Miffed With British Airways

I'm pissed off with British Airways (BA). For years, I've done all kinds of things to earn airmiles with their frequent flier program. I've eaten at various restaurants through their Executive Club dining program. I've bought flowers through various flower clubs. I've rented cars with their car rental associates. Because of all these efforts, I've earned over 443,000 airmiles with them. This past week, I found out that for effective purposes, those 443,000 airmiles are worthless.

As I mentioned previously in this blog, Harvey and I are planning to take a Globus tour of Scandanavia. It should be an absolute blast. One thing that would've made it even nicer and saved us some money is if I could've gotten free First Class tickets with British Airways. I got to fly First Class on British Airways years ago and I never forgot it. It was so cool. I have never been so pampered on an airline like I was then. I stepped on board the plane and they promptly offered me a glass of good champagne. I had my own vcr player and could choose from 42 different movies. My seat folded down into a six foot bed you could actually sleep in. Good luck sleeping in their economy seats. They even gave me a free set of pajamas which I still have. The thought of flying First Class to Copenhagen and back promised to make the tour far more enjoyable. I had no idea how many problems I would have trying to use my airmiles.

The first headache I ran into was trying to fly out of Baltimore Washington International (BWI). I prefer BWI as it's only 20-25 minutes driving from where I live. BA has one daily flight out of there and I thought I'd be able to get free tickets on that flight. No such luck. There weren't any First or Business Class tickets to be had on the dates I needed to fly out. Conversely, if I had been willing to pay $3,500, I could've gotten a seat on the dates I'll be flying out and back. I wasn't amused when I discovered this.

One advantage of living in the Washington D.C. area is that there are other airports I can use. I can fly out of Reagan National and Dulles International. The drawbacks to flying out of those airports is the substantially higher airport shuttle costs. The shuttle costs me approximately $25 each way to BWI. It costs me $75 plus each way to Dulles. Still, if I could've gotten tickets on the dates I needed to fly out and back on, I was willing to do it. A month ago, I could've done it. To my extreme frustration, it seems the limited free seats BA had out of Copenhagen got totally booked up for all four Sundays in September 2007. If I wanted to get a free seat coming back, I would have to spend an extra night in either Oslo or Copenhagen. I was thoroughly pissed off with BA.

Frequent flier programs are supposed to create customer loyalty. I know for years, I made a special effort to fly BA because I wanted the airmiles. However, when I find that all those airmiles that I've collected are of little use to me, I find that the last airline I want to fly is BA. Because of this whole boondoggle, I know I won't be busting my butt to earn airmiles with them. There doesn't seem much point in doing so. From what I've heard this problem isn't unique to BA. When you're flying, you might want to think more about price and convenience and less about the airmile scam. Nowadays, frequent flier programs definitely don't seem the deal they once were. Cheers!