Bits: you may get £400 from Mastercard, BA’s refusal to check through bags begins to bite

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• BillyBoy says:

  7 Jul7 July 04:53

  While the abandonment of interline agreements with other carriers (OW or not) clearly could have chunky commercial benefits, I’m really struggling to see any financial upside in attacking BA-BA itineraries as well.

  I would really love to read the Assumptions section of the business case for this – I suspect there are some heroic ones in there…!

  • Andrew says:

    7 Jul7 July 10:52

    First BA flight is delayed meaning that passenger no longer has time to collect their bags and check them in for the second so they miss that flight. They now have to pay BA for another flight and BA also potentially cancel their return flight meaning that that can be resold.

    Large financial upsides to BA at the expense of a terrible customer experience.

• James6u says:

  7 Jul7 July 05:12

  The new interline rules do not affect me as I generally carry cabin bags only. Neverthepess, this makes me mad and I hope the losses to BA from loss of passenger custom and goodwill exceeds their estimation. At the very least, one years notice of this change should have been given if BA had any respect for their customers at all.

  • zsalya says:

    7 Jul7 July 21:09

    It will affect you if the first flight is too late for you to make the second one – BA will not reroute you so you will have to pay top price for an instant ticket on the next flight (and if the flight you have missed is a return, you will probably have lost that too by being a no-show)

    • harry says:

      7 Jul7 July 21:18

      Indeed – Raffles you might care to look into insurance providers? Would Amex Plat cover disruption? Which other insurance providers would give peace of mind to the worried 2x PNR traveller?

      I look forward to the article 🙂

• Wanderwide says:

  7 Jul7 July 06:06

  All this is really appalling. My job always requires me to travel with a good deal of checked baggage. If I can no longer check it through, I won’t be able to risk making connecting flights on the same day, and shall have to waste time and money on a hotel overnight. Are any other alliances developing a different model, with a selling point of making transfers between its members’ flights – and, of course, between the flights of each individual airline – as seamless as possible? Is there any hope of political pressure being applied, with the threat of legislation to oblige airlines to check baggage through? Short of cutting up my BA Gold card, what would be the most effective way for a frequent flyer in my position to make BA aware of my disgust?

  • John says:

    7 Jul7 July 07:55

    If your job requires you to travel with checked baggage, then your employer should book you on a connecting ticket where baggage is checked through, otherwise your employer will be wasting time and money paying for your hotel.

• Cheshire Pete says:

  7 Jul7 July 06:15

  I’ve already implemented a policy , when flying from Manchester , that if I need to Interline as I’m unable to book a thru ticket , then I won’t be using BA anymore. Manchester does have many carriers offering more direct connections than I can count, so my love for BA is well and truely over.

• Clive J says:

  7 Jul7 July 06:37

  Logically it won’t just be Mastercard holders entitled to compensation. Retailers would have built these costs into their general pricing, so even those paying cash will have lost out. If it is restricted only to cases where retailers added a premium for Mastercard payments (and I cannot remember this being widespread) it will be a more difficult case to prove and almost impossible to quantify each loss.

  • harry says:

    7 Jul7 July 08:28

    The difference is: MC lost their case in law whereas there was no case upheld against Visa.

  • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

    7 Jul7 July 10:09

    Or, at least, Visa cardholders should also be eligible. There are plenty of merchants who charged more when paying by card (whether a corner shop or an airline) but I can’t ever recall variable pricing between Visa and MasterCard.
    The reason for this most likely is that the acquiring banks were charging the same fee whether it was Visa or MasterCard. Perhaps the banks should be suing MasterCard instead since one could argue that it was hitting their profits!

    • harry says:

      7 Jul7 July 11:12

      No – you’re missing the point that MC broke EU law whereas Visa didn’t

  • Tina Hammond says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:45

    Wrong thread ! This is ow not checking baggage if sepatate bkg regs

    • AndyGWP says:

      7 Jul7 July 12:16

      haha – no, it’s definitely about Mastercard Class Action Lawsuit AND bags not being throughchecked with BA

• Hmmm says:

  7 Jul7 July 06:56

  But the ex MAD flight was not on BA, was it?

• Tracy says:

  7 Jul7 July 07:07

  I have a flight in August on Alaska Airlines from Anchorage to Seattle. I’m then flying On BA to Heathrow. Before I booked I asked Alaska whether they would honour BAs baggage allowance and check the bags through and they confirmed that if I showed my BA itinerary they would. Does this mean they won’t do this now? Thanks.

  • John says:

    7 Jul7 July 07:57

    Alaska is not a member of oneworld. They may still do it but you shouldn’t have relied on it even before this policy change.

• harry says:

  7 Jul7 July 07:11

  When BA took over the BMI LHR slots, they made a binding commitment to improve interlining.

  Anybody care to look it up?

  • The_Real_A says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:00

    Interlining does not equate to separate tickets however. Its the ability to buy a single ticket from A to C (passing through B)

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