Just when flights were getting back to normal following the European volcanic ash drama, British Airways has been forced to defend complicated methods used to get passengers home.
Some passengers have called into question the airline's practice of hiking up prices of empty seats on flights despite thousands of passengers remaining overseas and still unsure as to when they can get home.
It turns out that the BA reservation system used to sell and allocate seats is to blame, forcing the airline to use a convoluted process to ensure it can re-assign places to stranded customers in places as widespread as Antigua/St Kitts, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Dubai, Delhi, The Maldives, New York and Sharm el Sheikh.
BA is unable to remove available seats from the system and hand them out to those stuck around the world.
This is because it has agreements with various intermediaries - namely, travel agents in the business and leisure sector and other airlines - to keep empty seats open on the system.
To get around this the airline has simply put up the price of each seat to (hopefully) put off agents from re-selling the fare.
A BA official is unable to confirm how much tickets were raised, but says it was "substantial". Reports have suggested some fares were increased to as high as £4,700.
The airline has denied the inevitable accusations of profiteering.
An official says:
Because other airlines and travel agents can access our computer reservations systems, we placed any remaining seats available on each flight in the highest fare classes in an effort to deter other airlines from reserving these seats for their customers.
This was the only technical solution we had available to us to help rebook as many of our own customers as we possibly could onto each flight.
An official continues:
This was the only technical solution we had available to us to help rebook as many of our own customers as we possibly could onto each flight.
But fearing a PR backlash - on top of the countless other problems the airline has faced in recent months - chief executive Willie Walsh even posted a video to YouTube last night to explain the issue.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWG363xt9DY