Average airline with average service - there are better carriers (British Airways in general)

Member Name: emmajt81

Product:	British Airways in general
Date:	07/10/09 (137 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good value for money mostly

Disadvantages: Some sloppy service

I generally fly longhaul once or twice a year and have always been back and forth between BA and Virgin depending on who had the better price at the time. I flew BA last year to New York and this year to LA. Both had good and bad points. I find BA to be quite a mixed bag to be honest, sometimes they are impeccable sometimes it's like they couldn't care less.

Their website is fairly easy to book flights. If you are flying longhaul to America you must include a Saturday night otherwise the fares are an absolute fortune (over £1000 sometimes). For long haul they have a fairly good system of pricing so it's easy to see how much things cost. You have a variation of flight times though and are able to see what sort of plane you are on (Boeing or Airbus). Our return flights to JFK the week before Christmas and returning on Christmas Eve were about £300 per person return which I thought was a very good competitive price. Unfortunately though, you don't get to choose your seats on booking like Virgin let you do, you have to choose them when you check in which opens 24 hours before your flight. BA are introducing the ability to pre book your seats when booking your flights in October 2009 but you will have to pay for the privilege - from £10 per person for European economy flights to £60 per person for long haul business class flights. Note that Virgin offer this for free. The only way you will now get it for free on BA is to do it during online check in, by which time all the good seats will no doubt be gone.

On Boeings and Airbuses there are a few rows at the back of the plane and a few at the front of certain sections that have rows of just two (this is Economy by the way). Meaning you don't have to sit next to a third person for a long period which is great (unless you are in a group of 3 already). So 24 hours before our flight to New York I checked in and even though I checked it the second it opened, I only managed to get the last set of two seats. For my LA flight I wasn't quite as lucky - I was refreshing the page til check in opening but still didn't manage to get them and had to sit next to some dirty smelly person for 11 hours. Nice. Why they don't give you seats as you book like Virgin do god only knows.

My flight to New York was fine. We flew from Heathrow Terminal 5 to JFK airport - the flight was on time and all the staff were pleasant. Terminal 5 is nothing to shout about - it's all sparkly and new but that's about it really - it's just like any other airport! Terminal 5 is just for BA flights, and when you land in JFK, they also have their own terminal just for BA flights. Same with LA - my flight to LAX was fine and on time and no problems at all.

My return flights were a little different though. The return flight from New York was delayed by 2 and a half hours. It was a night flight so was hoping to get some sleep. However there was a drunk guy on the plane 2 rows in front of me to my left. Why he wasn't thrown off the plane as he boarded I don't know, but once we were airborne he was allowed to buy even more drink (despite slurring and not being able to walk properly). He started telling passengers to get lost (although not in such nice words) then BA decided not to serve him more alcohol. He proceeded to run and steal it from the trolley anyway which resulted in him being handcuffed to his chair for the rest of the flight home and a steward sat with him for the entire time. The passengers around him got moved to business class (not us unfortunately) too. Although they calmed the situation down, I don't think he should have been allowed on anyway because he was in an awful state before we took off. Passengers even spoke to stewards about this before take off but they said 'oh he's fine'. Hmmm. When the flight landed it stopped before we got to the gate and 6 armed policemen came on board and arrested him. Merry Christmas huh? A situation which could have been totally avoided if BA had done their job properly before we took off and listened to passengers concerns.

On the return flight back from LA, my headrest was broken on my chair and kept flopping down onto my head. They got an engineer to fix it before we left the gate, but as soon as I sat back down it was broken again. They said they would 'sellotape it up' but it probably wouldn't work. Great that you pay all this money on BA only to have your seat sellotaped together isn't it?! I asked if there were more seats for me and my friend but there were only a couple of single seats, all in economy and all were middle seats. Since I'd checked in online deliberately to get a window seat I wasn't about to give that up (unless they had bumped me up a class of course). They said they'd get the seat fixed in London, but it had clearly been broken since they last took off from London so my guess is that the seat is probably still broken a month later.

So all in all, BA are OK but my experiences on Virgin have been a lot better. BA's seats are fairly comfortable (when they're not broken) but I am not a fan of their food. Virgins food is slightly better I think but the little packs you get given (socks, toothbrush etc) are pretty much the same on all long haul flights. I think Virgin has a better selection of films compared to BA. BA had some new released but only had about 30 films in total in their library, and their comedy shows were literally one episode - why not put 6 episodes of say Friends on, at least people could relax and watch a few instead of one 20 minute episode!

BA aren't bad but they aren't my first choice by any stretch.

Summary: Average airline with average service - there are better carriers