‘To fly, to serve” was the slogan British Airways once prided itself on. But a more accurate tagline today would be “Give us your money but please don’t bother contacting us in an emergency”.

On Monday two friends and I were caught up in the power outage across Spain and Portugal. When the grid went down in the late morning, it became very clear that our flight from Lisbon to London later that day would not be leaving the airport — obvious to everyone, apart from British Airways.

Most mobile phone and internet networks went down simultaneously, traffic lights stopped working and the roads were gridlocked. Shops and restaurants closed their doors, with no electricity to serve customers or take payments.

Our only information as to the scale of the outage came when the odd wave of phone signal allowed us to check foreign news websites.

This intermittent connection brought no news from British Airways — in fact, its website still advised passengers to get to Lisbon airport as if we were catching our flight at its scheduled time.The crowds at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado airport today after electricity had been restoredEPA/TIAGO PETINGAMeanwhile other airlines were already taking action to help their passengers. TAP Air Portugal told its customers to stay away from the airport, and easyJet offered free transfers to an alternative flight. From British Airways — which once hailed itself as the world’s favourite airline — there was silence. We were staying in a coastal town south of Lisbon and managed to get a taxi into the capital — where the severity of the power cut became clear. The main road to the airport had been blocked and passengers were jumping out of taxis on the motorway and at big roundabouts to make the final trek to the terminals on foot — some cars had even seemingly been abandoned at the roadside. Thousands of people and their luggage were gathered outside the airport — desperate to stay in the shade and without the means to buy water or use facilities. Airport security blocked the entrance doors and did their best to keep the overheating crowd calm — when one policeman heard British Airways was still sending people to the airport he laughed. “There are no lights, no passenger lists, no computers. No flights are leaving today,” he said. • What caused the power outage in Spain and Portugal?It was obvious to anyone with the will to see it that all flights were grounded. British Airways repeatedly pushed back our flight and it wasn’t until 7pm (almost eight hours after the power went out) that it finally cancelled it. We found wi-fi at the Meliá airport hotel, which has its own solar panels to keep the lights on and systems running. The staff were incredible, patient and kind — opening the doors to hundreds of stressed and sweating travellers to buy water and food, access the internet and use the bathroom. Stranded strangers shared their phones, chargers and even their packed lunches. When a flight is cancelled or severely delayed an airline should offer food, drink and alternative transport and accommodation where possible. British Airways emailed to tell us it would not be arranging a hotel for us that night and we should find our own, to be reimbursed. This would have been much easier had it followed other airlines and cancelled its flights in good time — instead it had waited until sunset was approaching and all hotels in the city and surrounding towns were fully booked.In a travel emergency it is reasonable to look to your airline for help and advice — it should have a better understanding of logistics, such as when an airport might reopen or where to stay in an unfamiliar city.But when we managed to make contact with a relative in the UK who called British Airways and its partner BA Holidays for help booking a place to stay, they were firmly told it was our problem to solve, not theirs. We had the same response when we finally got through to the company on the phone at 10pm. We eventually found a hotel room approaching midnight, but not before we had walked for an hour and 20 minutes across an unfamiliar city with luggage in tow, in the dark, with no streetlights and no phone signal. It was not a journey that I would have liked to have made solo. An unlit street in Lisbon yesterdayAP/ARMANDO FRANCAWe were able to navigate the chaos at the airport because we were able bodied (to walk across the city to a hotel) and reasonably tech savvy (to make use of what wi-fi we could find and search for accommodation). For elderly or vulnerable passengers, or those travelling with young families the situation would have been far more serious — did British Airways wash its hands of them too? The power outage was unforeseen and outside any airline’s control — but how each responded to help its passengers showed the true colours of their customer service. • How to prepare for a power outageAfter some sleep and breakfast on Tuesday morning I asked my travel companions if they could summarise how they felt British Airways had treated us. “With disdain” was their conclusion.British Airways said: “The power outage was entirely out of our control and we made every effort to get flights to and from Lisbon because we know how important our customers’ travel plans are.“We made the difficult decision to cancel two services as soon as it became clear that it wouldn’t be possible to operate them. We’re sorry to those affected customers and we contacted them immediately to provide them with rebooking or refund options.”Lisbon is largely back up and running and flights have left the airport today — we are due to leave this evening if all goes to plan. And we’ve topped up on cash now the ATMs are back up and running — yesterday was a reminder to these three millennials how redundant cards and Apple Pay are when the systems go down.