An update on the British Airways pilot strike

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• Antonio says:

  10 Sep10 September 09:50

  Weird, dumb move by Virgin. If you’re going to do that; why not wait until you’ve built something at least half as useful yourselves. Otherwise, all you’re doing is making things harder and worse for your frequent customers. Baffling.

  • Shoestring says:

    10 Sep10 September 09:57

    [some of the IT people were determined to close off external access to their API data feed]

    seek to understand – if you were Virgin and seeing the class actions facing BA for the data breaches & other IT failures, I think you’d be wanting to cover your backside as well

    doesn’t Tim actually work for BA now?

    however, you’d have thought that after some checking, and given this is only Tim’s side hustle & pretty useful to all concerned incl Virgin, they would re-instate his API feed after clearance

    • Dev says:

      10 Sep10 September 10:25

      Appalling. IT doesn’t run the airline, unless they have Cyber security issues and are covering their derriere. That could be the argument they used to make senior management sign off on the move.

    • David says:

      10 Sep10 September 10:27

      Sorry but that comment makes no sense.
      Not from a technical or legal stand point.

      It is more likely to be simply about resource use.

      • David says:

        10 Sep10 September 10:29

        Comment in reply to shoestring not Dev.

        To follow from Devs comment, if I was senior management at Virgin and I was presented with that as a reasoning, I’d be asking a lot more questions about my IT department.

        I’m sure this is resource use and cost.

    • Rob says:

      10 Sep10 September 10:41

      No, Tim has now left.

      I wouldn’t give up hope of this getting sorted, I have escalated it very high at Virgin.

      • Freddy says:

        10 Sep10 September 18:39

        Maybe escalate the useless 241 voucher issue aswell

  • Lady London says:

    10 Sep10 September 12:40

    I’m not even sure it’s legal to close off access to your API.

    Isn’t there some recent-ish law that software providers have to provide API’s to external software that wants to connect to them, and can’t block it off?

    Do you remember that other marvellous software that always alerted us to seat moves or flight changes and equipment changes long before British Airways and other airlines ever did? Another sad loss.

    • Lady London says:

      10 Sep10 September 13:21

      Actually, thinking about it, Virgin is dominated by Delta now, isn’t it? I do recall Delta was the first to remove its flights from an engine in the US that used to be able to look at them from outside, too.

      This set off a wave of everyone else doing the same in the US case – Delta being the forerunner.
      However I think the situation is different in Europe and that systems are legally obliged to provide API’s and to let external (even competitive) systems connect if they want to.

      I do so hope Virgin gets st*ffed on this and am pretty sure a legal challenge can be made. It doesn’t fit the image of a “cool” airline.

      • Rui N. says:

        10 Sep10 September 14:00

        I’m almost certain you are mixing with the “open banking” rules that do indeed require financial institutions to grant access to certain portions of their APIs. But those rules are not economy wide. Without leaving the aviation sector, Ryanair always shows much concern about unauthorized access to their API (and they have – or at least used to – have one of the most sophisticated APIs around, light years ahead of most competition), e.g., by meta-search engines (they have to either get into an agreement with Ryanair to show its flights or resort to screen scrapping).

        • Lady London says:

          10 Sep10 September 14:34

          Rui the API thing also applies to systems that do other things like the ones run by SAP can access what they like using API;s as far as I know. The software I work on most, which is a procurement system, had to provide API’s and let outside systems access information from within their system. this was a US-owned piece of software and the access I know was in Europe. Not sure if it’s just in Europe that systems have to provide API’s and allow external sites to use them to access information in their system, or if it also applies in the US too.

          It may well be that the “accessed” system can put in place qualification requirements and a process to request API access but I am certain that API’s now have to be provided by law, and that access via API cannot just be denied.

• Andy says:

  10 Sep10 September 11:15

  OT – I’m due to fly to Germany on Friday evening with BA and obviously slightly concerned about the drone protest. I booked it using my Amex Platinum through Amex travel.
  If the flight is cancelled by BA should I contact Amex Travel to rebook? Would i be covered by my Amex Platinum travel insurance and could book myself say an Easyjet flight from Luton.

  My key priorities are: Getting to Germany on Friday and not being out of pocket as having a few money issues at the moment!

  Any advice would be gratefully received!

  • Shoestring says:

    10 Sep10 September 11:28

    you’ll only get a refund if the flight *is* actually cancelled, so you’ll have to wait & see

    no insurance co will pay out now if you cancel on ‘fear of possible drone action’

    there is such a thing as an EasyJet flexi ticket but they are more expensive, ie if you want, you could book a reserve ticket then shift it to a later date if you don’t need to use it on Friday

    • andy says:

      10 Sep10 September 11:34

      Thanks, yeah I’ll hold on until Friday I guess. If my flight is cancelled would amex platinum insurance cover me if i rebooked on easyjet? Can just imagine it will be a nightmare trying to get through to BA on the day for rebooking…

      • Shoestring says:

        10 Sep10 September 11:45

        if the flight is cancelled you can definitely get a refund (it’s the law) – and you already know the value of that, call it £200

        if you qualified for insurance, you wouldn’t get the full cost of the flight – you’d get the difference between your BA refund and the EasyJet flight – call it £50 on the day? (in any case, you can quantify the difference)

        so you could go ahead & book EJ without delay once you’ve been cancelled as you know your downside risk (the difference in cost between the flights) which is quite limited I presume

  • Anna says:

    10 Sep10 September 17:12

    Do any insurance policies cover for strike action?

    • Shoestring says:

      10 Sep10 September 17:17

      sure – unforeseen strikes only, though, eg
      https://www.moneymaxim.co.uk/travel-insurance-strike-action

• Colin JE says:

  10 Sep10 September 14:08

  Very sad about losing the Manchester CP and Staybridge. I stayed at each last month and was VERY impressed with both. The CP gave me lounge access with my Spire membership and both were about 60 quid (admittedly it’s a quiet time of year for them).

  Will they be honouring points bookings for November or should I book a backup?

  • Rob says:

    10 Sep10 September 15:13

    It says 2020 so I would assume you’re safe.

    • Colin JE says:

      17 Sep17 September 11:04

      Thanks Rob, phew. I’d better get in as many stays as possible in the meantime!

• happeemonkee says:

  10 Sep10 September 15:00

  Response from Virgin

  I am very sorry for any disappointment caused with recent updates to our system.

  Reward Flight Finder is not affiliated with Virgin Atlantic in anyway, and so we would not design our systems to correlate with their own.

  I appreciate that this is not the response that you were hoping for, however we would not be able to update our systems to work with a third party website.

  I am very sorry to disappoint you on this occasion.

  If you enter your search requirements in the ‘Book flights’ area on the homepage, and then select the ‘Pay with your miles’ option for the cabin you want, this will show you any reward seats we have available on a calendar view.

  You can also send a text to our SMS team, who will be more than happy to check reward seat availability for any dates and destinations that you have in mind. This service is excellent if you’re on the go, and the team are available 24/7!

  • EwanG says:

    10 Sep10 September 15:54

    This sentence made me chuckle: “..however we would not be able to update our systems to work with a third party website.”

    That’s exactly what they did in reverse, by removing the API access!

    Perhaps all VFC customers should inundate the team with multiple SMS daily to check reward seat availability, rather than let the customers self serve using Tim’s tool. Not that Rob would condone such behaviour 😉

    • Peter K says:

      10 Sep10 September 19:00

      Not just me thinking this then…

• Double Dee says:

  10 Sep10 September 15:10

  The virgin site for booking rewards is beyond awful, half the time it doesn’t show anything and then resets your search, if you try to book delta flights its a complete pain

• Polly says:

  10 Sep10 September 15:32

  Doubt it, it works in their favour. Reward seats not found or used, can be later sold at a higher premium.

  • Rob says:

    10 Sep10 September 17:18

    Well, no, in theory these are seats which will not be sold, hence offering them for redemption in the first place ….

• Kai says:

  10 Sep10 September 17:16

  Am I the only person who is not saddened by the RFF news? I find Virgin’s reward search easier to use than BA’s – the calendar you get is straightforward and it’s easy to navigate to other dates. Also they have very limited destinations so I don’t think the “I don’t know where I want to go” function is very useful. Maybe it’s just because I don’t fly Virgin much at all.

  • Peter K says:

    10 Sep10 September 19:03

    But the point is RFF negated the need to “navigate to other dates”. I’ve spent a long time trying to find flights on the Virgin website when RFF found everything I needed in seconds.

• Craig says:

  10 Sep10 September 18:02

  we need to urgently rebook a cancelled BA first flight from JFK to LHR.

  We’ve been offered BA first from Newark to LCY or an AA first flight.

  Are either of these as good offerings as the BA JFK experience?

  Currently on the phone with BA trying to sort it so any urgent tips would be very much appreciated!

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