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British Airways agrees to pay for customers stuck in Italy to reach non-Italian airports

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If you have any friends or relatives stuck in Italy, pass this on.

A revised BA travel advisory, issued at 1pm today, states that British Airways will now pay the costs of passengers who wish to leave Italy and pick up a British Airways flight elsewhere.

It also applies in reverse, to any Italian resident who is in the UK and unable to return home.

On the – unlikely – chance that you can get through to British Airways, you will be rebooked onto a flight to/from your choice of:

Zurich

Geneva

Grenoble

Innsbruck

Munich

Salzburg

Zagreb

Lyon

Nice

The wording states that:

“Advise the customer that British Airways will reimburse them for any public transport (train, express coach, local bus) costs to travel between the new gateway and their original departure/arrival point in Italy. Receipts will be required and send these through the Customer Relations form in ba.com.”

Given the near impossibility of reaching BA by telephone, I would be tempted to head off for one of the airports above anyway and get your ticket changed on arrival, even if it means you can’t fly for a day or so until a seat opens up.

Rebooking on Alitalia remains an option for passengers.

The full BA rules are here.

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (6)

  • KSB says:
    12 Mar12 March 14:18

    Fortunately I am not currently impacted by this (unless it drags on for many more months). I just wanted to say that I have been very impressed by HfP’s coverage of all the relevant news events and help articles during these very turbulent times.

    Thank you for providing the information in a clear manner so that we can make informed decisions

  • Algor says:
    12 Mar12 March 15:52

    I’m due to fly from Dubrovnik tomorrow, online and airport self service check-in is not available.

    There might be some new policy of checking every passenger with maybe a temperature scan or interview of recent travel destinations.

    Or just simply unlucky.

    • Nick says:
      12 Mar12 March 17:34

      Or maybe you’re flying from an offline destination (that doesn’t use FLY), which means that every customer on every flight needs to check in at the airport, regardless of current corona issues.

      (DBV airport is run by Swissport, who mandate that all airlines use exclusively their departure control systems. Not everything is a conspiracy.)

      • Algor says:
        12 Mar12 March 18:41

        Thank you, didn’t think of this.

        Over last 3 days I had my flight destination changed 4 times and feels like I’m losing my mind slowly.

        Time to get home and relax.

  • NS says:
    13 Mar13 March 05:20

    Thanks Rob, continued information is extremely helpful. I’m currently in Cape Town coming back in a few days. Flying back via Joburg and even getting through to the local office when calling at opening has been impossible. I was hoping to change my redemption seats to a direct Cape Town to London flight to avoid an extra flight and airport particularly as travelling with babies. Shame you can’t just do this online. No luck but they’ve clearly got bigger issues and more pressing passengers to deal with so fair enough.

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