Personally I don´t think British Airways have ever been wonderful, I´ve had a couple of problems with them in years past. 16 years ago when coming to Spain from Kenya, our two very small dogs were booked with BA, booking made 3 months in advance. Two hours before we were due to leave BA called and told us they couldn´t get the dogs from Gatwick to Alicante so they had cancelled the booking for the dogs. I won´t go into the stress and worry this caused, but a good friend came to our assistance, I was going to cancel our flights too, no way I was leaving without my dogs. We left our dogs with our friends, they organised for our dogs to come the next day with Lufthansa. Lufthansa actually telephoned us to check the dogs had arrived safe and sound and assured us that every care had been taken of them during their long journey, Mombasa to Nairobi, Nairobi to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Barcelona and Barcelona to Alicante. The dogs were not in the least bit stressed and had been groomed during their short stay in Frankfurt. Not one apology did we receive from BA, neither did we get the air fare we had paid for the dogs refunded.

Two years later I booked a round trip back to Kenya with BA. I had to fly into Gatwick, then travel to Heathrow, on to Nairobi. I landed in Nairobi at 6 a.m. There are flights every hour from Nairobi to Mombasa, BA booked me on the 7 p.m. flight ! I went to the internal flight desk and booked and paid for the next flight.

I would never travel with BA again, Kenya Airways in conjunction with Dutch airlines is so much better and much less hassle.

It must be dreadful for all those poor people stuck at the airport.

I agree Clumsy. BA are certainly not the World's best airline as they claim. I think it's time the word 'British' was dropped from their name.

And Airways at the moment.

It would really defy belief that the mainframe computer of such a huge organisation didn't have surge protection, sounds rather a tall story to me I'm afraid.