91–100 of 117 posts
These guys are poster children for outsourcing all their core IT functions far and wide. Seems to come back and bite them rather often now.
I was stuck in exactly this situation with my father last year going from UK to Portugal via Heathrow. Hundreds of people past immigration counters joined the lines to get back into the country, stuck in there for about 5 hours in an extremely congested, slow moving crowd. Some of the younger people were so outraged they took to Twitter and Instagram and began a campaign to refund and sue. About 3 hours in, BA decide…
> An exact repeat of this situation makes it seem like such failures are becoming routine for BA. An even more 'routine' practice is overbooking. In my latest trip to Warsaw (using Polish Airlines / LOT) they overbooked by 10 people in a plane with less than 100. We bought the tickets one month in advance and had reserved seats, but it seems until you check in you are not guaranteed to be on board. Truly disgusting p…
If the airlines were just required to never do this, they'd obviously have to increase ticket prices, the prices today factor in the reality that they overbook because it works fine most of the time. Ban it and the prices rise because the costs don't change but the number of tickets sold falls.
If you're OK with higher ticket prices, you can already buy a more expensive ticket, which will mean you're not going to get bumped (because involuntarily bumping people on a more expensive ticket costs them more money) so you can already experience this alternate world today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> An exact repeat of this situation makes it seem like such failures are becoming routine for BA. An even more 'routine' practice is overbooking. In my latest trip to Warsaw (using Polish Airlines / LOT) they overbooked by 10 people in a plane with less than 100. We bought the tickets one month in advance and had reserved seats, but it seems until you check in you are not guaranteed to be on board. Truly disgusting p…
What's "disgusting" about resource allocation? If the airlines were just required to never do this, they'd obviously have to increase ticket prices, the prices today factor in the reality that they overbook because it works fine most of the time. Ban it and the prices rise because the costs don't change but the number of tickets sold falls. If you're OK with higher ticket prices, you can already buy a more expensive…
Without this level of transparency it is impossible for me, as a single consumer, to make an informed decision about my purchase, because perhaps the most important part of the product--the likelihood of arriving at my destination at the time advertised on the website--is opaque to me.
What's worse, there is a moral hazard here, as the airline is incentivized to overbook by as much as possible to eliminate any possibility of an empty seat on the flight, while they are not legally obligated to inform customers of the degree to which they are overbooking. The market only works when information is free and complete. When an airline overbooks by such a large margin, it's a breakdown in the air travel market.
can they not just transfer passengers to other airlines
"Your flight is now operated by RyanAir on the original schedule. Expect an adjustment of price via the original method of payment". Or United.
[Controversial post] This is what happens when you treat "IT" as a cost centre and outsource it to India with TCS, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Accenture etc. In the case of BA; its Tata Consultancy Service (TCS). I can't comment on outsourcing to Phillipines, Ukraine or Malaysia. I've worked with two companies that did their outsourcing to India and it was a shitshow. First and foremost there is the cultural barrier, sure…
Delays and cockups are just a cost of doing business. If it gets too bad trust me people get fired and contractors change or companies go out of business. Customers don't know how good they have it, because of how competitive the environment is.
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Yes I meant more with government regulations, and as someone else mentioned having a backup plan for when there are technical difficulties.
The thing you're responding to _is_ a government regulation. Specifically the EU's regulation 261/2004. The EU has both Regulations (like this) and Directives. A Directive says that member governments need to make a law that achieves something, but leaves it to them to figure out the details. A Regulation (like 261/2004) doesn't leave it to national government, it's the same across the entire EU. BA were required (as…
I have a hard time imagining, say, EasyJet doing any sort of compensation they aren't required by law to do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes I meant more with government regulations, and as someone else mentioned having a backup plan for when there are technical difficulties.
The thing you're responding to _is_ a government regulation. Specifically the EU's regulation 261/2004. The EU has both Regulations (like this) and Directives. A Directive says that member governments need to make a law that achieves something, but leaves it to them to figure out the details. A Regulation (like 261/2004) doesn't leave it to national government, it's the same across the entire EU. BA were required (as…
[Controversial post] This is what happens when you treat "IT" as a cost centre and outsource it to India with TCS, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Accenture etc. In the case of BA; its Tata Consultancy Service (TCS). I can't comment on outsourcing to Phillipines, Ukraine or Malaysia. I've worked with two companies that did their outsourcing to India and it was a shitshow. First and foremost there is the cultural barrier, sure…
India was definitely the worst. I don’t think we ever reached a point where the work lost to that team (hiring, training, coordinating, spoonfeeding, mess cleaning) was outweighed by actual productivity from them. In other words, I had the feeling that they should have been paying us instead of us paying them.
Ukraine and romania were different. Still many problems inevitable to outsourcing, but at least the ROI made some amount of sense.
Still, I don’t think offshoring is generally worth it. I saw firsthand how the CEO was looking at only half of the numbers (wages) while they weren’t factoring in losses caused by offshoring. I tried to argue this with him at one point, and his argument basically boiled down to: all these big corporations do it, and they can’t all be wrong. I figure all the CEO’s think that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your time is at all valuable to you, I strongly advise not depending on the airline for anything. Book your own hotel immediately; don't wait for a voucher. Arrange your own transport to your destination; don't wait in an hours long line. You may be able to get compensation later, but the important thing is you'll have a place to sleep and arrive at your destination long before you otherwise would. Case in point..…
Were you able to get them to reimburse you for the rental car?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your time is at all valuable to you, I strongly advise not depending on the airline for anything. Book your own hotel immediately; don't wait for a voucher. Arrange your own transport to your destination; don't wait in an hours long line. You may be able to get compensation later, but the important thing is you'll have a place to sleep and arrive at your destination long before you otherwise would. Case in point..…
Reminds me of the Planes, Trains and Automobiles movie.
My original path was BHM -> ATL -> RIC. My friend and I were traveling back together as far as ATL, then he was going to a different city. We got a notification that the BHM -> ATL leg was delayed, and we'd miss our connections in ATL. That prompted us to rent a car and drive from BHM->ATL. We got the last car Hertz had, a $200 Cadillac, so we rented it. Two other guys from the same flight piled in the back of the car, and we drove to ATL.
In hindsight, it would have been better to just drive to my friend's city, since he was on my way home.. Skipping ATL would have gotten me home hours earlier.