The meltdown at British Airways that stranded thousands of passengers last weekend led to such anger that some British Airways staff purportedly had to change out of uniform to clandestinely sneak away unharmed.
British Airways Meltdown Prompts Extreme Passenger Anger, Forces Staff To Remove Uniforms In Order To Escape
We speculated whether the IT meltdown, which began last Friday and marked the second in less than a week, could be traced to Russia (it came hours after the UK banned Russian airlines from its airspace), but it appears the culprit was just BA’s incompetent IT team, which has failed on many occasions since such operations were off-shored to India in 2016.
Nadine Houghton, a union officer representing British Airways ground staff, lay the blame directly on BA’s decision to outsource jobs:
“It didn’t have to be this way – but underinvestment in the business, plus the decision in 2016 to make hundreds of dedicated and loyal IT staff redundant and outsource the work to India are taking their toll.
“Moral[e] is at an all-time low after BA’s shameful attack on workers during the pandemic.
“Our experienced, dedicated and hardworking members fear this is now just the tip of the iceberg for the airline, with a summer of chaos now a very real prospect.”
The scaremongering is a bargaining tactic, but British Airways endured broad public condemnation during the pandemic for its attempt to slash wages and make workers redundant.
> Read More:
- British Airways Called “National Disgrace” In Bipartisan Smackdown From Parliament
- British Airways CEO Alex Cruz Cries Crocodile Tears
- Will A Blistering Note To British Airways CEO Change Anything?
After “significant technical challenges” affected ‘multiple British Airways systems,” thousands of passengers found themselves stranded last weekend. Passengers were (understandably) irate, but Houghton explains BA ground staff were spat at, suffered homophobic slurs, and were forced to watch as disabled passengers and babies slept in airport benches. Others felt compelled to shed their uniforms in order to escape the angry mob of passengers without harm.
British Airways has only managed a sheepish apology:
“We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience our customers have experienced and thank them for their patience and understanding during this incredibly frustrating period. We’re doing everything we can to get them to their destinations as soon as possible.”
CONCLUSION
The entire episode is a shameful reflection on British Airways, but also on the passengers who subjected ground staff to such vile treatment. While passengers were justified in being upset, even infrequent travelers should understand that deep technological issues are not to be blamed on frontline staff.
(image: British Airways // H/T: Paddle Your Own Kanoo)
Blaming frontline staff is akin to imposing sanctions on nations. It always hurts those who are not responsible.
But what else can be done?
@Matthew – Diverting the blame to Russia initially and then blaming offshoring to India in 2016 for an issue in 2022 is not helping. Can you not call out the BA management for their incompetency ?
Blank stares met with “call corporate to complain as we can’t do anything” and we wonder why staff feel endangered and hassled? No, it’s not their fault, but it’s also not an answer to meltdowns like this to simply be given a phone number to a call center that will ironically be in, India. There is a point where those in the C-Suite need to stop twiddling their fingers and ignoring both their front line employees and customers or else there is seriously going to be rioting at these airports this summer like we saw recently in Puerto Rico.
British Airways is reflecting the incompetence the airline had in the 70s!!! Yet the management seem to be incapable of putting in IT systems fit for the purpose of a 21st century airline.
Always cutting corners and not investing in upgrading systems is the corner stone of British life, but they will never learn and so the airline will continue to suffer until it collapses because people are fed up of the incompetent airline.
“The scaremongering is a bargaining tactic, ”
Hardly, it’s a plea on behalf of frontline staff, that are literally being spat at and worse, for the management to recognise and own the problem but more importantly fix it!
BA’s actions are still better than Spirit actually telling their employees to change out of uniform and run for their lives last year. It is low bar, I know.
A little bit of history: back in 2016,BA decided to chnage its PRS check in sys with a new one called Fly. The idea was that PRS albeit its efficiency was old, but also because its incredible flexibility made it very easy to manoeuvred (I heard tales of frauds regarding passenger traveling without correct tickets) . Also at that time BA had multiple sys managing the operations:ticketing, flight operations, baggage tracking, FQTV program, compensation, etc. Keeping track of all that was difficult, but manageable. They decided to create 1 giant sys capable to manage all that in order to offer customers a better experience and to reduce costs. Tatas was chosen for unknown reason seeing that they didn’t had any experience in that(Alex Cruz works for them now) . IT department was sack,assistance was moved to India. Fly prove to be an abysmal mistake. Nobody knew how to fix it. Incapable to admit mistakes, they brought Amadeus Altea as a back-up. That was the sys that works everytimes(this weekend included) , but not everybody is trained in it and not all stations have it. In the last years, committed in moving their back-up help in India, they moved the flight control from the airports, european( including those in UK) call centers were closed and everything was rerouted in India. I dealt with them just before departing: their incompetence is incredible, not to mention the language barrier.
We should have laws that stop companies from moving call centres to India!!! They just don’t work because very few know how to apply common sense and to use their own initiative.
Customers will eventually get fed up and stop using BA as you can’t speak to a person that can comprehend and fix a problem and/or their IT systems never allow you to make changes when something happens.
No mention if there was a security presence. This story would be much different if it went beyond spitting to physical harm. It is never OK to spit, hit or dive into a cursed laden diatribe, that speaks more to the character of one who has no qualms about revealing thug and in these days, racist tendencies. If BA is low balling staff and customers, when able, fly another air line. That’s something they may understand if it is significant.
Of course this is now the legacy of Walsh and Cruz who ‘maximised’ share holder value taking enormous bonuses out of BA themselves while under investing in the business. This was far from the first failure and it won’t be the last either because the investment needed to mend BA, if it is forthcoming, will take a significant amount of time to stabilise the IT systems. I wouldn’t book with them until this is done.
Gee, I’m really “looking forward” to my ACE-LHR-ABV flight on BA later this month now!
I too was caught up in last weekends fiasco at Heathrow. I arrived by car at t5 at 5.45am – only to receive a text and email 10 minutes later to say my flight at 7.45 was cancelled. I spoke to BA staff who booked me for same day at 4.10pm. I was given a £8 food voucher. At midday same staff said go airside. At 3.10pm the departures board flashed up cancelled, so I joined the queue of angry passengers. Their was just two staff working the desk and one asking firmly for some passengers to calm down. I managed to grab her attention and 15 minutes later she produced a hotel voucher and shuttle tickets. I thanked her and she thanked me for being calm and pleasant to her which is why she sorted my hotel quickly. As I walked away I received a text saying I was booked on the following day 07.45 flight.
I was semi lucky I guess – politeness does help!
The problem usually arises because they don’t communicate to passengers, which leads to anxiety and frustration.
She helped you because you were calm and polite is not the best customer service. They need to be able to process everybody and to calm the situation.
Observation regarding IT operation outsourcing. The old mainframes were so bulletproof that their danger was their reliability. Y2K happened because nobody thought the code would still be in use. Modern management busywork typically involves restructuring, otherwise, how to justify their huge salaries while they play golf to Game of Thrones jockey for higher positions?
The recent conflict between Russia and Ukraine makes me chuckle because that’s where the best hackers, and programmers, are who can do the work for a similar price point to India but it would be far more reliable. I have friends in Poland who work for British banks.
So why outsource to a place that does shoddy work? Because… planned obsolescence I think. Like the housing bubble collapse of 2008, executives cut deals, take their bonuses, and move on before the thing collapses. That’s the next administration’s problem to kick the can down the road. And heck, the next executive can then just move to another cheap outsourcer to “fix” the previous problem. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I’ll tell you a story of something I personally witnessed. There was a project at an old firm I’ll call “Leverage”. Leverage was supposed to get rid of the old mainframe which cost about $2 million a year to maintain but it did a lot: 5000 different workflows running in JCL. Some old guys managed it for a decent salary and they were reliable and nice so… OUTSOURCE THEM AT ALL COSTS.
So Leverage was designed to move all of it over to Linux Java and they’d dump the mainframers. About $20 million was allocated for the initial effort. Do the math on the cost savings above. The name of the outsourcers rhymes with BABA. The Java code was laughably awful. They wrote their own string conversion functions which already were in Java Libraries and tried to steal other code and pass off as their own. About $5 million and a year into it, they announced they had converted over… 20, repeat, 20 of the 5000 workflows!!!
So naturally, management declared Leverage a HUGE success. Threw parties and bonuses for the executives and those involved, and quietly buried it.
They then outsourced the mainframe to a company owned by a former presidential candidate from Texas who charges about… $2 million a year. Again, success!
ANYTHING to just reduce the employee count by 8.
In the meantime, they hired outsourced contractors by about 5:1 to do the work I did which meant they got rid of the cubicles and packed them in 5X. Yeah, the opposite of above.
When I watch Office Space, I marvel that I thought that movie was awful and it couldn’t get worse. I was wrong.