A BEAstly Journey
SIR,—I, am interested to learn from 'Spectator's Notebook' (June 3) that yet another busy journalist has decided not to fly again, if he can help it: by BEA (The Line that Leaves You Behind). Fortunately. there are alternatives on almost every route: next time, he might consider the BUA Edinburgh-Gatwick service. Since BEA (The Line that Leaves You Behind) stranded me in Paris in 1964, when 1 held what BEA (The Line that Leaves You Behind) itself described as a 'firm booking,' requiring no confima- tion; had nevertheless confirmed it not once but twice, in London and in Paris; and had reported (being already justifiably sceptical about the efficiency of BEA, The Line that Leaves You Behind) half an hour earlier than I was required to do. I have been carried by BUA, Alitalia, Olympic Airways. Aer Lingus, Air France -and Tunisian Airways, and always with greater courtesy and competence than I have learned to expect from BEA, The Line that 'Leaves You Behind. It should be noted that the difference is not
between publicly-owned and what 'Notebook' describes as 'free-enterprise' lines, but between the efficient and the inefficient, or just between pride in the job and no pride. Also that while one of the spokesmen of BEA (The Line that Leaves You Behind) was telling me that my misfortune in Paris— which inconvenienced my wife, ruined a family- reunion dinner party, and obliged me to hire a car because I could not be met as arranged—was due to 'human error,' another of its experts in double talk was admitting to a colleague of mine that it had been caused by the deliberate policy of 'over-booking' a predetermined percentage of passengers. This must, of course, have been the true explanation—two extra confirmations of a 'firm booking.' and an extra half-hour's grace on arrival_ would have disposed of any 'human error'—but it was denied by the smoqth- talking passenger-pacifier to whom my complaint had eventually been directed.
When, some months later, I had to fly to Manchester by BEA (The Line that Leaves You Behind) there being no alternative air service, I wrote for, and received, a written assurance that the seat I had paid for would, in fact, be available--but the outward flight was more than an hour late. causing me to miss the family wedding I was bound for, and even later coming back, so that I missed my dinner. On one of the journeys the excuse—I seem to recall—was engine trouble: one would have thought that even BEA (The Line that Leaves You Behind) would have learned by now to keep the, engines of the nineteen-sixties serviceable.
So now I do not travel at all by BEA (The Line that Leaves You Behind): 1 go by other lines, or by train or by road. Travel agents are always interested to hear my reasons. If the only way to keep a proposed appointment would be to have recourse to it. I explain to the person I have to meet--much to his interest, too—and we choose another time or place. Life has thus been purged of one of its major irritants, and my engagements, at home and abroad, are more precisely kept.
CYRIL RAY Kenthurst House, Rolvenden, Kent
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