Paid an arm and a leg — for squashed legs
I read “The big squeeze” (December 1), about plane seats and their width, with interest.
A year ago, my two adult children and I flew from OR Tambo to London and onward to Glasgow, both with British Airways.
We paid for premium-economy tickets for comfort, as I had had a thrombosis a few years before. The extra leg room and seat width on those flights proved to be what we had hoped and we had an excellent outward journey.
However, on our return journey, our Glasgow-to-London BA flight was late because of technical problems and we missed our Johannesburg connection.
BA had supposedly booked us onto an SAA flight (economy) but failed to issue tickets so that flight was also missed.
According to BA, there were no flights available for several days with their airline and eventually we were booked on Emirates to Dubai and then on to Johannesburg, both in economy.
So it was back to those narrow middle seats on both homeward flights and none of the comfort I had experienced on the outward journey. Our trip took a total of 30 hours. Fortunately my leg survived the trip.
We contacted BA for compensation but received what I call a standard letter of apology, quoting some European regulations and informing us that BA was not liable to compensate us. They did offer £50 (not each), which I declined.
Getting no joy from BA, we took our case to the Civil Aviation Authority at complaints@caa.co.uk.
They have advised us to be patient as there are numerous complaints relating to this new regulation, to which BA refers. So we are still awaiting the outcome.
BA’s service at Heathrow and in correspondence was extremely poor, disinterested and very disappointing.
Travellers beware: even if you pay for the wider seat, you may not get it, even where the airline is clearly at fault. — Maureen Sheard
British Airways replies: I was disappointed to hear about Mrs Sheard’s experience, particularly after she had such a good outward flight. On the rare occasions when flights are delayed, we try to make suitable alternative arrangements which minimise the inconvenience for customers. I’m not sure why, on this occasion, we were unable to re-book another British Airways flight, which is always our first alternative unless there are compelling reasons to do otherwise. Unfortunately I don’t have the details of Mrs Sheard’s bookings, but would be happy to look into what happened. — Sue Botes, commercial manager, Southern Africa