British Airways faces fresh fury over travel chaos for telling customers to ring premium-rate helpline that costs 62p a minute
Under fire airline’s official Twitter account advised passengers to call rip-off phone number
BRITISH Airways faced new fury over holiday travel chaos last night for telling customers to ring a premium-rate phone number at 62p a minute.
The beleaguered airline’s official Twitter account advised passengers to call its helpline on 0844 493 0797.
Calls to that number cost 7p which goes straight to BA plus a rip-off access charge of up to 55p a minute imposed by the phone company.
The airline has a cheaper national-rate number and a free number which it was advertising elsewhere.
David Hickson, of the Fair Telecoms Campaign, said: “BA is being greedy and foolish.
“The Fair Telecoms Campaign calls on all users of 084 numbers to cease this foolishness.”
Anyone calling the number in relation to a contract entered into with BA is entitled to a refund of the additional cost.
A BA spokesman said: “As a global airline we have call centres placed strategically around the world in the UK, Europe, the US and Asia.
“We have an 0800 number for UK customers whose flights have been affected by the IT failure — 0800 727 800.”
BA has also been accused of profiting from passengers’ misery amid claims that travellers caught up in the global IT crash were made to pay for expensive upgrades to reach their destinations.
It emerged that trapped passengers had to spend up to £800 to gain access to spare seats in premium economy cabins and it's been suggested the air company may fail to reimburse in full passengers who had to travel with other airlines.
BA faces losses of an estimated £150million for the computer glitch that has grounded 75,000 passengers.
Chief exec Alex Cruz said a probe will be launched into the IT failure that led to BA cancelling or delaying 1,000 flights.
But he dismissed union claims that “greedy” cost-cutting, including outsourcing jobs to India, had contributed to the disaster — and insisted he would not resign.
BA said it will run a full schedule at Gatwick today and that it intends to operate a full long-haul schedule and a “high proportion” of its short-haul flights at Heathrow.