British Airways Boeing 787 Window Dimmers Glitch, Crew Gets Creative

The Boeing 787 is known for its dimmable windows, rather than traditional window shades. There are a variety of reasons I don’t like these, like the crew being able to control them, the dimmers not fully blocking out light, and more. Well, here’s yet another reason not to like these, as flagged by PYOK.

Dreamliner window dimmers malfunction on long haul flight

A traveler has posted to the British Airways Complaints Advice Facebook group (which… that’s interesting in its own right) to share a recent unpleasant experience on one of British Airways’ longest flights, from Tokyo (HND) to London (LHR).

The person was traveling with his girlfriend in premium economy, and writes the following:

The automatic window dimmers on our side of the cabin were not functioning correctly, leaving us exposed to bright daylight for much of the flight. What made this issue even more concerning was that half of the cabin had fully functioning windows. Cabin crew tried to get a fix from engineers on the ground but the best fix involved using a paper tray liner and tape to cover the windows, which had to be re-applied multiple times with the help of the cabin crew and even another passenger. Had to use the emergency procedure card to try and block the light more effectively.

Just didn’t feel very premium at all – do you think I could at least get something back, had been saving this companion voucher for a special occasion and kinda feels wasted.

The traveler should get something for the inconvenience

It’s funny, because the premise of the post is asking if they can get anything from British Airways for the inconvenience. It seems reasonable that if the person wrote in to British Airways, they’ll get some number of Avios or some voucher for the inconvenience.

This is just about the worst possible flight where something like this could happen — it’s one of British Airways’ longest, and it’s a daytime flight the entire way. On the plus side, kudos to the crew for their creative solution, and for apparently being helpful throughout the flight.

You’d think that the airline would’ve proactively offered compensation to passengers for this, because it greatly impacted the flight. Then again, I guess we’re talking about British Airways, so we shouldn’t be too surprised about the lack of proactive customer service.

I guess there are Facebook groups for everything, but it’s just kind of funny to me how there’s a Facebook group specifically for people to get advice about complaining to British Airways. Even stranger, if you ask me, is the number of people who post in this group as British Airways apologists, just telling people that they should be happy the flight was safe, and they should move on. Ah, the joys of the internet…

Bottom line

The window dimmers glitched on a British Airways Boeing 787 flight. Worst of all, it was one of the carrier’s longest flights, with daylight the whole way. On the plus side, the ground staff and crew deserve credit for trying to come up with as good of a solution as possible, by taping pieces of paper and safety cards to the windows, to block out as much light as possible.

What do you make of this window dimmer glitch incident?