Fuck British Midland Airlines. Fuck them right in the ear

[andrewducker]

So, Julie and I are flying down to Derby with BMIBaby (the low cost arm of British Midland).  And we go to check in online - and are told we can choose to pay an extra £4 to choose our seats, or take what we're given.

No problem, we think, we'll take what we're given - we don't care if we're at the front or the back.

But no - they assign one of us seats at the front of the aircraft and one at the back.

But we can still choose to pay - and looking at the system, we can choose two seats that are handily right next to each other.

So, despite there being pairs of seats, and despite us checking in online on a single form, they allocate the pair of us different seats, just so they can charge us an extra £4?

Oh - and to cap it all, there's no way to leave feedback online, or to email them.  The only way to talk to them is via a phone number that costs 65p/minute (i.e. $1/minute).

Fuck them.  I'm never flying with them again.  There's a certain amount of dickery I'm just not prepared to put up with.

Comments

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

How do you situate flying against the environment?

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

Above it generally.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Is this a serious or glib comment?

As, seriously, you've indicated your desire to have children. What if they inherit a world where they cannot fly even when they 'need' to (i.e. one day on planes vs months on a ship), because of our generation's selfishness, or an even more fucked environment?

Or is this a free-rider or prisoner's dilemma problem where the individual might as well defect / betray because to not do so would be foolish?

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

It was a glib comment. As planes generally tend to fly above most of the enviroment.

[andrewducker]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire/content/articles/2008/09/24/ecotravelling_feature.shtml

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

This is per person rather than per trip, so I suspect they would make trains better if more people went by them, relative to other modes of transport.

[andrewducker]

No more than if more people went by plane - because the figures are based on average passenger figures. It only improves with additional passengers if you're talking about cars.

CO2 emissions for four people
Rail: 178 kg total
Air: 226 kg total
Car (Prius):73 kg total
Car (Range Rover): 209 kg total

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

I suspect we need full occupancy figures, along with the possibility of adding an extra carriage to a train.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

www.saynoto0870.com and then tell them exactly how you feel!

[guybles.livejournal.com]

I recall flying with bmibaby on two occasions, neither of which were particularly good. On one flight, the plane to Edinburgh was cancelled and we were given a choice of flying to Glasgow or waiting until the next possible flight, arriving just before midnight.

The other situation was being snowed in at East Midlands airport; although not his fault, the pilot's tannoy announcement that he was "negotiating with the company" to get us some water gave a very clear impression of how important we were.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

You know I wouldn't blame them! Did you book direct or via expedia? I booked 2 flights return to NYC for October - both K and I, passport details, fact she's in the 12-15 age group and ticked the box asking them to allocate seats for us. We were at opposite ends of the aircraft too, despite 3/4 of the plane being empty - I reckon it's some sort of random algorythim. Anyway luckily I could change our reservation direct with continental on their own website.

[andrewducker]

I was booking in online direct with their website.

And if their idea of good design is to have a random algorithm take people travelling together and allocate them random seats then they can fuck off too.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Their idea of good design is to have the algorithm allocate people to single seats, while keeping pairs of seats free in an attempt to get the maximum number of people to pay so they can sit together. In terms of maximising revenue, it's quite a good one, in terms of customer service it sucks huge donkey bollocks.

I hadn't realised BMI were now resorting to Ryanair style charges. Will bear it in mind in future.

[andrewducker]

Exactly. For their short term revenue it makes sense, so long as they don't mind ripping off their customers.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Well, quarterly balance sheet and all, so it makes sense.

[andrewducker]

Which is why it's good that the renumeration package for the head of RBS is based over the results of multiple years.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

bmibaby isn't the same as bmi, and their charges aren't the same.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

True, but they are owned by the same company. By the sounds of it, BMI would do well to change the name of their low-cost arm to prevent people assuming they are one and the same.

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

They're cunts. Avoid them. I haven't used them in years, and have been happier for it.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

See, going by train is just better. It's more comfortable, it's generally as cheap and fast if you factor in getting to and from airports and it's waaay better for the environment (obv. this may not make a difference to you, but it sure as hell does to me). With trains you spend more of your time sitting (and reading if you're like me) and less time in the most unpleasant buildings in the world. Aeroplanes are fun, but fuck 'em - train companies are less unpleasant and don't have the whole "hidden charges" culture so much.

[andrewducker]

I find planes about as comfortable as trains for short trips. Trains are nicer if you get a table, but otherwise there's not much between them.

The trip is going to get me there two hours faster (leaving Waverly at 11:00 - I get there at 1:30 by plane and 3:26 by train).

I have worried a lot less about environmental concerns since reading this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire/content/articles/2008/09/24/ecotravelling_feature.shtml

[skington.livejournal.com]

The linked article doesn't mention the CO2 emission or time costs of getting to the airport and back, though, which is a fundamental flaw. Nor the issue of what you *do* with your Prius once you've driven it to wherever you're going, or, for that matter, the fact that if you're driving your own car you have to bloody stay awake and deal with traffic rather than e.g. drink wine and browse websites, which is what I do when I get back from work on a Friday night.

In my personal experience, trains are a far better (and cheaper) way of getting from e.g. Glasgow to London and back. I used to fly with BA for business reasons; now I take the train with Virgin, and their First Class fares are cheaper than what we used to pay BA. (Virgin's standard class Advance fares are cheaper than budget airlines as I recall, certainly if you're taking a bag.) Bear in mind that I'm factoring in here the cost of getting to the airport and back in both cities. Given that it costs me £2 or something to get to Queen Street from my flat in Glasgow, and my work is in the centre of London; compare that against a £17 taxi fare each way in Glasgow, and £15 for the Heathrow Express. Not to mention the ridiculous security theatre, and endless waiting / being shunted from departure lounge to gate to plane.

Also, British Midland are penny-pinching bastards in my experience. BA and BMI fly the same route at the same time from Glasgow to Heathrow, and for the same price. On the plus side, BMI manage to get your bags back from the plane much quicker (late last year they got there about 10-15 minutes earlier, as I recall). On the significantly negative side, BMI charge you for drinks and food.

A caveat, though: over longer distances you're still better off flying, especially if your trip involves two flights or more. High-speed trains work by going from city centre to city centre at reasonable speeds without airplane-level faffing about; if you go further than, say, London to Lyon or Glasgow to Paris, you're better off taking a plane.

[andrewducker]

Time-wise planes win, even over Edinburgh->Derby.

And there are other factors to CO2, if you factor in infrastructure then planes win again:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/08/airliners_greener_than_trains/
Airplanes add in 31%, while trains add over 150% for building and maintaining their infrastructure.

Pricewise, trains certainly can be better, if you get a cheap ticket. I seem to have had bad luck with that recently.

[skington.livejournal.com]

My work commute (Glasgow Kelvindale to London Liverpool Street) is something like 15 minutes slower on the train than the plane - the plane may travel faster, but there's all the faffing about getting to the airport, waiting around, etc.

That paper considers plane infrastructure in isolation, though - add the cost of the extra infrastructure to get people to and from an airport and planes don't look so attractive. Also, noise pollution: planes are loudest around habited areas when they take off and land; trains are quieter, and loudest in the middle of the countryside when they've picked up speed. And CO2 is only part of the emissions problem; not only do trains run on electricity (on any semi-decent line, at least, so not Glasgow-Edinburgh), but we have far more emissions-neutral ways of producing electricity (solar, wind, wave, nuclear) than we do of producing airline fuel. And that's before you consider all the other pollutants planes chuck into the atmosphere, or the multiplicative effects of chucking them directly into the upper atmosphere.

And finally, planes can't stop every hundred miles, or land in a city centre. And the view from a plane is fucking boring compared to a decent train ride.

[andrewducker]

I think it varies a lot - with the trip from Edinburgh to Derby it was 2 and a half hours from Waverly Train Station to Derby by plane (half hour to the airport, hour to check in, hour flight) and four and a half hours by train. If the train station wasn't so close to the airport it would be different, of course.

The majority of train lines in the UK are still diesel, apparently. And very little of the current electricity production is from renewables. Ten years from now it might be very different, of course, at which point the argument will be different.

Oh, and I vastly prefer the view from planes. I love looking down on hills, mountains and estuaries, not to mention the view of clouds you get from above. I do like the view from trains, but sunset/rise from a plane is one of my favourite things.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Possibly useful for future bookings:

http://www.aph.com/news/hiddencharges.htm

AIRPORT PARKING AND HOTELS (APH) EXPOSES THE HIDDEN CHARGES OF “LOW-COST AIRLINES”

It's a big ol' chart.

The 'meal' line is just a waste of space, though. :)