British Airways: most-reported complaints
Automated analysis of 560 public Trustpilot reviews published 2026-05-06 to 2026-09-26. TrustScore 1.5 from 16,591 total reviews — see the Trustpilot page. Quick answer: is British Airways legit? Issues below reflect what reviewers reported, not findings of wrongdoing.
Reviewers most often report that customer support is unhelpful, with 168 complaints (36% of identified issues) citing a lack of ownership and assistance. Poor core service is the second most common concern, accounting for 92 reports (20%), including instances of significant flight delays and unreliable information. Additionally, 88 reviewers (19%) found support unreachable, often struggling to get their payment or booking records verified. Other reported issues, such as boarding planes that were not fueled or had missing luggage, made up the remaining 58 complaints (13%).
Trustpilot lists this business as no longer collecting reviews. New reviews are not currently being gathered for its profile. See the Trustpilot page for the current status.
The company claimed its Trustpilot profile on 2026-05-12 and last replied to a negative review on 2026-09-25. We last checked this profile on 2026-09-26 and found 35 new reviews. These are facts Trustpilot publishes about the profile, as of our last harvest.
Forum footprint: 2,095 MoneySavingExpert forum discussions mention this company (browse). Roughly 0 of the top, relevance-sorted search results were posted in the last 90 days — an approximate figure by construction, not a true recency count. Recent thread titles: “British Airways have stole £600 - help!”, “E: 18/10 Win £20,000 of advertising space with British Airways(Company)”, “British airways codes????”.
Elsewhere: 4.1★ on Google (1,207 reviews) — a 2.6-star gap between its Trustpilot and Google scores.
TrustScore over time
1.5 → 1.5 across 12 census measurements since 2026-08-23. Our own record, independent of Trustpilot’s display.
Reply behaviour over time
Solid: % of negative reviews replied to. Dashed: typical days to reply. Both as reported on this company’s Trustpilot profile, recorded whenever our census re-checked it and a figure had changed — the gaps between points are not equal: 2026-08-23 (1%, 4.9d) · 2026-08-26 (1%, 5.0d) · 2026-08-29 (2%, 4.1d) · 2026-09-01 (2%, 4.0d) · 2026-09-04 (3%, 4.1d) · 2026-09-07 (3%, 3.8d) · 2026-09-10 (3%, 3.7d) · 2026-09-13 (3%, 3.7d) · 2026-09-16 (3%, 3.6d) · 2026-09-20 (4%, 3.8d) · 2026-09-23 (4%, 4.0d) · 2026-09-26 (4%, 4.2d).
Severity: 39% of this company’s 461 graded complaints were classified as severe (money lost, an essential service cut off, or a problem unresolved for months). See the harm index.
Reviewers here waited a median of 2.3 days between the experience and publishing their negative review (755 reviews record both dates).
Measured reply time: across 81 negative reviews that received a public reply, the median wait was 2.6 days — the company profile reports an average of 4 days. The two are measured differently: ours counts only replies we captured to negative reviews.
Reply quality: of 81 company replies to negative reviews analysed, 14% engaged with the specific problem and 85% were generic templates.
Review provenance: 40 company-invited reviews in the recent window average 4.75★, while 392 organic (uninvited) reviews average 1.55★.
22% of its 76 recent 5★ reviews came from accounts that had written only that one review when we captured it (the median across companies is about 39%). A high share is a reason to look closer, not evidence of fake reviews.
Sector benchmark: support unhelpful makes up 36% of this company’s complaints vs a 31% median across 122 ranked companies in its sector.
Review velocity: 2,521 of this company’s 16,591 Trustpilot reviews (15%) were written in the last 12 months.
What are the most common complaints about British Airways?
Support unhelpful
168 reports · 36% of complaintsrising since 2026-09“21 Bags Missing. Thousands Lost. No One Takes Ownership.”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“zero proactive communication from the airline.”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“I would not accept compensation in a Voucher as that would imply that I can be paid off and I forgive their disgusting lack of personal service.”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Poor core service
92 reports · 20% of complaintsfalling“Delayed by 2-1/2 hours from Belfast, 50 mins on the phone (with escalation to manager) still could not guarantee flight.”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“zero proactive communication from the airline.”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“There was no apparent reason why the cabin luggage had to be removed from the aircraft.”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Support unreachable
88 reports · 19% of complaintsrising since 2026-09“the agent told me they could not find my payment record in their system.”
The company replied on 2026-09-04: “Hi Tin Sun, thank you for reaching out to us. We're very sorry for the issues you experienced. We're pleased we were able to speak with you today to address your concerns and reach a resolution. If…”
Our classifier read this reply as a template response.
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“finding out if information sent to them has arrived or is deemed correct is impossible”
The company replied on 2026-08-06: “Hi Ian, thanks for taking the time to leave a review and for giving us the opportunity to try to resolve your issue proactively. If you need anything else at all, please don't hesitate to come back…”
Our classifier read this reply as a template response.
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“I do not even know where to start with as there is no Customer Service.”
The company replied on 2026-08-18: “Thanks so much for giving us the opportunity to resolve your issue, Massimo. Please do not hesitate to come back to us if there's anything else we can help you with and we look forward to welcoming…”
Our classifier read this reply as a template response.
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Other
58 reports · 13% of complaintsrising since 2026-09“We boarded the aircraft only to discover that the plane had not even been fuelled and our bags had not been loaded.”
The company replied on 2026-09-17: “Hi Richard, thanks for taking the time to leave your review. We're keen to know more and have requested some further details from you. We look forward to hearing from you soon.”
Our classifier read this reply as a template response.
1 reader marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“Premium looks like economy but with bit bigger seats .About £2500 to upgrade wasted.”
1 reader marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“Unfortunately, due to a system error, we are unable to process your request”
1 reader marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Delivery failed
46 reports · 10% of complaintsrising since 2026-09“21 Bags Missing. Thousands Lost. No One Takes Ownership.”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“After a week without our luggage, we received confirmation that our bag was shipped from lhr to jnb. It never got on the flight”
1 reader marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“British Airways then told us they have lost the bag again”
1 reader marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Not as described
35 reports · 8% of complaintsfalling“there is significantly less space than easy jet …there is simply no space.”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“It certainly wasn't a 'premium' service what exactly did i get a larger space but was the cost difference worth it?”
The company replied on 2026-08-24: “Hi Sue, thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We're sorry that your recent experience didn't provide the level of service we aim to deliver. We're pleased we were able to speak with…”
Our classifier read this reply as a template response.
1 reader marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“British Airways has hidden fees to choose seats, hidden fees for in-flight wifi”
1 reader marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Method: reviews are classified into a fixed complaint taxonomy by an automated reader; every category shown is backed by at least two verbatim quotes from distinct reviews. Trends are computed from dated review counts only. Negative reviews are deliberately over-sampled for evidence depth; headline percentages use an unbiased recent sample only. Report updated 2026-09-26.