It was not too much fun. My family (not me) was traveling on the 8:30 a.m. flight to London but the flight was delayed. They kept promising more information until around noon when they finely canceled the flight. There was a mechanical problem. Even if they had been able to fix the problem union regulations would have prevented the crew from serving on any possible flight on that day.
They were told to go to immigrations, re-enter Kuwait, collect the luggage and go back to the check-in counter rebook their trip. When they arrived at immigrations they were told to go back to emigrations to get the exit stamp canceled. When they got there they were told to go back to immigrations to cancel the stamp. Finally someone opened another counter to cancel the exit stamps.
They made it to the check-in line around 1:00 p.m. and I joined them at around 2:30 p.m. At about that time they were given a sheet of paper with an apology and numbers they could call to reschedule if they wanted to avoid the line-up. Click here to see the letter that was given to the passengers. The problem was that the call center was closed because it was Saturday after one o’clock. The passengers were offered the option of leaving their boarding passes with contact phone numbers with a promise that they would be contacted to rebook. This seemed pretty iffy. The only other option was to call UK British Airways office at our own expense. Finally near 4:00 p.m. we reached the counter and were able to reschedule two days later on the same flights. Others were less fortunate. One woman was trying to get to Mexico and was offered a five leg journey. She had to take it because she only had a transit visa for Kuwait. Some people waited for over an hour before the agent could find them another booking.
The most frustrating part about waiting was that many others felt that it was just fine to bypass the queue. As a result they watched the line-up behind them shrink as quickly as the one in front. We were in the last 1/4 of the line when we were finally served even though we started in the front 1/3 of the queue.
During the entire wait between 8:30 when the plane was supposed to depart to the time we got our new booking at 4:00 we were offered one refreshment.
There were no British Airways people present, only the local agents with NAS (National Aviation Services) that do check-in and other services for several airlines. The whole affair left a bad taste in our mouths. Mechanical problems happen and we are happy that these problems are found and dealt with so we are all safe. But the passengers deserve to be treated like valued paying customers not like inconveniences.
