It happened in the Fast Track Connection desk in Terminal 5A:
- Can I see your boarding pass ?
- yes, here it is
- Oh, you are on the A380...
- yes, I know, I saw it on Terminal 5C (the only BA one with gates with 3 jet bridges)
- No No, there is an issue with it, it leaves tomorrow at 8h00
!!!!
So I headed up for the connection counter, and the lady told me: "the sister flight (which leaves 20 minutes before my flight, BA operating double daily to HK, with a triple 7 and a one-week old Airbus 380) is full, I can re issue the ticket to fly with Cathay from Terminal3..."
That's the kind of cases where you need your brain to act fast, very fast... Ok, there is a 500+ people A380 which has been cancelled, the passengers will be rebooked to all other possible flights (which are normally 85+% filled already), and in such cases, do not think about asking to be compensated by an upgrade... because the A380 Biz class passengers are already overhelming the few biz class seats left in the CX 747, and are reaccomodated in Economy class on Cathay... So I've got the choice: travel in a middle seat in a super packed Jumbo Jet (of course, you can say bye bye as well to your window seat), or take a less crowded A380 tomorrow morning (*), missing Macau, but arriving in the early morning in HK for a connection to Fiji at 17h.
Ok lady, keep me on this European plane, no I don't want to collect my checked in bags, and yes I'd like a voucher for the shuttle and the hotel...
50 minutes later (this H56 shuttle ride was one of the worst nightmare I've ever had to live, stopping 5 times in hotels around Heathrow, where the driver had to steer carefully (it means sloooooooowly) his bus in the tiny hotel parkings, all this in a dusk that only UK can produce at the end of the year, you know, 17h and it's so dark you think you are in Hell), we were dropped at the Premier Inn, an hotel that believes it's upper class, but is in reality super greedy you've got only 30 minutes of free wifi, 3 Pounds for 24 hours, you can't borrow a travel adaptator at the reception, but buy one for 5 pounds... who has got pounds ?? Can't our UK friends move away from their 19th century currency to Euros?
Anyway, BA also gave me a voucher for a dinner: the soup was hot as the room is cold (heating doesn't work)
and the burger must have required several cows to produce a steak that big (the positive point is that the dinner was without doubt better and more comfortable than what I would have had in the plane :o) )
I will try to get some sleep, wake up at 4h00 to take my-friend-the-shuttle all the way back to Terminal 5. In the meantime, I will dream of BA Galleries lounge, with free wifi and international plugs...
(*)> actually, 2 minutes after the BA agent informed me about the delay, I've received a SMS and a mail saying the flight was delayed to 10h the next day : it's a good start, but in the mean time I already had a boarding pass issued for 8 in the morning... not consistent
- Can I see your boarding pass ?
- yes, here it is
- Oh, you are on the A380...
- yes, I know, I saw it on Terminal 5C (the only BA one with gates with 3 jet bridges)
- No No, there is an issue with it, it leaves tomorrow at 8h00
!!!!
So I headed up for the connection counter, and the lady told me: "the sister flight (which leaves 20 minutes before my flight, BA operating double daily to HK, with a triple 7 and a one-week old Airbus 380) is full, I can re issue the ticket to fly with Cathay from Terminal3..."
That's the kind of cases where you need your brain to act fast, very fast... Ok, there is a 500+ people A380 which has been cancelled, the passengers will be rebooked to all other possible flights (which are normally 85+% filled already), and in such cases, do not think about asking to be compensated by an upgrade... because the A380 Biz class passengers are already overhelming the few biz class seats left in the CX 747, and are reaccomodated in Economy class on Cathay... So I've got the choice: travel in a middle seat in a super packed Jumbo Jet (of course, you can say bye bye as well to your window seat), or take a less crowded A380 tomorrow morning (*), missing Macau, but arriving in the early morning in HK for a connection to Fiji at 17h.
Ok lady, keep me on this European plane, no I don't want to collect my checked in bags, and yes I'd like a voucher for the shuttle and the hotel...
50 minutes later (this H56 shuttle ride was one of the worst nightmare I've ever had to live, stopping 5 times in hotels around Heathrow, where the driver had to steer carefully (it means sloooooooowly) his bus in the tiny hotel parkings, all this in a dusk that only UK can produce at the end of the year, you know, 17h and it's so dark you think you are in Hell), we were dropped at the Premier Inn, an hotel that believes it's upper class, but is in reality super greedy you've got only 30 minutes of free wifi, 3 Pounds for 24 hours, you can't borrow a travel adaptator at the reception, but buy one for 5 pounds... who has got pounds ?? Can't our UK friends move away from their 19th century currency to Euros?
Anyway, BA also gave me a voucher for a dinner: the soup was hot as the room is cold (heating doesn't work)
and the burger must have required several cows to produce a steak that big (the positive point is that the dinner was without doubt better and more comfortable than what I would have had in the plane :o) )
I will try to get some sleep, wake up at 4h00 to take my-friend-the-shuttle all the way back to Terminal 5. In the meantime, I will dream of BA Galleries lounge, with free wifi and international plugs...
(*)> actually, 2 minutes after the BA agent informed me about the delay, I've received a SMS and a mail saying the flight was delayed to 10h the next day : it's a good start, but in the mean time I already had a boarding pass issued for 8 in the morning... not consistent
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