British Airways tells customers that flights need to move by four hours to trigger a refund

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• roberto says:

  24 Oct24 October 05:33

  Can these changes be added retrospectivly in law? If I booked under one set of terms and conditions are carriers allowed to move the goalposts somewhere down the line?

  • BS says:

    24 Oct24 October 07:41

    I imagine not. Especially if the presence of the 2h rule made you choose BA. But I imagine you will have to take BA to CEDR/MCOL to get anywhere with this.

  • Chris Heyes says:

    24 Oct24 October 08:10

    Roberto In law you are bound by the set of terms and conditions you booked under At time of booking so is the company who set the rules
    unless it would be deemed unreasonable or against the law
    the gray area is always the unreasonable part in most cases
    (a case in general was when BA stopped supplying food on flights, compensation was paid but only to those who persisted with a claim as they had booked before it was introduced)

  • ChrisC says:

    24 Oct24 October 08:11

    It depends what the conditions of carriage actually say as that is your contract.

    Rhys linked to the BA standard customer guidelines so it would depend if those are contractual or not.

  • pauldb says:

    24 Oct24 October 09:40

    These guidelines (and the link that is said to be the full T&Cs) are not the terms of your contract with BA at all. The terms of your contract with BA are their Conditions of Carriage, which have not changed. They say you can have a refund for a significant time change, with “significant” not defined therein.

    Therefore 4 hours within the guidelines is simply the interval that BA are universally willing to accept is significant without any argument from the passenger.

    The passenger is still able to claim that less than 4 hours (or even less than 2 hours) is significant in relation to their circumstances, but BA won’t accept this without discussion and potentially you’d have to take them to arbitration/court.

    • Nick says:

      24 Oct24 October 10:10

      The COC actually state 5 hours so you don’t have a leg to stand on. BA have been more generous in practice and allowed 4.

      • pauldb says:

        24 Oct24 October 10:16

        No, that’s for a delay not a schedule change.

      • Littlefish says:

        24 Oct24 October 10:25

        No. BA CoC 9b on delay is 5 hours. 9a is schedule changes and says ‘significant’.
        In any case BA CoC 9a1 say timings are NOT part of the contract!
        Nevertheless three remedies are provided for in the CoC.
        Accordingly, the Guidelines linked above are just that … guidelines.
        The difficulty does seem to be the remedy on Joint-Business connections esp where AA moves things for the North American connection; which happens close to 100% of the time! The Guideline has the 240 minute figure for those too … which is a non-starter.
        So probably just another reason to book on 001 stock for Transatlantics OW, where any connections.

        • Lady London says:

          24 Oct24 October 14:06

          I think it’s time any airline condition saying timing is not part of the contract was explicitly stated in court as as unreasonable contract term which in the case of an aijbe operating a published schedule and selling timed tickets, it is. There is also no reciprocity.

• Flyoff says:

  24 Oct24 October 07:10

  I think I have seen the departure and destination definition debated before on HfP but can’t remember the conclusion. Where BA have moved flights from LGW to LHR with the same flight number and departure time I assume these are refundable.

  • Sue says:

    24 Oct24 October 07:46

    Yes change of airport is refundable including seats. Happened to me in July & received full refund.

  • AJA says:

    24 Oct24 October 08:37

    They were cancellable earlier this year as that is exactly what happened to me and I got a full refund. I assume that this still applies but if BA can change the goalposts on timings what’s to stop them changing their minds on this too?

    • Cam says:

      24 Oct24 October 10:47

      BA also take the position LGW to LHR does not trigger EC261. I challenged this and lost in a CEDR arbitration a few years ago.

      • meta says:

        24 Oct24 October 14:02

        Should have gone MCOL rather than CEDR!

        • Lady London says:

          24 Oct24 October 14:09

          I will never use CEDR because of the considerably higher likelihood of perverse decisions like this one. MCOL every time because I’m not asking any special favours or consideration I would be asking for the law to.be operated as it stood.

      • pauldb says:

        24 Oct24 October 14:45

        BA have recently being given refunds on these switches (because they do state the original flight is cancelled) but in fact I agree that per EU261 it’s not explicitly a cancellation that requires the refund option.

        • Charlieface says:

          24 Oct24 October 19:40

          Where in EC261 does it state that?
          It’s not the flight that was booked. It makes no difference what the airport decides to call itself, LHR is not LGW.

        • Cam says:

          25 Oct25 October 10:10

          While <14 days from departure, CEDR decided I was offered a flight from the 'same' airport (a London airport, even if in Hounslow rather than Crawley) arriving at the same time (within ~20 min). The fact that I had relied on BA's promise to fly me from LGW was disregarded.

        • Lady London says:

          25 Oct25 October 16:38

          @Cam a perverse decision.
          Lots of people would find transport options, for example, work for one airport and not the other.

• Andrew says:

  24 Oct24 October 07:19

  Surely options 1 and 2 have a threshold too? I’ve had a flight retime by literally 5 minutes on several occasions (especially when booking a long way in advance) – would that really allow for a date change etc?

  • SammyJ says:

    24 Oct24 October 08:40

    And often the time change doesn’t affect the departure time, but will have you arriving 5 mins earlier, perhaps due to aircraft type or a slight flight planner-route. They wouldn’t let you change for that alone…surely?!

    • Cam says:

      24 Oct24 October 12:37

      I think there historically was a de minimis threshold on AA ticket stock, something like 15 or 29 minutes. I recall discussing this with them about 18 months ago, when I was trying to use schedule changes as a way to get 4 passengers who had booked in 2 pairs on to the same flights. However, BA tickets on to AA connections had no such threshold, iirc.

• Reeferman says:

  24 Oct24 October 07:20

  Does this 4-hour rule still stand if the flight is cancelled by BA and you are automatically rebooked on a flight with a different flight number?
  I have this with a Malaga flight in Feb – which has also been switched from LCY to LHR!

  • ChrisC says:

    24 Oct24 October 07:54

    If the flight is cancelled then you are entitled to a refund.

  • AJA says:

    24 Oct24 October 08:40

    You should be entitled to a refund. The change of flight number means your original flight was definitely cancelled plus the change of airport should also constitute a cancellation.it does when they move a flight from LGW to LHR so would say it also applies to LCY changed to LHR.

    • Reeferman says:

      24 Oct24 October 09:26

      Many thanks ChrisC and AJA
      My thoughts too.
      Will report back once I’ve spoken with BA to get the cash refund!

• Timothy Firmager says:

  24 Oct24 October 07:23

  I would be interested to know how soon before the departure date and time BA can make schedule changes. For example, if I have a flight booked on 10th November at 12:00, on the morning of 10th November can BA re-schedule this to 16:00? How would this overlap with EC216/2008 (assuming there was an equivalent delay on arrival)?

  • meta says:

    24 Oct24 October 09:35

    It will need to be tested in court, but at the moment delay compensation under EC261 is suspended. However, this is now being abused by airlines which wasn’t in the spirit of EC guidelines and I imagine that you will need to argue that it was a commercial decision. Soon this pandemic will either be over or if it persists airlines won’t be able to play covid card and abuse customers’ goodwill.

• Save East Coast Rewards says:

  24 Oct24 October 07:23

  This change affected me. I had BLQ-LHR booked on one ticket and it’s cancelled, then LHR-GIB on a separate ticket which was retimed by a couple of hours. So old rules would let me refund, new rules mean I must take a voucher for LHR-GIB unless that also gets cancelled.

  That of course is a risk of not booking it on a single ticket.

• PGW says:

  24 Oct24 October 08:16

  What is the situation with connecting flights on the same booking? All too frequently I have found that while the first BA flight departs more or less as booked a connecting flight on another OW carrier (in particular AA) is changed resulting in arrival at the final destination several hours later than the original time.

  • Littlefish says:

    24 Oct24 October 10:37

    This case is problematic. Previously (three or four years back). BA would simply re-jig the routing to same destination. That’d usually not be an issue for a 2 hour or so set of changes. Same cabin as originally ticketed.
    It then started to become more and more ‘negotiable’ and once I’d finished as a Gold Guest List I found it better all round booking through AA, mostly. Not sure if AA has mirrored these new guidelines, or whether they are ‘temporary’ for Covid, but makes sense more than ever now to double check BA price and terms versus AA for transatlantics with AA connections.

    • ChrisC says:

      24 Oct24 October 13:51

      AA changed their policy a few months ago. Around April comes to mind because I was shifted from ORD-LON from ORD-MIA-LON. The first test the agent did was “was it more than the new change limit” (which is was) but the she said that didn’t matter because of when I bought my ticket so the cancellation was processed.

      It used to be 60:minutes and they upped it to either 4 or 6 hours off the top of my head so long before BA.

      But they only applied it to new bookings made since they changed the time limit.

      • PGW says:

        24 Oct24 October 19:13

        Thanks for the replies. I used to book mostly through AA when I was Executive Platinum before they completely butchered the programme a few years ago and was usually able to amend/cancel my trips without a problem when these things occurred. This latest move just reinforces my decision to leave non-essential travel for the time being however long it takes.

• David says:

  24 Oct24 October 08:53

  This really should not be left up to individual airlines to decide. What counts as a “significant” change should be defined across the industry.

  As for what I’d set these as, I’d go with:
  Under 1500km – 1 hour
  1500-3500km – 2 hour
  Over 3500km – 4 hour
  (Distance thresholds choose to align with what’s in EC261)

  • ankomonkey says:

    24 Oct24 October 12:39

    Agree!

  • ChrisC says:

    24 Oct24 October 15:51

    You need to define ‘the industry’ and who is included in that and who would make the decisions.

    There are a number of trade bodies that various airlines are members off but not all airlines are members of the same ones. I recall BA left one group because they felt it didn’t represent them and joined another that included airlines such as Easyjet.

    So you could have one trade body with relativly consumer friendlyish times like you have suggested (but I think are totally unreasonable and open to abuse) and others where the minimum is 5 or more hours.

    And involving the regulatory bodies would also be a nighmare because you could have the EU imposing one set of times and the FAA another set and the Australians another and you’d end up with asymetric regulations that would only confuse everyone because you could end up with different rules for different legs of the same trip.

    Just look how confusing EU261 is when it comes to non EU based airlines and I’d throw the Swiss into that where they signed up to EU261 as written but don’t always accept ECJ rulings because they don’t have to.

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