Dear British Airways,
I have all this money here, and I’m wanting to spend it on you. Why, oh why, are you making this so difficult?
Why are you allowing me to choose a city for my departure when you don’t even fly out of that city? If you don’t fly there, and your route map clearly shows you do not fly there, don’t let me choose it as my departure city!
Stop getting my hopes up like a bad prom date. Why not offer me a departure city of Funkytown, arriving on Mars?
Geert Heremans
on 09 Sep 08All who think that the error message in itself is very unclear say aye.
AYE!
PS: Have a nice trip to Spain Sarah.
Berserk
on 09 Sep 08Well, since Jerez is less than 100km from Seville I assume (yes, I know, I know) that they have bus transfers scheduled to match flights from/to Jerez.
Enjoy Spain, though :).
Taylor Hughes
on 09 Sep 08FWIW, they might have British Airways tickets for flights “operated by” other airlines. I booked a British Airways ticket to Barcelona, for example, operated by Iberia.
SH
on 09 Sep 08@Taylor – their route map includes flights operated by other airlines.
Taylor Hughes
on 09 Sep 08Well then! Maybe that dropdown is powered by their hopes and dreams :)
Tanner Christensen
on 09 Sep 08Every time I type “Jupiter” into the destination on Orbitz.com, the results always let me down. Maybe someday, they say. Someday.
Eelco
on 09 Sep 08Just be happy that you didn’t get as far as actually booking the flight and having to check in using their portal. That will really get your emotions running (ie. you can select a seat while checking in, but suddenly, your seats are fixed and you’re on to the next stage). By the way, you should check www.seatguru.com for your seat, it helps me everytime for the best seat (as long as i get to select it though!) ;-)
Scott Semple
on 09 Sep 08Brutish Airways is HORRIBLE. [No that was not a typo.]
The worst travel experience of my life was with British Airways, and they did NOTHING to help. It was truly remarkable as a demonstration of a complete lack of 21st century business practices.
Whatever you do, DO NOT fly British Airways, and DO NOT fly through Heathrow. It is worth an extra couple hundred bucks to fly through Frankfurt, where some forethought went into airport design.
For more anecdotal proof, feel free to peruse: http://blog.scottsemple.com/brutish-airways/
Sorry for the shameless plug, but it was honestly an unbelievably bad experience.
Vladimir
on 09 Sep 08I had a lot of errors with their website today. Their credit card processing was down and all I got was a bunch of strange errors. I reloaded the page like 1000 times. Lost a few hours just to change a booking.
I wrote them an email and they replied telling me to find the nearest office. That’s what websites are for, right!
Tim Jahn
on 09 Sep 08Blows my mind how they let things like this slide. To me, total common sense to only list cities you operate out of.
F. Yang
on 09 Sep 08You think they would know better :)
Jared
on 09 Sep 08I couldn’t agree more. I’ve had a number of sites lately offer my choices in a menu that simply don’t exist. Is it that hard to generate menus that only offer valid choices?
Geoff
on 09 Sep 08Try using IE. I had similar issues with Firefox when trying to book using airmiles but it worked fine using Internet Explorer.
James
on 10 Sep 08OK, so I know the purpose of the post is to comment on British Airways’ appalling interface and system, but the good news is this:
You can do it! (kinda)
Because BA is part of oneworld they codeshare with Iberia. So, from O’Hare you can fly to London (Heathrow direct or Gatwick via Manchester). Then jump on an Iberia plane from London to Seville (there are direct flights, or through Madrid).
So I guess the moral of the story is that BA loses twice here: 1) they DO offer a flight and don’t allow you to book it 2) thousands of potential customers have just read a bad story about them.
But, they are one of the world’s best airlines (and I say that even after flying with them after an engine cut out and a galley fire in the same flight). Imagine trying to run an airline with 46,000 employees that flies to SIX HUNDRED cities; there are bound to be hiccups.
Maybe an email to point out the deficiency might be in order.
Alex
on 10 Sep 08But Funkytown is already on Mars, and once you go you don’t wanna go back!
Devan
on 10 Sep 08On a semi-related note – I was staggered yesterday when my family travelled from Boston to Seattle on United. Despite checking in 2 hours before the flight, we found out that me, my wife and my two very young sons were scattered all over the aircraft! That means for the 4.5 hour leg to Denver, our 5 year old and 8 year old sons had to sit 6 rows away from us (and each other) and be next to strangers. Heaven forbid if they wanted food or drink or there was an emergency.
United didn’t give a damn and didn’t lift a finger to assist in this matter. We have flown many many times on Australian airlines on totally full planes and this has never happened.
Why don’t they realise that four seats booked together with the same surname, would probably like to SIT together on the plane – especially if two of those booked are very young children?
I would expect their booking software to ‘ghost’ reserve a block of 4 seats in the plane until the last minute, instead of letting individual business travellers jump in and gobble seat allocations all over the aircraft.
James
on 10 Sep 08You probably need a degree just understand the error message. There is one thing missing from the error message though: perhaps a textfield to allow us to recommend what we think THEY should do. Silly one way app!
Stephen Jenkins
on 11 Sep 08Won’t you take me to:
Funkytown?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Sean McCambridge
on 11 Sep 08Off with their heads.
Daniel
on 15 Sep 08BA used to flight direct from Heathrow/Gatwick to Seville (sometimes codeshare with Iberia). There is a train from Jerez to Sevilla (10min taxi ride + 1h train) or you can fly to Madrid and jump on the high speed train to Seville (AVE train, 50eur one way if you show them you are making an international flight connection). Have a nice travel, Seville is a wonderful city…
This discussion is closed.