17 Shocking Technology Failures on British Airways App & Website

VIDEO |✈️ BRITISH AIRWAYS BROKEN TECHNOLOGY EXPOSED! It's Unbelievable How Bad They've Let Their Website & App Become...

17 Shocking Blunders by British Airways Antiquated Technology

This week's big story is about British airways. At one time they liked to brag that they were the world's favorite airline. In fact, that was literally the tagline to all their ads. At one time, they led the way in innovation. For example, they co-created Concorde, the world's first supersonic commercial plane, and they were the first airline to install fully flat beds in business class. But oh, how times have changed. In the last 15 years or so, most frequent fliers agree that BA has steadily gone downhill. For me, it started when they decided to get rid of Concorde. It was the one plane that every other airline in the world envied - capable of going from New York to London in under three hours. It was a huge step backwards in aviation when they got rid of it. I can't imagine any American airline doing the same thing. And then came along Virgin Atlantic who boldly challenged BA's claim of being the world's favorite, with ads that openly mocked BA, saying "The world's favorite airline? They must be on a different planet."

You gotta' admit, that's pretty clever! As if to validate Virgin's claim, the airline stopped claiming to be the world's favorite, and they spent 60 million to ditch the British flag on their planes in a failed rebranding attempt. After that catastrophe, they never really recovered. Nowadays, most travelers agree that there's not much to separate BA from the budget airlines. For example, BA's European business class uses the exact same seat as an economy, with the same leg room. The only differences being that they won't sit someone immediately next to you, and you'll get a meal.

In 2017 they did away with free food and drinks in economy class on all their short haul flights. As one of their most valued top tier gold members, not even I get a drink on a four or five-hour flight. And on long-haul flights, their flagship first class product now barely matches up to many other airlines business class. Look, I will say that BA has some very well-trained staff, and their Shepherd's pie is delicious, but of course these days, that's not enough. The part of BA's business that's most shocking is their technology, which feels like it hasn't been updated in 20 years. I can honestly say that I've experienced much better with some third world airlines. Crazy.

The airline's website and app are both badly broken. Let me show you why. And I warn you, brace yourself, cause it ain't pretty. First, when you're logged into your account and you try to manage the details for a flight you get an error screen that blames you, the passenger for not entering the information correctly - except there's nothing you can enter. You just click on one button. Here's the same issue on another booking.

Second, when you get an email inviting you to upgrade, often the invitation isn't valid. Look closely, and it even says in the email "not valid." And when you click on the 'treat yourself' button, it says the offer isn't valid. Frustrating, and disappointing.

Third, if you're visiting a foreign country and you book a flight while you're in that country, BA assumes you're now suddenly a native speaker of that country. And they'll send you emails in the language of that country, even though you booked the flight using your frequent flyer account that's registered in England.

Fourth, apparently one email notification about a change isn't enough. For a recent flight, BA sent me the same email eight times on the same day!

Fifth, when using their website you'll often, and I do mean often, randomly get this error: "internal server error." Whatever that means. S

ix, when you're trying to retrieve a boarding pass from the app, you'll get this error:
"An SSL error has occurred and a secure connection to the server cannot be made." Again, whatever that means. I don't speak geek.

Seventh when you're in the process of making a booking, right at the end when you're waiting for the confirmation that the payment went through, it will sometimes crash and give you the message: "A system error was encountered during the confirmation of your booking. You are strongly advised to contact British airways for confirmation of whether your booking has been completed." Yeah, no kidding. And of course there's no number to call, no reference, and basically no reassurance whatsoever. You just have to wait on hold and hope that the transaction went through. And if it didn't, you get back to square one.

Eighth, after receiving an email inviting me to check in within the 24 hour window, I go online, scroll down and it says "Online check-in not available. Self-service check-in not available. And airport desk, check-in not available." Wonderful. So how exactly do I check in?

And then ninth, here's a classic every BA frequent flyer is all too familiar with. You use the app to check in, click the blue button, a message says, "Checking your flight details." And then this happens... as in absolutely nothing. The 'white screen of death' I call it. And if you continue to wait, you'll be waiting a very, very long time because nothing happens, no matter how long you wait here.

Here it is again, another day, another flight. And again, nothing happens unless you count a white screen as something happening .

Tenth, if you do manage to start the check-in process, the system will sometimes put you in what I call the 'endless loop of frustration.' You click on 'confirm seats' and check in. And all it does is jump back up to the top of the same page, like this. And again, and again, and again.

Eleventh, you get an invitation to upgrade. And when you go online, it says, "We're sorry, this special offer upgrade is sold out on your outbound flight. Available upgrade options are shown below." You scroll down, and you see the contradictory message: "This flight is not available for upgrade."

Twelfth. You go into the app to make an award booking, and you're asked to choose a departure city, so you type LHR for London Heathrow, but nothing happens. So you type "Heathrow." And again, nothing. How can BA not know the name of their own hub!? So you try another well-known airport like LAX, nothing. Same for JFK. Turns out, the only way you can search is by typing out the complete name of the city! As in 'London.' It's absolutely bonkers that an airline app can't recognize the universal language of three letter airport codes.

Thirteen, when BA changes the day and time of your flight, not once, but multiple times as they're doing lately, they don't get rid of the wrong bookings in the app. They keep hold of them. And then it's up to you to hunt through to try and find which one is the correct.

Fourteen, when you want to see all your past bookings for reference, you'll often get this message, "Sorry, we can't currently show you all of your bookings." Wonderful.

Fifteen, can you imagine how frustrating it is to be logged into the app, and then their system asks you to log in again, which you do, only to see this message, "The login details of your account are no longer valid. Please login using the correct details." I did, and then when you go onto the website to login, you get this message error: "You've made too many login attempts. Your account is now logged for up to 24 hours." Perfect, thanks.

Sixteen, I made a booking while logged into my account. And while I'm still logged into my account, I scroll down and see the message: "Add your frequent flyer number to earn 13,000 miles." Can you believe this? The system didn't automatically attach my frequent flyer number to the booking, even though I'm logged into my own account I had to do it manually.

And finally, number 17, this is the classic that I'm sure just about every frequent flyer on BA experiences all the time. This is where you're logged into the app and it confirms your logged in at the top. You're ready to make a booking, and the first thing it does is ask you to log in again, even though you're already logged in. It's so frustrating. Now, these are just a few examples. These things happen to me regularly. It's so incredibly frustrating to try and book or manage flights with BA's broken technology. As you can see from these news headlines BA's I.T. failures have been well documented for years. Personally, I think calling them glitches is way too kind. A glitch is kind of like a minor inconvenience. BA's outages caused chaos. Yes, British airways has fallen from grace. Once much loved, they were named as the second-worst carrier in a recent survey of 32 major airlines. As I mentioned earlier, I do fly quite a bit on BA and I'm even in their top tier, but rather than love the experience I merely endure it. BA, it's time for a new slogan, perhaps "The world's least favorite airline."

Have you flown BA? Can you relate to these issues? I'd love to know your thoughts and opinions about this.

Please do comment below...

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