Travel - GBAirways style

The idea seemed simple - on my birthday fly to Tokyo.
GBAirways had other ideas! GBA, who run BA's flights in southern spain and Gibraltar, saw fit to put us on a plane first piloted by the Wright Brothers. Of course it arrived in Malaga fine. But couldn't take off.
First problem was the hydraulics, which required a new pump. That was 6 hours. Finally, the plane was ready to go! Yippee! Missed the flight to Tokyo of course, but got on one the next day.
Taxi out to the runway and doh! Now one of the engines is acting up. So back to the ramp for some more dicking around. Finally at 11 (that is about 12 hours after scheduled departure) it was called a night and we were shipped to the local hotel.
So, for my birthday dinner I was enjoying hotel food at midnight. Well, not enjoying as we were not given any choice, just a plate of chips and pork in sauce. Now, being a vegetarian I didn't find this particularly appealing, so dinner was chips (french fries for you Canadians, Freedom Fries for you Yanks).
Pork has to be the stupidest choice for a 'forced' meal as not just us vegetarians, but Muslims and Jews as well don't take kindly to it. Oh, and it was cold.
So, day 2 of the journey starts and we are still around 100km from home. Instead of getting us on the now-fixed plane nice and early, GB Airways decides to give us a noon slot, which means we have no margin for error to get onto our Tokyo flight.
We taxi out to the runway and doh! Same problem! Somehow it had not fixed itself over night. What a bummer.
I say 'fixed itself' because the pilot made no mention of them working on it over night.
So, another few hours while GB Airways decides what to do and all flights are now booked for the day from Malaga so they are really in a pickle.
At 11pm, now 36 hours late (on a 2 1/2 hour flight) a plane from Excel Airlines (who??) takes us to Gatwick.
Of course, we were supposed to be going to Heathrow, where the flight to Tokyo leaves from. Can we get to Heathrow at 1:30am when we land? No. We have to stay the night in Gatwick, then take the bloody bus from Gatwick to Heathrow. That means we can sleep for 5 hours only, because we have to schedule 90 minutes to get to Heathrow and of course be there nice and early to check in as we now are not automatically checked in because of the fact we are in a different airport and our bags are with us.

But I am writing this in Tokyo, so we got here eventually. 48 hours late. Thanks BA!

Oh, when we got to Heathrow I thought that perhaps BA owed me something and maybe, seeing as I missed my birthday, they would upgrade us to something a little nicer. Wrong. To quote BA ground staff - there was 'no reason' to perform the upgrade. And I was reminded that GB Airways is NOT BA (despite flying under their logo). I pointed out that I had booked tickets on ba.com, not GBAirways.com, but they weren't having it.

In short - GBAirways has a lot to answer for.