April 24th, 2002
Mr. Rob Eddington,
President of British Air
Waterside PO Box 365
Harmondsworth, Middlesex UB70GB
UK


Dear Mr. Eddington,

On September 11th, we were about to board our flightplane to return to Boston and I must say I have never seen so many hopelessly helpless people supposedly in charge. “Just go get your luggage and leave.” No instructions of where to go or that people had to go to immigration first. No announcements on the loudspeaker to inform people what had happened and was happening, Nothing. They just walked away from it all.

I am a writer and a watered down version of the story of that day appeared in the book “Glory: A Nation’s Spirit Defeats the Attack on America” The unabridged version will be in this months edition of Unravel the Gavel. I am sending you a copy of the print out.

We were okay, we had family we could go back and stay with and friends, and a checking account and credit cards but what about the others who were so lost? I think your people should be trained so that if a crisis comes up they don’t just disappear but stay and attend to the problems at hand.

A week later when we arrived to finally go home we were made to stand outside in the cold and drizzle for over two hours. Toward the end someone came out and handed out some blankets hardly enough for the people who wanted them. My husband gave me the one he received as he at least had a suit jacket on. As we went in to the terminal it was literally pulled off of me by one of your BA people who said we could get others on the plane. Well I was cold and wet then and as it happened our plane wasn’t airworthy and we had to wait another two hours for a plane. You guessed it, when we got on the plane there weren’t any blankets. We both came home disillusioned and miserable with colds. We were so late getting in that we couldn’t pick up our cat but had to drive across state the next day.

Frankly, I am very disillusioned with BA but then this last trip over was quite pleasant and the steward was excellent. (He informed the man with 6 million children the isles were not a parade ground and he was disturbing all the other passengers and they had to sit down. I felt so sorry for the woman in front of me who had to keep getting up to let the woman with the baby with diarrhea get up. I think it is time BA hired someone like me who travels all the time and gets them to write up a checklist of all the problems from both the customers’ side and from your employees point of view. There are two sides to every coin as the old saying goes.

I am sorry to have dragged this entire mess out and dumped it on you but when something goes wrong in my business they come to me and I have to fix it, as I assume you are in the same position.

Sincerely,



Pamela E. Apkarian-Russell

PO Box 499 Winchester, NH 03470 USA

603 239-8875

halloweenqueen@cheshire.net