If only I could. Do British Airways really not mind losing business or are they so focused on other things that ensuring customer satisfaction is low on their agenda? Before Christmas we booked a long weekend trip to the South of France for ourselves and a group of friends. Due to work commitments time was short and we wanted to maximise our stay by travelling out on an early flight and returning on a late one. Objective being to get nearly two extra days in the South without the rain and cold of a British winter After searching on the web we came up with the best flight times and cost. Using BA we could fly into Marseille early, pick up a car and be at our destination by late morning. The return was late evening, allowing us a leisurely day. Great! So tickets booked and car hire arranged to pick up from the airport. All sorted, or so we thought. Weeks went by thinking this was all planned and paid for only to receive an email a couple of weeks before departure stating that the return flight was now cancelled – the only alternative offered was an morning flight that lost us a precious day away. Departure from other airports would cost us more than the original flight (and I am sure that BA would not pick up the extra for returning the hire car to a different location even though this was booked through their ‘partner’)  So, we say, lets cancel these and get other flights – we will just take our business elsewhere. Easier said than done. Has anyone else out there tried to cancel a BA flight recently? After repeated attempts to get through and being advised of the fact that “we are experiencing a lot of calls at present” so expect ½ hour waiting in a call queue, we went to the web site – should have done that first you might say, always quicker – only to find that the superbly names ‘manage my booking’ section was not working properly  So BA, do you operate a black hole policy that once you have the money you don’t care about managing any fall out? Or is it that you have fine tuned your organisation to such an extent that anything out of the norm cannot be handled efficiently? I realise flights get cancelled due to a whole raft of reasons, but surely handling the knock on effects well is critical to maintaining customer satisfaction and long term relationships, especially in such a competitive market! I want to support BA, but if this level of service continues it will be Ryan Air all the way!

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