Are you listening British Airways? Air Canada shows how elite status extensions should be done

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• Simon says:

  8 Apr8 April 04:31

  Only issue with air Canada is that they completely refuse refunds for both cancelled flights and for fully flexible tickets , no discussion they just completely refuse full stop. Can’t speak for anyone else but BA have refunded all my cancelled flights

  • Charlieface says:

    8 Apr8 April 12:15

    Chargeback and S75 are your friends here

• Jason K says:

  8 Apr8 April 05:14

  I missed my Delta gold medallion target on 1 Feb (covid unrelated) and Delta has still upgraded me to gold, and extended it until 1 Feb 2022. They’ve done this for anyone that just missed status due to Covid. I was lucky to get caught in a wide net.
  Ecredits for cancelled flights are also valid for 2 years.

• Denise Sheard says:

  8 Apr8 April 06:15

  With BA present customer service and attitude towards cancelled flight refunds and BA executive status they deserve to be out of business

  • The Original David says:

    8 Apr8 April 08:04

    Although ironically, it’s exactly that attitude which has put them in a stronger cash-flow position than they would otherwise been in, so are in fact less likely to go out of business!

• Jake says:

  8 Apr8 April 06:25

  I fly BA fairly regularly between Denver and LHR and have Gold on BA.
  If I can earn a decent status on UA at half the going rate due to Corona and BA does nothing, I will probably status match and switch.

• david dony says:

  8 Apr8 April 06:58

  Missing the threshold for gold @1020 TP today. Asked if they could give me gold anyway, but no
  !

  • Cheshire Pete says:

    8 Apr8 April 07:38

    Where u expecting to get it with Bookings that were cancelled up to April 8th?

• Al says:

  8 Apr8 April 07:20

  I think BA has had the worst attitude compared to most important players in airline and hotel industry. Their current behaviour is on par with budget airlines.
  I will go out of my way to avoid BA once this is all over, the last 2 years with BA have been awful, it’s somewhat annoying to see how they completely destroyed good customer service in 1-2 years.

  • Rich says:

    8 Apr8 April 08:48

    The rot has been going on for longer than that, courtesy of Walsh and his puppet Cruz. Once you go down the road of “profit at any cost”, you lose Customer service and develop a couldn’t care less attitude. Its atrocious.

• Andrew says:

  8 Apr8 April 07:23

  BA are treating Exec Club members so appallingly compared to other airlines and I feel totally let down by them. I am currently gold and obviously won’t retain for next year or see any of the benefits of earning it last year due to no flying this year. I for one will vote with my feet, and will fly other airlines wherever possible and look forward to not having to put up with BA’s ambivalent customer service and inferior inflight products anymore. In a way I feel free from the shackles of the Exec Club now and wonder why I put up with such a mediocre airline for so long.

  • Doug M says:

    8 Apr8 April 09:15

    You say you’ll vote with your feet, and so do many others. But the underlying truth is that BA passenger numbers (normal times) suggest they don’t need you and anyone else that says this. Flyertalk is always full of complaints from the I’ll never fly BA again posters, then they continue to post and comment on BA service clearly putting the lie to the previous declaration. The nature of being angry at some slight, real or perceived, is that over time we most of us end up reverting to what’s easiest for us, and if you live in London or much of the south, BA is typically just that, the easiest choice.
    I’m firmly in the do what’s easiest best for me camp. I’m not going to connect in Frankfurt or Amsterdam to fly to Madrid or Berlin, and my experience of Ryanair means they’re a last resort, Easy better, but Gatwick and Luton are a bit crap for me. Whatever BA do or don’t do, live in London and they’re the best option. Miles earned long haul typically mean seldom paying for a short haul flight. BA are far from perfect, but they work for me, status extension would be great, and it may well happen anyway. BA are always last to the giveaway, and first to the takeaway. Nature of the company’s ethos.
    I’m not a BA apologist, just something of a realist.

    • Genghis says:

      8 Apr8 April 09:34

      Good post!

    • Paul Pogba says:

      8 Apr8 April 09:41

      I think this coupled with a lack of non-flight earning opportunities on other airlines since MBNA pretty much fell out of the market means BA don’t need to worry too much. Its a shame HSBC or Amex don’t offer more partners but I imagine people like semi-exclusive deals.

    • Kev 85 says:

      8 Apr8 April 10:00

      Yep. You’re not flying BA out of “loyalty”, you’re doing so because it’s convenient. I live near Heathrow so will generally fly from there. I really don’t care about specifically flying BA though and will choose the cheapest/best option.

      Showing loyalty to companies is bizarre behaviour, given that they couldn’t care less about you.

    • Andrew says:

      8 Apr8 April 10:26

      Indeed. Barely a day goes past without someone on here or FT complaining about how BA’s lounges are always so crowded. BA now have the perfect excuse to cull some status members which is probably much needed. I’d have thought that if you’re genuinely important to BA, are close to maintaining/gaining status and can demonstrate that through cancelled bookings then BA will probably make an exception on an individual basis.

      • ken says:

        8 Apr8 April 11:25

        “BA will probably make an exception on an individual basis.”

        You reckon ? More like computer says no.

        I’d agree with the rest of your post. BA tend to under reward business customers making 1/2 dozen trips to the US a year, and paying flex price, and over reward those making the odd cheapo business class flights on another carrier combined with a couple of weekend breaks with BA.

        If you want to cull the lounge numbers, maybe make a BA annual spend stipulation.

        • AJA says:

          8 Apr8 April 15:12

          There is already a minimum BA spend stipulation in the need to fly on either 2 (Bronze) or 4 (Silver/Gold) eligible flights on BA or IB. The fact that they only have to be the cheapest economy tickets is by the by.

• Ra says:

  8 Apr8 April 07:26

  Still waiting for refund of cancelled flights, 18 days and counting….

  • Andrew says:

    8 Apr8 April 07:58

    21 days and counting. Agent told me 7 days. Lies! All lies!!!

    • Liz says:

      8 Apr8 April 08:08

      26 days for me. I called again yesterday and was told the refunds were dealt with in India but as their offices are now all closed they brought them back to the UK 10 days ago to be dealt with. Managed to finally get my Avios which is a start.

    • Nick says:

      8 Apr8 April 08:12

      21 days ago the team in India that processes manual refunds was still allowed to work. Today it’s not. I don’t know where exactly you think BA is going to rustle up enough trained skilled staff to get them done as quickly onshore, but in the real world it’s just not possible.

      It may surprise you to learn that BA is trying its absolute best to get these paid out as quickly as they can. A team of managers in NCL has been drafted in, and anyone in head office who happens to have refund training/accesses has been spared furlough to help get through the list. Given how ranty you lot are, I seriously don’t know why they bother.

      • Andrew says:

        8 Apr8 April 08:21

        Well I wish they would just hurry up and do it then. Funny how the booking system is fully automated to take your money but a refund needs a manual operation….

        • JRC says:

          8 Apr8 April 08:45

          +1 this. Once this has blown over we need the CMA and other consumer watchdogs to go through this. I understand why companies don’t want to refund the cash straight away but it needs to go both ways.

      • Anna says:

        8 Apr8 April 08:22

        Because it’s our legal entitlement maybe and BA has been demonstrated to be applying underhand tactics (e.g. tinkering with their IT system to deny cash refunds) in other areas?

        • Geoff says:

          8 Apr8 April 12:37

          I never know whether this is deliberate tinkering or just the usual incompetent BA ‘IT’ in general. They send out emails which say ‘Your holiday is cancelled, call us on this number’ but that number just tells you that all calls are consolidated on a single different number, which just gets cut off. I tried all press 1/press 2 options and each resulted in ‘we can’t connect you right now’ and got cut off. Even the vouchers, when you do get one, cannot be used online so adding to the phone workload.

          Anna – did you ever see that redemption cash refund?

      • Liz says:

        8 Apr8 April 08:34

        We are not being ranty. I’ve been told 3 different things each time. I don’t want to have to phone but I feel after 26 days I am justified in chasing it again. The phone line says refunds will be paid in 14 days – they need to update that for a start. There should be a proper chronological order to the refunds which there doesn’t seem to be – some getting refunds quickly others not.

        • Nick says:

          8 Apr8 April 08:49

          Those with ‘simple’ bookings can have refunds paid automatically, it’s ‘complex’ ones that have to be run manually. That’s why some refunds are coming through quicker than others. Sadly the definition of ‘complex’ is wider than many would like… I’m sure they’ll look at that once this is over, it’s never been needed before. The list for manual processing is indeed handled in time order.

          And yes, it would be lovely if everyone in the contact centres could have exact expected wait times on hand every time they speak to a customer… sadly that process isn’t in place either.

          In normal times it would be entirely fair to be angry at BA for not handling this well. And yes, even now they would do well to communicate better what’s going on so customers at least understand. But we’re not in normal times, everything in BA has been turned on its head, and they’re doing what they can to get through it. Some flexibility and understanding from customers would also – in my opinion of course – be fair at this time.

      • Steve says:

        8 Apr8 April 09:14

        You don’t know why they bother? Perhaps because they are legally obliged to do so? It has never failed to amaze me how quick ANY company is to take money from you but how many hoops have to be jumped through in the event you are entitled to a refund.

        Why don’t people just do a charge back anyway?

        • Genghis says:

          8 Apr8 April 09:36

          It’s 4 weeks tomorrow since I initiated a Qatar refund. 4 weeks is the upper limit that refunds are meant to be paid. Am I confident at receiving a refund? No. I started the chargeback on Monday; can always cancel if it comes through.

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