A Revolution is the Solution
D00d, they saw you comin!! LOL
Thanks for the informative post. I dread things like this sometimes. It's rather confusing. What I do is just run my computer through a computer check up at one of those free websites like http://www.pcaholic.com.
Cool!
So thats the synopsis, when's the film released??
Oh, it wasn't some bad film plot, it was for real?
:-O
Did you kiss the tarmac when you finally landed aka Pope styleee?
I'm So Sorry Tea bag :-(
Now you see, this is why I don't fly...
Every so often I think "hey, wouldn't it be great to go to America/Egypt/wherever" but then I read stories like this and think "No way, Pedro!"
Wow. Just... wow.
Steven Levitt's Freakonomics book makes an interesting point on the safety of air travel.. i.e that it isn't as safe as people make out. His argument is that when you look at accidents and incidents per flying hour (rather than per mile) then it works out to be as safe as taking a car journey. You're roughly as likely to have an incident on a 10 hour plane journey as a 10 hour car journey.
Oooer.
I think the rest of the cock-ups sound normal for a BA flight though.
So it's not just your underwear that's gone missing this time? They want your entire wardrobe!!
As Sammi said, would make a good film plot if it wasn't so damn serious - at least you got to your destination safely, which for us is a good thing, for the baddies it's not *hugs teabag*
Starts to think she should never have made that joking comment on the post below talk about doom sayer wow...
I lol'd
Oh come on Kalei ....... we are talking B.A. here, they couldn't run a piss up in a brewery if they tried
I heard there was another plane that was delayed for 2 hours due to them "wanting to put all the bags on safely" etc. Imagine their dismay when they got to their destination only to discover the cargo hold was COMPLETELY EMPTY.
so said some random guy in the terminal. it really wouldn't surprise me if it was true though, i heard a few people on other journeys saying the same thing.
I do hope they used the term "safely" very loosely. I've stood in departure lounges watching from window at the way they put luggage into the hold ... doesn't look very safe to me .... oh look here's a suitcase let's' just lob it over there ... result anything fragile you have been daft enough to put in your luggage is smashed to bits ..... least my Southern Comfort made it in one piece but that could have been because I wrapped it in a towel lmao
Thanks for this Chris, I'm going to use it in my strongly worded complaint to BA when I make them compensate me for a new pair of pants.
Glad we made it, see you at the show.
hey Rob, hope you weren't stuck at the airport too long! See you there 
(RSA that is, not the airport!!)
Your story wins.
Someone i know was on that flight and said you were sitting by the wing taking pictures all the way down.
you are wonderfully, certifiably insane.
Hey PG did you at least get the unimpressed girl's phone number? Maybe you could make an impression on her.
If you don't want to then could I have it?
PG what is it with you and travel ?
there has got to be a trip that you made that didnt end in disaster:-O
Mind you saying that it would make a boring blog Kali eyes chill he's alive isnt he....
Why do you think they call them Terminals ?
As another passenger on ths flight, suffice to state that the general gist of the ...mess... is captured very well here.
I would say a few more things: I think the pilot was more than a little pissed off, as his tone the instant we landed was that this was an instrument screw-up and not real, and yet he had to play by the rules. And his tone was irritated at the gate to start with because of the baggage. I think he had a bit of a bad day. C'est la vie, air travel still beats conestoga wagons. But 46.5 hours travel time from Italy is a bit of a drag.
Also, the flight staff in our area were pretty uniformly up-to-par -- since there's about 15 or more on the flight, it doesn't surprise me that there was 1-2 nitwits, but overall, the crew did a good job ON THE PLANE. Clearly, BA needs to outline who in the hell is in charge on the ground, which was a total, inexcusable CF. At least one flight crew should have stayed with the passengers (the "SENIOR STEWARD" comes to mind) with, one hopes, some apriori knowledge of how unscheduled landings are supposed to happen.
The handoff to the ground staff... never happened.
I was not concerned about using the same plane. Pilots generally speaking are pre-disposed to having safe and healthy take-offs and landings, such that the fact the same pilot got on the plane pretty much told me he wasn't concerned. After all, if you make a small fortune per annum, you have to be alive to spend it. Had we a new pilot, I'd have been a bit more worried. Overall, I thought the pilot was very professional.
The hotel management at the Clare Inn was good, after they realized they were in charge. Pat-the-manager had the foresight to do a headcount and insure we were sent to hotels with actual rooms. How he got to be in charge... who knows? But his reactions were of a professional in a service industry.
I was a little miffed that the one, most basic amenity hadn't been thought of -- toothbrushes were a scarce commodity -- and BA should have thought of that, sent a Servisair person to the nearest drugstore or two and purchased them. Most of us hate going a day without...and so do the passengers next to us! I solved this lack of amenity by heading to the bar, noting that alcohol in sufficient quantity should clear any germ formation. Here's to Irish pubs, even in hotels!
Getting checked back in Saturday... what a joke! Like no one realized we had already been checked in once, and the computer would have a record of that... and it took 1-1/2 hours to solve? The solution was to *not* check us back in, but to manually write the flight-gate-seat number onto a chit and move us into the gate area. This particularly sophisticated solution should have taken about 5 minutes to come to consensus on. It's not likely there was a blackmarket on yesterday's boarding passes.
Had no problem getting through in SFO. Took a few minutes, but the lack of computer didn't slow things down by much... thank goodness. took no more than 3-4 minutes to go by before the TSA (Customs?) realized the system was down and they went into backup mode. Slower, but moving.
Now, if only BA finds my Sears... I mean, Armani suits soon.
Nice pictures of the fuel and firetrucks. We couldn't see the fuel being let go, but we noted the airport trucks immediately.
To anyone else flying overseas, key item to note: all these planes have a little map, and when the plane icon turns around in mid-air,well, as my travel companion stated, "Hm. That's not good."
Yeah, thank God for that final hotel, no idea what we'd have done without them - I actually went up to the manager and thanked him for being the first person with some sort of authority I'd met that day with some idea of how to fix the problem.
Interesting that you got through security at SFO so quickly - we were stuck in line for about 30 to 35 minutes. Not a huge delay, but I'm used to getting through in 5 minutes or so and add the prior journey on top and it probably felt like a lifetime.
Hey Chris,
Geez... why do these things always seem to happen to you?!
Last time I flew BA, I was without my luggage for eight days on a nine day trip. They reimbursed me for everything though.
I had a short flight delay myself, otherwise I would have seen you this eve... See you soon though!
Yes this was quite an interesting flight to say the least! And perfectly summed up in your post - nice one!
Most classic moment was when the BA ignoramus that was handing out luggage forms accidently caught himself going 'oh f***' and then 'erm, oh, urr, oh dear' when I told him that I had my bag in Shannon but not in San Fran!
Fortunately the bag turned up this morning - just as I am getting ready to leave to go back to the airport to go home
I would like to say credit to all the passengers I came across though - the atmosphere and sense of cameraderie was brilliant, and had there been any more whingers screaming for compensation 30 seconds after we landed and were still alive, I might have had to punch them
Some more pics here (including the tv screen that inspired John's companion to go "Hm. That's not good."
http://www.facebook.com/album.ph...75&
id=863195175
Nice pics! And yeah, everyone I saw was extremely good spirited about the whole thing. Some tempers frayed when we got to SFO, but I think it was understandable by that point. Glad to see you got your back back, still waiting on mine! Goes without saying, but safe trip back 
Hi
Great blog. I was on BA287 too and also had my bags lost. I still haven't had any information about my bag - have you? Has anyone?
Apart from all the incompetency and panic, it was pretty fun though, wasn't it!
My baggage tracker thing says "found, but needs confirmation" but so far they've hung up on me twice when going to look for it.
Awesome work, BA.
Thank you Chris and PG for the photo's and links! and you are both correct, passengers were (mostly) cool with the entire mess and trying to look out for each other. still don't have a clue where my luggage is.
Cheers and a pint...
-JP
For those of you hoping for upgrades on the return journey because of the whole emergency landing/24hr delay/lost bag shenanigans I wouldn't keep them up for too long - big fat "no" when I asked!
It's quite nice to be home again tho - and you will be reassured that bags are showing up at T5 again so hopefully when you are all reunited, you will stay reunited
What a trip - 42 hours of travelling for 36 hours there
Well, it seems like its actually more difficult getting my bags back now I know where it is than when the damn thing was lost - the company responsible for getting you it is HOPELESS.
they've had it for three days, and their levels of assholery are almost as bad as BAs.
Sorry to hear that mate - if it's anything like the experience I had, they will get it to you at 6am on the morning you are due to leave.
Got my fingers crossed this all sorts itself out for you!
I've had exactly the same issue. I called the day before you and they didn't know where it was, even though it says it's located. I think it's actually still BA's problem, not theirs.
Time to buy a $3000 suit on BA.
Did anyone catch the tail fin number on this pane so I can reseach its repair history?
The plane would have asos been christened an aircraft name that is painted on the fore of the aircraft.
Don't know about the number, but if you google BA287 you quickly end up with wonderful tales like this:
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-d...Aw--?cq=1&
p=487
There was also some other entry mentioned in google about a co-pilot dying onboard, but not sure if this was actually aboard the same plane or it just gets a random mention because the article was down when i tried it.
I have flown BA (primarily 747-XXX)since the demise of PA at least twice a year since 1979 (yes, that's up to 60 flights now!) and could write a chapter in a book for each flight. In this case was there any turbulence before the captain announced the hydraulic issue? To research this requires details. With the tail fin number we could track the maintenace record.
No turbulence - what happened was the captain interrupted the inflight movie stuff to announce to the whole plane that he wanted the head engineer guy (or whatever he was called) to come to the front of the plane immediately.
Then five minutes later they announced they were having "issues with the hydraulics" (can't remember the exact words), then a few minutes more passed at which point he announced there were concerns about the navigation system, and so they were dumping all the fuel and making an emergency landing at Shannon.
Despite trying to sound cool and calm, I remember the captain sounding faintly panicked and some of the cabin crew were absolutely crapping themselves.
Oh, the captain apparently managed to fix whatever issue they were having (caused by some computer card or circuit responsible for monitoring fluid levels) as soon as we touched down.
There was no turbulence before this happened, and the actual descent was as smooth as anything.
All in all, pretty surreal.
Here is a good play by play as to what happened that day:
http://www.airliners.net/aviatio...d.main/3920453/
Did BA pay for the food, pints, etc. at the Clare Hotel? They have vouchers for that sort of thing.
Thuis is wierd: BAW9603 with 747's (744 is a code for the 747-400 like you flew) turned up exactly 3 years ago per the following:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ph...rt/message/
3237
The registration number on the tail was G-BNLM per this site: http://www.visitingphx.com/
chart...arters2005.html
Now I really wonder what your tail number was ) and was it the same by any chance?
This flight was insane. I was sitting near the back and everyone was pissing themselves. Just a point airforce one did in fact refuel in shannon that evening, we passed u.s. servicemen on the way to immigration in shannon and we had breakfast next to the whole irish police force at the clare inn (about 150 policemen seriously)
but what an experience aye guiness never tasted so sweet in irland eh.
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