Holiday travelers dodged a bullet when a judge issued an injunction against a proposed British Airways strike last December.
Unfortunately that bullet was reloaded and has come back with the British Airways cabin crew union (Unite), calling a strike again, this time in two parts, March 20-22 and March 27-31.
The airline insists in emails to travel agents that their ‘door is always open to Unite” and they are trying to settle, but they have already preemptively canceled many flights this weekend.
As with many airline decisions and policies, these British Airways moves are a mixed bag. Details are updated regularly on BA.com. Here are a few highlights and lowlights of what the airline is doing.
The good things include their efforts to give travelers advance notice, and being flexible as to destination cities. For example, if a flight to Los Angeles is canceled, travelers can rebook to San Francisco. And if a flight to Florence is canceled it can be rebooked to Rome. (The airline is being relatively flexible with this rule — one client rebooked changing his destination from Entebbe, Uganda, to Nairobi, Kenya.)
British Airways also will allow a passenger booked in one of their four cabins to be rebooked in a different fare class, if it’s in the same cabin, with no price increase.
British Airways also claims they have arrangements with 40 other carriers to protect passengers in case there are no BA options.
And for passengers traveling during the second weekend of the proposed strike, the airline says at this point passengers can cancel and receive a refund.
That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news.
Passengers who take advantage of BA offer to rebook into a different city are on their own for transportation to their original destination and they will not be reimbursed for any other additional expenses caused by the strike disruption.
Regarding those 40 other carriers — passengers or their travel agents must call British Airways to have any chance of using them. The airline will not allow any movement of flights to other airlines to be done in agent computers. BA has not announced what 40 airlines are working with them; believe me, I tried.
The BA reservations agents just nicely say (if you can get through) that they have the information internally and it’s complicated.
Rubbing salt in the disruption wound, BA announced that clients who decide to get a flight refunds for next week, will have to start over with new reservations at the current fare if Unite and British settle. BA is putting their customers on the hook for their negotiations. Giving with one hand while taking away with the other.
Now for the ugly — stress and time lost. Passengers are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. And BA’s secrecy and penchant for mindless bureaucracy is making any decision making even more difficult.
For travelers and travel agents alike the hassles created by this mess are enough to knot a muscle. Anyone who had BA flights booked for March 27-31 is really in a tough situation. Should they book a new flight? Is it worth the extra expense to move the flight to another airline? How long will this strike last? Will the strike be canceled after one day like the Lufthansa pilots’ strike?
Those who bet that the strike will be short and decide to hold their tickets for the second tranche of strikes, their reward could be even higher fares should the carrier cancel flights next week. Especially since they will have lost the seven-day-advance-purchase fare window.
For those trying to rebook canceled flights this weekend (and as of Tuesday British Airways was still canceling flights), they must either try to navigate the BA.com website, or plan to spend a lot of time with the redial button and/or on hold.
Since British Airways will not post the the other airlines who have agreed to help their customers, and since such changes can ONLY be made by phone, there’s the added frustration of not even knowing if all the time dialing and redialing and waiting on hold is worth it.
For agents, it’s hours spent trying to find alternatives, hoping THOSE flights don’t get canceled, and spending hours on hold. British Airways also insists that all flight changes require reissuing tickets instead of sending the client to the airport with the original ticket. This takes more time and costs money as well as time — all uncompensated by BA.
No doubt BA will make some special marketing offers to customers, especially Executive Club frequent fliers, when the strike is over. As far as their agent partners, we are not holding our collective breath.
So far, at least, the strike appears to be more aggravating than disastrous. It isn’t a holiday week and it isn’t during summer peak season, so remaining flights are more likely to have some availability. However, next weekend’s scheduled strike will last four days instead of three and will be closer to Easter, so this could change.
It’s anyone’s guess, however, just how angry travelers will be as far as future bookings, especially those who had to pay for extra tickets to complete their trip.
This British Airways strike has relatively little impact on domestic travelers. But, get ready, American Airlines, one of the country’s largest carriers, is having concurrent labor issues with pilots, mechanics and flight attendants.
American’s flight attendants have indicated they will ask the National Mediation Board to start a 30-day cooling-off period that could lead to a strike. So, as far as dodging bullets, travelers may not be done yet. We may have a few domestic labor-management shootouts to deal with soon.
