Connecting off of an 8 hour flight from Chicago, and before a 4 hour drive north of Edinburgh, any sort of delay is inconvenient. It can be downright annoying when caused by some passengers complete disregard for others, and an airline’s reluctance to enforce guidelines intended to avoid he problems. In these circumstances British Airways failure to walk it’s talk when it comes to customers and service can be seen in stark relief. The reality is BA customer service is simply bad.
Every BA check in desk, and very BA departure gate has a frame to check the maximum size of carry on baggage, and a big sign explaining if your bag won’t fit the frame, it won’t get on the plane – check it in the hold instead.
Experienced travellers tend to understand there’s a point to this. Any busy flight will have trouble accommodating the carry on bags plus briefcases, lap tops, or shoulder bags allowed. The reason for the pre-boarding scramble is the difficulty passengers have in finding space in the overhead lockers close to their seat. And that’s when check in staff and passengers follow the rules. When they don’t mayhem quickly follows.
Nowadays every passenger seems to have a suitcase with wheels on the bottom- which makes it awfully easy to travel with the maximum they might need, as opposed to the minimum they will need. To paraphrase Parkinsons Law, which suggests work expands to fill the time available, – travel essentials expand to fill the space available.
Unfortunately the same trend has reached carry on bags. Cheap luggage manufacturers now sell what seems an infinite variety of bags with wheels on, so they’re easy to pull along, at a small enough size to fit in the standard overhead locker. Of course they won’t fit in the frame at the check in desk, but who cares. The label says its guaranteed carry on size, after all.
Now the occasional traveller can take even more junk on the trip.
Happy days for the pilgrims, but a real pain for everybody else – especially the cabin crew left with the problem of meeting on time departure targets, whilst keeping passengers who can’t find room for their bags, and others
And that’s where BA – the self proclaimed World’s Favourite Airline – crams too many passengers with too much luggage on shuttle flights with the minimum allowed turn around time.
The particular flight in question here was an hour late leaving – a lot for a one hour flight – which inconvenienced everybody. That was painful enough, but not as painful as watching the amazingly calm, collected and controlled cabin crew plead with passengers to take smaller bags out of the overhead lockers so the wheeled monsters could be put away.
At one point, there was a line of more than 10 of these abominations standing in the aisle. The passengers were seated, but there was no room for the bags.
The disaster plumbed comedic depths when the crew first announced these bags would have go in the hold if more room couldn’t be found, and then announced the luggage couldn’t be transferred to the hold, because that was full already.
