid.
Now, the interesting thing was that a member of the ground crew at Calgary told us, confidentially, that it is like that with EVERY BA flight. EVERY FLIGHT…….
And the reason?
Get this…
Apparently, since BA gets more revenue from cargo they fill up the hold with cargo until they can’t get any more on board and then fill whatever space is left with luggage.
THe compensation they have to pay – 35 quid remember – is nothing compared to the money they receive by taking cargo rather than bags. Unless its First Class bags of course.
With a single daily flight to Calgary and the same ‘baggage’ strategy operating on each flight – you can see how this happens every day since they never catch-up with the back-log.
Of course – it goes without saying that neither me nor my partner will fly BA again – and we are both senior business-people who fly quite regularly with work.
They have no clue and deserve all they get.
28 March 2008, 4:08 pmLouis:
lol that’s hilarious, it really isn’t rocket science is it?
28 March 2008, 5:22 pmSoyab:
Surely there must be some EU, Montreal Convention, IATA etc etc rules that govern the minimum an airline has to pay per day of delayed baggage. BA cannot try to fob anyone off with 35 quid!
28 March 2008, 9:03 pmWhat if you had a serious business engagement or a wedding and you needed your clothes…not to mention skiing gear!
French Blue:
@Soyab
29 March 2008, 7:40 amSurprising isn’t it? No there aren’t any rules providing for serious compensation. That’s what pricy travel insurance is for. Welcome to the world of private enterprise…
FreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » The T5 Fiasco: some free advice on customer engagement for BA:
[...] About FreshNetworks « How will T5 fiasco affect BA Net Promoter Score? [...]
29 March 2008, 2:29 pmHelen:
@Soyab
29 March 2008, 2:55 pmIn fact as well as skiing, I am also going to two Weddings – so I’ll be casual! Latest on Montreal Convention is here http://tiny.cc/SKDth at the Ait Transport Users Council. Unfortunately there is very little to protect passengers.
FreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » How do you deal with critics online?:
[...] our posts on BA’s fiasco at Heathrow show (see here and here), it is how brands deal with things that go wrong and with criticism that really shows how [...]
2 April 2008, 4:33 pmNiki H:
We flew BA last week to get from Edinburgh via London to Miami for our honeymoon. Yes, that’s honeymoon. We were delayed in both directions and our bags lost both ways too. We returned to Edinburgh (eventually) at 3pm on Monday 30th. Here’s our story.
We have a young son, from whom we could only be away for one week, hence our honeymoon was relatively short & every minute very precious. We were attending the Miami Winter Music Conference and had rigorously scanned the events, reserved tickets etc. in advance. The delay to our journey & our luggage meant that we missed the event we had planned to go to on our first evening – the door policy did not allow jeans and that is what we had travelled in. We arrived on Monday night and had to spend most of Tuesday looking for clothes to wear (daytime & evening, not knowing when the bags would pitch up) on a budget of £35 each. Miami WMC is probably one of the most stylish events in the world so you can imagine how I felt literally not having anything to wear!
Our return journey took place on the weekend when the clocks changed, our scheduled connection at 11.15am HAD BEEN RECOMMENDED BY BA DESPITE THE CLOCKS GOING FORWARD MEANING THAT WE ARRIVED IN T5 AT 11.05, NOT 10.05!!!! We had absolutely no chance of catching it, even if the Miami flight had landed on time.
Upon arrival in T5, our connecting flight was delayed meaning it hadn’t left yet – hooray! We went to go through security only to be told that they had cancelled our boarding passes as we hadn’t arrived in time. Of course they had. No-one had thought that the flight might then be delayed, allowing us to board in plenty of time.
So, we were ushered to the customer service queue where around 100+ other passengers were queuing at 17 desks to be given alternative flights. Only 7 of these desks were manned while floor staff milled around forming small huddles and discussing how awful a day they were having. After waiting 30 minutes in this queue, I decided to ask whether any more staff were available to man the desks. ‘They’re all manned’ I was told. Upon correcting the BA lady she said she would find out if anyone was available, but never re-appeared. After waiting a further 15 minutes, I decided that we were going to miss the next connection to Edinburgh (at 13.15) if we didn’t do something. I went for a wander and discovered another queue just round the corner. I started to have grave misgivings so asked a passing BA lady to check that we were definitely waiting in the correct queue. Turned out we weren’t. We had been told to go to customer services for a new flight when in fact we had already been checked onto the 13.15, just nobody had bothered telling us that.
I realised that if we waited in this new queue to get through to board our flight, we would miss it, so I asked if there was anything she could do given we had already waited 45 minutes or more in the wrong queue.
She said and I quote ‘The problem is there are lots of other passengers in your situation so if I did it for you there would be a riot’. We discussed this for several minutes and I offered to try & retrieve my husband from the queue without alerting the other customers as to what was going on (we were desperate to get home to our son by this point!). She agreed so I called to my husband that there was a problem with our luggage and we were escorted out of that queue and through security. We had been chatting to another couple from Edinburgh in the customer service queue and needless to say they never appeared on the 13.15 flight.
Basically, if I hadn’t asked any questions and offered my own solutions to the problem, there is no telling what time we would have made it home.
Shame our bags couldn’t do the same, they still haven’t arrived!
3 April 2008, 1:26 pmGillianC:
I am surprised how calm this blog is. Bearing in mind, my wedding, was one of the weddings that Helen was attending it is incredibly calm and measured response to a very difficult situation.
This state of affairs also had some additional irony, at least for me, as I am an Agile Coach/consultant and had (note past tense) been singing the praise of the T5 project as being one of the best agile projects I’d come across (and to Helen – oops!). A 5 year, £4.3b project which was delivered on time and to budget. Incredible (simply compare it to Wembley stadium …. With my consultant hat on I am intrigued as to how this seemingly successful project has failed so spectacularly, it seems to me to come down to some key points (I have many more but I’ll try and keep it short):
Testing only shows the presence of bugs, never the absence. So whilst considerable time and expense was made on testing the T5 baggage system, going from testing to a a significant launch (where any defect could affect 100’s of people), does seem quite radical to me. Couldn’t a slow ramp up of the use of T5 been considered rather than lets ‘go for broke’?
Staff morale – it doesn’t matter what training or processes you put in place – if you have a seriously de-motivated team they will always find reasons why they won’t / can’t do things rather than seek solutions. The fundamental morale problems which appear to be within the core of the BA culture was always going to be serious risk to the T5 launch and was clearly not effectively managed..
Finally BAA is the owner and operator of T5 and in fact the baggage system which caused the problems. BA are getting it in the neck as BAA doesn’t have a the same kind of public facing profile – oh shall we all start feeling sorry for Willie? No see above point – they are equally as culpable!
Suffice to say, Helen and co ensured that I suffered a lot for my previous lauding of the T5 project and I shall watch with interest to see what emerges as the root cause of the problems.
But I do wish T5 a speedy recovery …
9 April 2008, 2:53 amFreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » American Airlines launches blog - an example for BA:
[...] our posts about what British Airways should have done during the T5 fiasco at Heathrow (see posts here and here), I notice today that American Airlines are doing what we advised BA to [...]
16 April 2008, 8:39 pmVW-T5:
yeah
3 February 2009, 12:18 pm