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We booked 2 tickets from British Airways to Turkey Sept. 9th for a January 16 flight. In October, Turkey began a series of changes in Visa requirements for US citizens wanting to travel to Turkey. I’ll skip all those details now since I’m reviewing British Airways but at each step of not being able to get into Turkey, we called British Airways to find our options (refund, voucher, etc.). Each time BA assured us that we’d get our visas and and to wait. They would only refund taxes and fees, about $990 (customer service wouldn’t say a monetary figure) out of $3500. We waited and tried monthly. Finally, after getting approved for an appointment for an in person visa interview with Turkey, the only available interview was in January, the day before our flight. Then there’s a two week approval window. So no visa and when we called about refund options, the refund offered now was $187. I believe since BA is government subsidized, there was a conscious delay process to permit the government to continue to collect time released taxes. I’d enjoyed multiple Economy Comfort step up seats and comfort and thought I’d found a comfortable way to travel. I’ll now take my business to another airline. I forgot to say, but when I calmly said to the BA customer service agent when offered $187, that I might as well hold onto my seat so BA could not resell the seat, she hung up on me. Fly US and suffer with the tight seating.

The app as a whole doesn’t function well from a technical perspective. The user interface, in theory, is pretty well thought out, but I can’t enjoy any of it because of the technical difficulties I’ve been having with the app. This is coming from what you would consider a power user - I’m not your grandma and using a smartphone for the first time. When it’s difficult for someone who thoroughly understands the inner workings of mobile applications (+3 of her tech-savvy friends), you have a problem. An example of a use case is earlier when I attempted to check in for my flight, got to the final step, and the app crashed. I then decided to check in via the web and the process showed several discrepancies. I also couldn’t get my mobile boarding pass unless I went back to the app and finished my check in process, which I couldn’t actually complete because of aforementioned difficulties. There really needs to be some significant technical adjustments to the app. For an airline that is highly sought after, your app is severely lacking. I’m happy to provide more detailed feedback if needed.

There was a time when I found the BA iPhone app helpful and functional. It appears that it has undergone some sort of redesign that has rendered it near useless. Basic airline app functions like selecting seats and checking in are tortuous and frequently impossible. Navigation is not intuitive and endless loops of error messages are standard. The redesign seems to have moved the app from a native iPhone design to directing one to a smart-phone version of the (horrible) BA web site. On every page, I get a message at the top of the screen advising me to install the BA iPhone app, as if I haven’t already thought of that and am indeed already in it. The inability to do anything useful on this app forces me to stand in long queues and/or call BA for things that on other airlines I can efficiently do myself with their apps.