UK court ruling may lead to six years of refunds for cancelled returns on missed flights

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• James says:

  28 Jun28 June 08:14

  To be fair to BA – during the recent IT meltdown, I was expecting trouble with the return leg as we didn’t take the cancelled outbound flight. There wasn’t.

  The return flight remained valid
  They provided EU Compo
  They paid for alternative flights we booked on another airline (they weren’t remotely in a position to rebook us as you know)
  They paid reasonable expenses
  Points posted for outbound flight

  This was the least I expected but they did it reasonably promptly with little fuss.

• Dev says:

  28 Jun28 June 08:27

  This is dangerous. Surely the airlines will counter by creating special fares or something. E.g. LHR-NYC costs £1500 but the outbound is priced at £1499 and the return is £1 or something like that with the caveat that you only get £1 return if you buy a £1499 one way.

  • Nick says:

    28 Jun28 June 08:49

    It is a fair point, but surely any Court would look through the form to see the substance and allocate say 750 to the return leg. They would surely take a dim view of the position taken by the airline. It might also create some interesting arguments for ec261 compensation in respect of the outbound.

  • john says:

    28 Jun28 June 09:30

    Sounds similar to how railways often price their tickets.

  • Klaus-Peter Dudas says:

    28 Jun28 June 11:46

    That would also lead to other interesting situations where people on the return leg would be the first ones to be downgraded (here is your 70p compensation) vs people on an out-bound where £1,049.30 is due.

  • RussellH says:

    28 Jun28 June 15:23

    Or maybe airlines ought to consider just charging twice the single price for a return.

    I am sure that back in 1973 when I first started to use air travel the fare was distance related. I know that it was worth quite a useful sum flying GLA-DUB-BOS cf LHR-DUB-BOS single. A return would not have been much use as I had a three year contract. I returned by ship (Montreal-Southampton) in 1976 as I was able to bring three years accumulation of stuff (1 medium size flat bed truckload) for free.

• Joan says:

  28 Jun28 June 08:55

  Last year when BA cancelled my outbound flight from City to Zurich on a Friday morning ( and offered me instead a flight from Heathrow on Sunday , which was ridiculous as I was going to Zurich for the weekend ! ) I took myself off to Gatwick on that Friday morning and got an easyJet flight to Zurich instead .
  I had no idea at the time that BA would automatically cancel my pre- booked return flight from Zurich to City just because they had cancelled the outbound flight . Luckily when I tried to check in on line and couldn’t , I called them and after much toing and froing they reinstated me in that return flight .
  Otherwise I might have turned up
  At the airport to be , once again, abandoned by BA !

  • Leo says:

    28 Jun28 June 09:22

    This isn’t just a BA issue. Its much broader than that. Broader than IAG also.

• richard says:

  28 Jun28 June 09:51

  I would be very surprised if this means anything for “missed leg” flights. The circumstances are quite different and the cases can be distinguished.

  To use Raffles’ example above, I think it’s wholly reasonable for an airline to assume that if a passenger is booked onto AMS-LHR-HKG, but fails to turn up for the AMS-LHR leg, then that passenger is not going to show up for the LHR-HKG leg and to deny that passenger boarding at LHR (since they did not pay for a ticket originating in the UK). By contrast, Mr. Dove paid for his ticket from MAD-LGW but was denied boarding at MAD.

  In the UK at least, public policy is part of the courts’ discretion and I’m sure the courts would be aware that a ruling which allows passengers to join “missed leg” flights part-way through would completely undermine the ability of the government to raise APD.

  • Leo says:

    28 Jun28 June 10:52

    Sensible comment.

  • Alan says:

    28 Jun28 June 22:49

    Agree, sensible thoughts.

• Oliver says:

  28 Jun28 June 12:28

  The judgement in itself is useless, what we need now is a regulation that states that airlines must now automatically refund/contact anyone that this has affected in the last 6 years.

  Same with EU comp, once they have paid out a claim, they should be bound to award compensation for the entire flight, and must make efforts to contact all passengers.

• memesweeper says:

  28 Jun28 June 13:43

  Plenty of things that airlines consider ‘normal’ would to a lay person seem ‘unfair’. Disallowing name changes on bookings (or charging massive fees for them) is a way for airlines to preserve revenue, as it prevents tickets being sold on, but for a traveller, such rules are unfair and unjust when a ticket can no longer be used and is non-refundable/non-changeable. If the courts start expecting airlines to behave like ordinary companies selling normal goods/services, they are in for an expensive shock. Could be great news for passengers if unfair terms and practices are struck down though.

• Steve says:

  28 Jun28 June 15:40

  This is an interesting case with Iberia, I am currently in a strange situation, I had a flight booked from Amsterdam to Tokyo with Qatar with some feeders booked with BA (London to Amsterdam). My Qatar outbound flight got rescheduled as the connection was to short. They offered to fly me from London instead so I could make my onward connections.

  Now the BA feeders I have booked is with a 1 night hotel stay which BA say wont be a problem, but as I need to cancel my outbound and keep my return they want to reprice the fare and change change fees. Surely booking a return and removing the outbound would make sense for the airline to cancel it for free. I am not sure what to do and does this case fit into this situation.

  Thanks for any replies.

  • Alex W says:

    28 Jun28 June 21:01

    Could you book a RFS back from AMS and just cancel the whole BA holiday?

• Gomigo says:

  28 Jun28 June 18:58

  ‪Rob I just noticed that Iberia Plus has made a quiet change to its combine avios rule. Avios can be transferred only from Avios / BAEC to Iberia Plus and not other way around. Also we cannot undo the transfer once it is completed. Any insights ???‬

  • Genghis says:

    28 Jun28 June 19:05

    Eh? Where did you notice?

  • the real harry1 says:

    28 Jun28 June 19:05

    the insight is you are just on the standard Avios transfer page and that’s what you normally see

    the IT is rubbish

    you can still move Avios about freely between the various bits of IAG, but you might need the help of the pushmi pullyu 🙂

    nothing to see, please move on 🙂

    • Genghis says:

      28 Jun28 June 19:07

      To me… to you…

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