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Does Italian law let you book a cheap British Airways ticket from Milan but get on in London?

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We cover ex-EU flights deals (cheap flights which start in a European country, not the UK) now and again on Head for Points, although they are not for everyone.  There are two types of ex-EU deal if you live in the UK:

saving money (not on BA) by starting your trip outside the UK, which is usually cheaper because you avoid long-haul UK Air Passenger Duty (up to £160) and because other markets generally have fewer corporate travellers willing to pay full fare

saving money on BA flights by starting your trip outside the UK, which involves flying back to London and then onwards to your final destination.  This is cheaper because you avoid long-haul APD and because BA has to price these indirect trips cheaply to compete with direct flights from the same cities. 

British Airways A320

As a random example of the latter, take a look at this article we ran last week showing £1,150 British Airways Club World return flights to Cape Town, as long as you start in Amsterdam.

Of course, flying to your European starting point costs time and money.  I did a few trips like this when I was single, because I was happy to trade the time for the money saved and the extra Avios and tier points earned.  There is no way, however, that I would drag my wife and children around Europe on a similar route.

You MUST take the first leg of your flight.  If you book Amsterdam – Heathrow – Cape Town and just turn up at Heathrow, you’re stuffed.  Your entire itinerary will have been cancelled when you failed to board the flight in Amsterdam.

But has Italian law thrown all this into disarray?

Take a look at this article.

In June 2017, British Airways and Etihad were each fined a whopping €1 million for not telling customers that they would NOT lose their entire booking if they missed the first leg when flying from Italy.

It appears that Italian law does not allow airlines to cancel the rest of your journey if you fail to take the first flight.  The article makes it clear that this applies both to multi-leg outward trips and return trips.

Italian law does not give you, the passenger, carte blanche however.  You must notify the airline of your intention to fly the subsequent parts of your ticket within 24 hours of the original departure time (two hours for a round trip same-day ticket).

If you do this, and your ticket was sold in Italy, the airline is obliged to let you continue your trip.

Here is an example in practice

Take a look at this page of the Qatar Airways website.

It tells passengers who have bought tickets in Italy that they can ring a specific number, or email a specific inbox, within 24 hours of their original flight and have the rest of the ticket reinstated.

What does this mean?

I am not a European aviation lawyer.  Let’s get that clear from the start.

However, the implication here is that you could potentially book a cheap Milan – London – XXXXXX business class ticket on British Airways, and not bother to take the first flight.

All you would have to do is call BA after the departure of the first leg and insist they reinstate the remaining flights.  You could then turn up at Heathrow and jump on as usual, having made a substantial saving.

One potential risk is the definition of “a ticket sold in Italy”.  Flights booked on ba.com from Italy will probably be ticketed locally but can you be certain of this? Is there a way of knowing where the “sale” took place?  You could, of course, use an Italian travel agent or Italian website to make your booking which would ensure it was “sold” in Italy.

Let’s be very clear ….

I am NOT recommending you go out and try this.  I am simply highlighting the fact that Italian law seems to imply that it should be possible. 

However, I am NOT going to be taking a risk here and I don’t recommend that you do either, unless you are brave (or on a fully flexible ticket.  I’m sure at some point we will find out one or the other whether it is possible.

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Category

British Airways and Avios, Etihad and Etihad Guest, Qatar Airways and Privilege Club

Comments (106)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Biagio says:
    10 Sep10 September 05:25

    Austrian law is the same…

  • Cat says:
    10 Sep10 September 06:31

    …or you could start off your long haul holiday from Milan with a delightful weekend at the Italian lakes and make it a two centre holiday and avoid the risk entirely.
    If the kids start complaining on the flight out of London, tell them about Italian ice cream!

  • Paul says:
    10 Sep10 September 06:31

    I have “dragged” my wife and family around Europe and it’s hardly a hardship when saving many thousands of pounds. U.K. APD is regularly cited as an issue, and saving over £600 (family of 4) is not to sniffed at, but that’s not why most people do ex EU. The fares are just a great deal less than ex LHR and the savings run into many thousands of pounds. In the last 15 years I have not bought a single ex UK premium cash fare.
    Even adding in the positioning flights, hotels etc the savings are huge. Moreover adding a day, and making it part of the holiday means we have seen things, and done things many would never do; and still saved thousands.

    • John says:
      10 Sep10 September 06:50

      I do ex-EU because without a substantial increase in my financial position I won’t pay the usual prices being asked for ex-UK, so talking about “savings” is meaningless: the options are often either ex-EU in J or direct in Y(+) or don’t go.

      However I have paid quite a few ex-UK premium fares recently; TK £1000 to BKK, MH £1500 to SYD, QR £1400 to HKG (but that’s just about too pricey for me), some BA CE fares for £60-70 one-way…

      • Michael C says:
        10 Sep10 September 07:34

        With a family, I’m a big PE direct flight fan, too.

        Just fyi, LHR-HKG Cathay for next year is currently around 900 GBP (open jaws from SEAsia possible for little more).

        • Crafty says:
          10 Sep10 September 08:30

          Intriguing. How would you rate Cathay PE in comparison to say BA Club World (or any other benchmark)? I don’t want to pay this much for something that feels like BA PE, but I’m assuming Cathay makes the experience more special…

        • Michael C says:
          10 Sep10 September 11:51

          Crafty, haven’t done it yet – just pricing out some possible April hols!
          Lots of Asian returns via HKG. A bit surprisingly, the PE reviews aren’t that great. But at that price, the saving is a massive hotel upgrade for the trip…

        • Tony says:
          10 Sep10 September 15:07

          Cathay PE is still PE. I used them last year for a trip to HKG when the fare was very good (c. £800) and didn’t require a Saturday night stay.

          The cheapest J I could get at the time was Finnair, for almost £1k more so I went with CX. If you take the morning flight out of London, you can treat the outbound like a day flight. Pick the same for the return and use some of the savings to pay for an extra night in a HK hotel or a day room etc so you can get straight to bed for a few hours on arrival.

          Ultimately however, it’s still PE and cabin crew were very difficult to find for the most part (although my CX J experience was about the same…)

    • ChrisC says:
      10 Sep10 September 17:04

      On all of my Ex-EU trips the APD saving is only 20% (at most and is often less) of the total saving.

      If the saving was only the APD element then people wouldn’t bother doing them.

      When pricing up a trip I always price up an ex-LON as well as ex-AMS/DUB/INV etc to see how much the saving really is and then add in the costs of the positioning flights plus a possible hotel as well. Sometimes it’s not value for money when you factor in all the costs.

  • Marcw says:
    10 Sep10 September 06:33

    I’m not convinced this is that easy. First, BA would charge you any dep LHR taxes (eg APD), since you are not a connecting pax.
    And second, possibly BA could charge you a fee to reissue your ticket. The theory might be simple, but the applicability questionable in complex itineraries where you just decide to skip the first segment…

    • Doug M says:
      10 Sep10 September 08:52

      This my guess too. BA would be yes it’s fine, we’ve not cancelled it, but we have repriced it based on a London departure, and we want £2K. I’d also guess like you that the ADP becomes payable.

      • john says:
        10 Sep10 September 12:01

        Any seat reservations would get lost and in theory between you being offloaded and re-loaded the flight could become full in which case you’d end up on some other service at a time of their choosing. Lots of risk involved with this which may not be acceptable to some.

    • Andrew says:
      10 Sep10 September 09:28

      At the moment this article just contains a lot of supposition which is a shame because, if true, this could be extremely significant in the points and miles game.

      Why not give it a try Rob? Pick up a cheap Milan->Manchester ticket and just turn up at Heathrow? At the very least negotiating the BA bureaucracy you’ll come up against could make for an entertaining article.

      • Rob says:
        10 Sep10 September 10:08

        It’s not supposition to the extent that Qatar Airways actually has a page on its website telling you how to do this. It is more about the technicalities of how you’d get BA to process it …

        You’re right though, a Milan-MAN via LHR single would be one way of testing this.

    • ChrisC says:
      10 Sep10 September 17:07

      IIRC that is the position in Germany after a court case there. Airlines (in that particular legal case Lufthansa) cannot simply cancel the rest of the trip but can reprice the trip and use the original trip as a credit against the new cost.

      • Will says:
        10 Sep10 September 21:52

        But that’s German law not Italian, the Italian law appears to specifically state you can drop the first leg, I’m no expert on Italian law but it would be a very weak defence to say you complied with this law by charging additional money (beyond APD)

      • Will says:
        10 Sep10 September 22:05

        Further the summary of the case explicitly states:
        “ …. this rule and its implementation methods and to set a procedure to enable them to board on subsequent flights free of charge”

  • Kevin says:
    10 Sep10 September 06:47

    I took advantage of the BA sale, and I am dragging my partner and (then to be) 5 month old child to Amsterdam to start our journey there. It’s really not a hassle to spend a night in a great European city, especially when you can use the Eurostar to get there!

    The savings are astronomical: we’re flying AMS->LHR->DUR, and return CPT->LHR->LGW->AMS. This is taking advantage of BA’s LHR->DUR direct route, which has no competitors (similar for CPT->LHR). As there’s an airport change, we’ll get our checked luggage back and ‘change airports’.

    The minor inconvenience of starting in AMS means the tickets cost us £1240 each as opposed to £4020 each. Rather crazy.

    • John says:
      10 Sep10 September 06:53

      But were you truly considering paying £4020? If not, the comparison is between £1240 and the route you would actually have paid for.

    • filipino_chino says:
      10 Sep10 September 06:59

      I did the same, but rather than short connections – i would book longer one…

      My trip with a nearly 2 year old was:

      MAN>AMS – 1 day layover
      AMS>LAX>HNL (next time a break in LAX)
      HNL>DFW>AMS>MAN – this is too much in one go

      The extra hop was fun, but i think no matter which route, HNL is a long flight – so i need more time, I saved just short of £500 per person for my dates excluding the hotel etc (but i enjoyed my time in AMS – i want to do MXP next time)

    • Mud Island Mlungu says:
      10 Sep10 September 07:01

      “Change airports” lol. Hint hint wink wink…

    • Robman says:
      10 Sep10 September 08:08

      There are no direct flights to Durban on BA as far as I’m aware. You either connect through Johannesburg or Cape Town.

    • Chris says:
      10 Sep10 September 08:25

      Ha! My wife would never agree to that, despite huge savings. I’d do it with a baby but as soon as you hit walking/toddling age I’d probably just pay the extra…

    • Doug M says:
      10 Sep10 September 08:56

      Agree with post about comparison. I would never pay for £4K for a CW flight. I have paid £800 to £1000 for PE, but last couple of years have paid £1000 – £1400 for business. If I couldn’t get the fare I want I’d be back in PE hoping for an Avios upgrade.

      • Rob says:
        10 Sep10 September 10:12

        I’ve never paid more than £1750 and that remain my cap, even though it was about 10 years ago that I paid the £1750. Even if I wanted to go to Oz I could get it for under £2500 (Etihad is offering this price virtually every day from Stockholm, and good old China Eastern and China Southern are often £1999 from Amsterdam. Someone told me the other day that they had got Singapore Airlines over Christmas to Oz for £2250, starting somewhere in Europe.)

        • Alanr says:
          11 Sep11 September 15:06

          I got Singapore Airlines to Melbourne starting in Stockholm last Christmas for £1830. Out on 14th Dec and back on 1st Jan, and booked about nine months in advance. Generally they now have flights on that route for around £2300, so I think the price I got was a sale for a new route (started mid last year).

  • Kevin says:
    10 Sep10 September 07:16

    @John – I get your point, false equivalence if we’re comparing what would be financially feasible rather than just the flight routes.

    Realistically, we wouldn’t have been able to take even a remotely similar flight path for a similar amount. We were going to start in MAD and take advantage of Iberia’s 90k avios (reward booking), but that would see us going LHR->MAD->JNB->DUR, which is now becoming a bit tedious.

    Additionally, there’s practically no reward availability on the way back, and one-way biz tickets are at least £1100, and this has us connecting in JNB, and then again somewhere else (Ethiopia, UAE, Italy, etc). Therefore, in terms of sheer legs required, this us not only the most financially feasible option, it’s the most direct within our budget.

    The alternative would’ve been to leave the outbound Iberia booking in place, and book economy on the way back.

    Either way you look at it, this is a very attractive deal.

  • Mikeact says:
    10 Sep10 September 08:03

    We’re off again Wednesday on another ex EU flight, this time via MAD to take advantage of our first bunch of the recent Iberia promotion Avios. Just a fortnight break kicking off in Philadelphia.

    • Mikeact says:
      10 Sep10 September 15:41

      Meant to say….saved a ton of Avios and a lot, I mean a lot of money, even taking into account RFS Avios for positioning.

  • Evan says:
    10 Sep10 September 08:16

    I’m not knocking ex-EU flights (or the people who take them) – but I think they are a total faff when you just want to get somewhere – I did it once on a long weekend trip to New York. Never again. I was knackered when I got there. I’d consider doing it if the EU airport was “on the way” say CDG on AF to Asia etc. but I wouldn’t double-back on myself to LHR/LGW again. I’d rather go PE direct if going west on a day flight.

    • Jamie says:
      10 Sep10 September 08:23

      +1

      I’d rather not waste hours and hours of my own time for the sake of flying business – economy/PE with a more direct and convenient route is always preferable! The only exception I can think of would be Australia/NZ where I’d be already resigned to a stop over. I can never understand people flying to South Africa via the Middle East (which can literally double the journey time) when it’s an easy and relatively painless direct flight.

      • Chris says:
        10 Sep10 September 13:31

        But if you were a few tier points shy of Gold and the trip in CW would get you there?

      • John says:
        10 Sep10 September 14:51

        You’re talking like the route is the only consideration. Why wouldn’t you stop over in the ME if it was £500 cheaper? And economy flyers might not mind spending 5 hours extra to save £100

    • Rob says:
      10 Sep10 September 08:45

      It makes more sense if you live near Heathrow and can exploit the 24 hour rule, ie you can have up to 24 hours between flights.

      Monday AM fly to Amsterdam, bit of sightseeing, fly back, go home. At some point on Tuesday, leave home, go to Heathrow and take your long haul leg.

      • Evan says:
        10 Sep10 September 09:15

        I do live in Central London but I’m still not convinced! But you know horses for courses.

        • Rob says:
          10 Sep10 September 10:11

          My option above is a no-brainer tough if you’re single and overrun with holiday time. Why wouldn’t you do a day trip to Amsterdam if it saved you £750? You still get to sleep in your own bed.

      • alan young says:
        10 Sep10 September 14:59

        Do you have to check in baggage in AMS or can you do that the next day at LHR.

        • ChrisC says:
          10 Sep10 September 17:10

          yes you can check it in the next day.

          But when doing OLCI always select ‘not sure’ when asked the number of bags you want to check-in. Putting in a number (including 0) messes up some airline systems

    • Doug M says:
      10 Sep10 September 09:05

      I actually enjoy the positioning. I’ve become very fond of Stockholm and Helsinki in the last couple of years. I’ll be spending a hopefully enjoyable day in Dublin come October. Before going home for the night, and flying to Miami the following day. It’s all part of the experience for me, a holiday within a holiday.

    • John says:
      10 Sep10 September 15:02

      Well, I don’t understand why people do ex-EU to New York, as it adds 4-5 hours to a flight that is 6-7 hours in the first place – especially if it’s a back-to-back in the European airport. In particular the ex-CAI examples where the “positioning” might take longer than the actual flight.

      And J to NYC doesn’t make sense to me anyway unless you actually need to be at work 2 hours before takeoff and 2 hours after landing.

      But I think it makes sense for flights 10+ hours long, and I try to schedule activities that I need to accomplish in the European city too, so I actually need to take all the flights.

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