[Nigel_C]

I was one of about 30 people who flew from  Gatwick to Turin on 14/7 on BA 2578 for L’etape du Tour and had there bikes left behind. The pilot announced with 15 mins to go to landing  they basically made an operational decision to leave them on the tarmac at Gatwick. They were last known to be heading for Nice later the same day with the intention of them being couriered to Hotels. 

I understand the same flight the previous day out of 62 bikes  30 were also left behind. 

B.A. have no idea where my bike is. Its its worth £3,000 and they closed the Missing Baggage Report when they sent it to Nice. The don’t even know if they sent it to Nice. 

As of today its been missing for 8 days. 

Anybody else suffer the same problem or know anything more than the above? or have any more information. I can’t get anything at all from B.A.

and oh yes, I missed L’etape.

Topic

[DeeJayJay]

Any update Nigel?

Any update Nigel?

[Nigel_C]

Let me update you…

Let me update you…

 

19 days after my bike went missing I found it ….in a French hotel, I have never been to this hotel or had any contact with it, and I have no idea why British Airways sent it there. Worst of all British Airways had no record of it even arriving in France let alone just randomly dropping it off. Fortunately it had been kept safe by the owner who had tried to contact B.A. only to be told they couldn’t tell him anything about who the bike belonged to because of ‘data protection’ and it did show up as  missing baggage because BA inexplicably cancelled there own self created Missing Bag report.

 

A happy ending… NO!!     7 days later it still lies in  the hotel uncolllected and by BA. This is depite a promise to collect it and courier it home with 48 hours. No amount of phone calls, emails or social media can get this company do anything. I am at present trying to get the CAA to intervene.

 

[Anonymous]

Sounds like a proper shit

Sounds like a proper shit show, I hope you get as much out them as possible and a free flight/compo on top of your out of pocket expenses not to mention the bike!

[Nigel_C]

Thank you for all your

Thank you for all your comments advice. Its day 12 now and still no show.

I paid the extra for business class with BA thinking ‘priority’ baggage would be enough, clearly not…if you can’t even count the number on meals to passenger correctly and leave them without food what chance have you got with a bike.  Having apparently put the bike on plane to Nice B.A. them cancelled there own Missing Baggage Report so for 6 days it didn’t even show as missing. You can’t make it up. 

30 missing bikes on Thursday and 30 on Friday and that was jus the Turin flight, apparently same thing happened for LHR – Nice.!!

I’ve taken to social media and even got help of a journalist cyclist involved so fingers crossed and getting some good legal advice. However you can’t shame BA into doing anything.

 I’ll update this for future reference as it happened last year and will happen next year at L’etape. Lesson learn’t…. drive down!!

Oh, and you don’t realise how how much you miss yor bike ’till its not there …

And although I paid for Business Class it was a treat, I don’t have Ultegra, a BMW or golf club membership 😉

[Anonymous]

This is precisely the reason

This is precisely the reason I’m driving/supporting some friends to do the Raid alpine in two weeks time and hiring a VW transporter.

That said I was in favour of getting the train  in all honesty (Eurostar/SNCF (to geneva then back from Nice) by far the easiest/safest/least stressful way to get across France if you live within even 60 miles of London.

The charge for the bike on the eurostar is less than on any flight and the SNCF is free, you also don’t need to stress about the ‘chuckers’ at the airports. Walking from gare du nord to Gare du lyon is about 15 minutes, on the way back it’s a walk across the concourse.

Just did a quick check, £190 via Ryan Air from stanstead to Turin including a bike, 15kg/no reserved seat, no guarantee of a wheelie bag to go in overhead locker, a seat that’s really only wide enough for an oompah-lumpah, stress of the chuckers and stress/getting to airport an hour before/being bumped/bikes not being loaded

OR £224 for a nice stress free journey, nice wide seat/table, no real luggage worries, not stressing about bike being loaded/damaged, arrive in the middle of the city and most definitely with your bike. End to end there’s probably not an awful lot of time difference.

Flying with a bike, fuck that shit! Last time I flew in anything big was back in my army days, rail, boat or car for me.

[The Hare]

I’m not sure that I can help,

I’m not sure that I can help, but I can perhaps offer some hope. My bike was declared lost recently following a trip back from a cycling holiday. It was however found, much to my relief, 3-4 weeks later. The problem was that the airline had put the wrong computerised baggage tag on my bike box. You would not imagine this is possible, but apparently it is not unheard of. 

With the wrong passenger name on the baggage tag, while the airline ould track the bike down, there was nothing to link it to me. Eventually I got hold of a sympathetic custom service official who put in the right calls and persuaded people to look inside some lost bike boxes.

The only tip I can offer is to keep nagging the airline and to put together a really good description of your bike. And then pray for someone sympathetic at the other end of the line. 

Really hope you get your bike back and soon.

[fenix]

For ironman events there’s a
For ironman events there’s a company that will drive your Bike over for you. Costs slightly more than than flying with it but much less hassle. Look them up.

[crazy-legs]

We had a nightmare last year

We had a nightmare last year with bikes.

Basically learnt the hard way that if you’re flying out to Etape, fly out at least a week in advance. With a day to go, thousands of people are flying out and the airlines simply can’t cope.

[fenix]

That’s a pain. What are BA
That’s a pain. What are BA saying ? You need to kick up a fuss – Twitter – social media – claim the cost of your Etape back ? I have had friends miss events due to bikes not turning up – but luckily that’s very rare.

Good luck with the bike.

[Author]

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