My father suffers from terminal renal failure and depends on a extremely particular dialysis machine each night time to outlive. British Airways’ check-in workers twice insisted on checking this fragile 20kg lifeline into the plane maintain the place it was first broken, then misplaced.
When his outbound flight arrived at Heathrow, it was returned damaged leading to a frantic seek for a mortgage unit and hours spent in A&E so my father’s blood might be monitored. On the return flight to Rome, the machine couldn’t be discovered. My dad and mom waited till 2am earlier than being informed to go house with out the tools that retains my father alive.
He needed to borrow one other unit from a hospital. His was lastly delivered three days later with the protecting case unsealed and significant inside elements disconnected.
The sheer terror and stress of lacking a therapy, not figuring out if the A&E might accommodate him in time, and fearing that his well being had already been severely compromised, was indescribable.
British Airways has missed all deadlines to handle our criticism and is now ignoring our correspondence.
DL, London
Your father didn’t want to make use of the delicate unit in the course of the flight however was involved, rightly because it turned out, it would endure harm within the maintain.
BA, in frequent with most airways, permits very important medical tools to journey without spending a dime together with its proprietor, supplied it doesn’t exceed the scale of cabin baggage. It’s important for security causes that belongings could be stowed below a seat or an overhead locker.
Your father’s machine was too giant, and I imagine it was affordable for BA to examine it into the maintain if the flight was full. If, nevertheless, there have been spare seats, it might have allowed it to journey on one. It has since informed you a seat might have been purchased.
The actual shocker is that such very important equipment was mishandled not as soon as, however twice. The impression in your father might have been grave had mortgage items not been discovered. BA’s response was, at finest, cavalier.
If you wrote to me, a month had handed since your preliminary criticism and also you’d heard nothing in addition to auto-generated acknowledgments.
The corporate acquired its act collectively after I questioned its perspective. An operative referred to as you to apologise and it managed, eventually, to answer to your emails. Nonetheless, you’re unimpressed by its provide of £300 in e-vouchers to, in its phrases, “put issues proper”. I’ve instructed it convert this into money and think about a sum that higher displays the impression in your father. It informed me it is going to be in contact to debate a “gesture”.
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