On the ground: British Airways’ T5 PR disaster

Filed Under Business, Corporates, PR Disasters | 1 Comment

Writing in The Guardian, Anthony Horowitz gives his take on how the PR disaster impacted at ground level:
“I knew we were in trouble when the man in the shiny suit appeared with a trolley of bottled water and granola bars. Our British Airways flight from Vancouver had already been delayed twice - trouble refuelling and trouble finding somewhere to dock - but even as we walked into the crowded but strangely inactive baggage hall in the new Terminal 5, nobody was telling us that we had just flown into the sort of fiasco that the British seem to do so particularly well. Queues had already formed at the customer assistance desks but the smiling, slightly wild-eyed staff had almost nothing to offer. Even after six hours of chaos, nobody had been briefed. Nobody knew anything. The desks, probably knocked together by a carpenter some time during the night, were bare. I’m not even sure they had telephones.
“Why can’t you give out some proper information?” I asked a BA manager. “We can’t,” he wailed. “We don’t have any - and anyway, they haven’t given us a Tannoy.” Read more