Avios 25th anniversary flight apology: my take on what IAG Loyalty's statement really means

Well, they've said something. IAG Loyalty (AKA Avios) put a statement up on the 25th Anniversary Flight landing page on 16th July. It's short, but crucially, unlike a lot of corporate apologies, it does actually say sorry. Twice. Let's have a look.

The statement in full

"We know customers experienced technical issues accessing the booking page for our 25th Anniversary Celebration Flight with our partner, American Express. We're truly sorry for the frustration and disappointment this caused. While we anticipated significant demand and carried out testing ahead of the booking window opening, our site was overwhelmed on the day by many more visits than expected.

The flight sold out very quickly to eligible customers who had registered in advance. We apologise to customers who experienced difficulty accessing the booking page due to the high volume of booking requests. The waitlist was made available after the last seats were sold and remains open for customers who wish to register. Should any customers choose to cancel their seats in the coming weeks, we will contact customers on the waitlist in the order they joined it to offer those seats. Once again, we apologise for the frustrating experience you've had."

My take, with my commercial head on

I'll give credit where it's due, then I'm going to pick at a few bits, gently.

Credit first. IAG Loyalty sent this over to me directly, before I'd even seen it published myself, which I'll admit I'm slightly embarrassed to say. I'm choosing to take that as a sign they know you, our audience, was affected, and wanted us to have it straight from them.

The fact they put something out at all is a good thing. Not every brand bothers after a day like Wednesday. It would have been easy to let this quietly slide off the news cycle and hope everyone had moved on by the weekend. They didn't do that. There's a proper apology in here, said twice, an honest admission that people had a rough time trying to book, and an explanation of what went wrong.

Crucially, and this is something I'd been wondering myself, we finally get a straight answer on the waitlist, which is the bit a lot of you have been asking me about since Wednesday afternoon.

One thing worth remembering, and I've been turning this over a lot: Amex, Avios and BA all have access to the data on who holds a BA Amex card. They have to, since everything from your Avios and Companion Voucher landing in the right account through to linking up your BA Club account depends on it. Which means they can see exactly who has the card, who pre-registered, and who didn't. Take it from someone who's spent a fair amount of time on the commercial side of these partnerships: reading between the lines, they've checked that everyone who got tickets was eligible.

Where I'm less convinced

Now the bit I'm less sold on: "We anticipated significant demand and carried out testing ahead of the booking window opening."

Because whatever testing was done, it clearly wasn't enough to stop the system falling over completely. And I'll hold my hands up here. I readily admit I was part of the problem. I was on two devices myself, and I know plenty of others who were on their personal phone, work phone, iPad and laptop, all at once.

But, given we live in a world where we are so used to being in a clear queue on Ticketmaster (can't believe I'm praising Ticketmaster), being left in the dark with error messages clearly meant we were all going to try other devices. This, in reality, should have been part of the testing. We do not live in the Sims where people behave predictably. People behave irrationally, and this should have been accounted for. Look at Taylor Swift or Harry Styles tickets, or people in the middle aisle of Aldi. Do they need the fold up pilates reformer machine / ice cream machine / anything else you can find there? No. But do we buy it? Yes! The system let us down. I'm still in favour of a ballot next time an airline does something similar. Guaranteed not to fall down like this.

Now, this next bit will make me sound like I'm firmly on IAG Loyalty's side, but bear with me, because there are some comments doing the rounds that needs a bit of a reality check. A gesture of goodwill for those on the waitlist or who pre-registered and missed out would be welcome, and I do think that's fair. But if you were expecting them to cancel every ticket already issued and rerun the whole process from scratch, or to lay on a second flight to make it fair to everyone, and yes, I have seen and heard both of those suggested as necessary, I'd gently ask you to manage your expectations.

I do mean it when I say the whole thing was shambolic. For a promotion that's meant to be entirely about rewarding loyal cardholders, it didn't quite deliver on that. A bit of actual generosity toward the people who tried and failed would have said far more than the statement does.

The verdict

So where does that leave us. Two things can be true at once here, and I think that's the honest way to close this out.

IAG Loyalty didn't have to say anything. They did, and quickly, and they said sorry twice rather than once, which counts for something in an industry not exactly famous for admitting fault (like the whole tier debacle earlier in the year). The waitlist explanation is useful, and it answers the question most of you actually had. A launch like this was always going to get hammered by people on multiple devices trying their luck, myself included, and the testing should've assumed this.

But none of that changes the fact that it offers nothing to the people who did everything right, and still walked away with nothing. An apology is the minimum. It isn't the same as making it right. The fact is it was billed as "a premium experience with exceptional value", and whilst yes the flights were exceptional value, the experience thus far hasn't felt all that premium.

So: credit for showing up, credit for the clarity on the waitlist. But it's a statement that explains the easy part and skirts round the harder part, and that's why it won't fully satisfy anyone who's still cross about Wednesday. You have every right to be.

I'll update this if anything more comes from Avios, Amex or BA. And if you've heard from them directly, tell me in the comments. I want to know what they're saying.

But hopefully, we can put this sorry saga behind us now.

Helena

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