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Thank you British Airways

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31st May 2017
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The first word of the title of this article could well have been somewhat less complementary had the BA computer meltdown occurred a couple of days earlier.

As readers of last week's column will know, your doughty columnist sacrificed himself on behalf of AccountingWEB spending a few days in Venice suffering for the cause.

His carrier of choice on this occasion was the aforementioned British Airways. Flying out on Monday of last week and returning on Thursday was pretty uneventful, although it was necessary to get to the airport for the return journey rather earlier than expected, following events in Manchester. This was to deal with supposed additional security checks, which were far from apparent in a process that took about two minutes.

In normal circumstances, travelling on flights that left and arrived on time would not be material for particular exciting article. However, in retrospect, my luck was in this time around.

Had my outward journey from Gatwick been due to take place on Saturday and the return yesterday, I would probably have spent a day trapped at Gatwick's South terminal, which provides enough intellectual stimulation for about 15 minutes of limited entertainment. All that would remain is hours of intense anger and attempted communications with an airline that had presumably shut down all of its phone lines and was unlikely to respond to e-mails.

Most of us really look forward to our holidays and the idea that they might be disrupted is unthinkable. In this case, a short break would have become a source of great stress as the holiday disappeared without trace.

It is all very well to be told that you will get a full refund but would this extend to all of the costs involved? Further, does compensation cover all of the heartache, particularly if there were children in the party. Going a step further, I would suggest that for an accountant, an appropriate sum might be their normal charge out rate times 12 hours a day for the duration of the (cancelled) holiday.

I do hope that no reader has actually suffered as a result of the computer disaster.

However, the likelihood is that some will have been caught up in the mayhem and to them, I offer my heartfelt sympathy.

In addition, accountants being accountants, some were probably attempting to fly around the world, or maybe even just around the country, trying to do business which will have suffered badly as a result of what is apparently a computer meltdown that only lasted a few seconds but will take weeks or months to repair, especially in terms of goodwill for our national airline. For them, the losses could be in millions if a potential contract disappeared as a result of the failure.

In passing, there is probably a lesson for our own businesses, which is that a bit of cost-cutting that harms clients can prove very expensive in the longer term. There can be little doubt that as of this moment, BA’s reputation is far lower than it was a week ago and may take years to repair.

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