BA forced by the courts to refund £5,000 of non-refundable tickets – unreasonably?

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• BJ says:

  2 Mar2 March 07:27

  Every time I flew with BA I reasonably believed I was flying The World’s Favourite Airlinre … does this mean I can now get all my money back? This decision was a joke, the T&C are clear enough.

  • Andrew says:

    2 Mar2 March 07:34

    I’m not sure BA has used that strapline since the 80s either!

  • TGLoyalty says:

    2 Mar2 March 07:51

    T&C’s need to be clear AND fair.

    Trading standards etc should be testing these practices in the real courts rather than letting billion £ companies get away with it.

  • John says:

    2 Mar2 March 08:15

    No, because there is no monetary value directly attributable to being the world’s favourite airline. When you book a cheap ticket there is no option asking “would you like to upgrade to the world’s favourite airline for £500?”

• Jimbo says:

  2 Mar2 March 07:46

  I personally don’t understand why – unlike train operators – airlines are allowed to refuse to refund any unused ticket!? Train operators do after deducting an administration fee. I guess it may be that airlines got away with this rules set up after the big government owned national flag carriers were privatised and everyone’s followed suit. think it entirely reasonable for a passenger to expect a refund from an airline if they give notice and the refund has a say 15-20% administration fee deducted !?

  • Ken says:

    2 Mar2 March 08:03

    Many train fares are regulated by government.
    There are also large public subsidies on many routes.

  • John says:

    2 Mar2 March 08:06

    Advance train tickets are not refundable (covid exceptions) but they can be changed with an admin fee.

  • Super Secret Stuff says:

    2 Mar2 March 08:36

    Also, train operators can pack as many people in as they please. Airlines can’t due to safety so I would say it is fair to keep the money as you are blocking a sale to another customer.

    But then surely they shouldn’t be allowed to over sell tickets? They can’t have it both ways

• Ash Johnson says:

  2 Mar2 March 08:09

  When buying direct from BA you have a choice between lowest fare or flexible seat pricing options. As a predominantly leisure traveller I fully understand that by selecting lowest fare option I am essentially waiving my right to change or cancel. If you book a ticket whilst being covered by travel insurance, the Hawaii flyer should have been able to claim back under the Covid rules, or at the very least be offered a future travel voucher, which is what we took when all this kicked off!

  • The real John says:

    2 Mar2 March 09:45

    This case happened in 2019

• IanM says:

  2 Mar2 March 08:34

  Indeed – WHich? should never be thought of as any sort of ‘consumer protection’ organisation, they are a commercial money making machine and cherry pick cases and issues to maximise their own profile. Not only that but they are quick to criticise the actual government and local government agencies who do work for consumers (and business) where it suits their agenda.

• Yorkieflyer says:

  2 Mar2 March 08:44

  I think that unless it was quite prominent, most people would expect a business class fare to be changeable for a fee

  • Cheshire Pete says:

    2 Mar2 March 08:55

    Indeed. I often buy Iberia cheapest Business seats, and they are changeable for a fee I think it’s €60-€90 plus fare difference. I tried to do this once over the Easter period a few years back, and they tried to offer me Economy for more money than buying a new ticket! But, that’s another story, Iberia CS, and obviously coinciding with them mostly being shutdown for that period! Anyhow, I had a screenshot of the original booking page and had to do a S75 to recover the money, as they didn’t honour my semi flexible ticket. Airlines are a disgrace in this area, they try and even ignore their own ticket conditions. They’d bit off your hand and eat it if they could get away with it.

  • Memesweeper says:

    2 Mar2 March 19:18

    … and with some other airlines/countries this is still the default, particularly with sufficient notice. I think this plaintiff gave many months notice, whatever the terms BA should have offered something.

• Chris Heyes says:

  2 Mar2 March 08:50

  Rob I agree with you in principle with one proviso any t & c Should be written one a scroll down page (not click onto another page)
  The main t & c Should be at the top of the page ” in large PRINT!
  So the “Mr Average” Can see exactly what he/she is getting
  Most large company’s and unfortunatly a lot of small ones hire experts to hide away some t & c
  I can imagine that BA as done this in this case and Which has a good Solicitor
  quote ” A second rate arbitration can interpret as they wish
  A court will always follow the law in it’s interpretation”
  One reason many firms settle out of court, another reason is cost win or lose

  • Cheshire Pete says:

    2 Mar2 March 08:57

    BA used to get away with hiding the CC surcharge until the payment page right up until it was finally dropped. This was always illegal.

• Matthias says:

  2 Mar2 March 08:52

  I used to work in hotels where we’d charge say £10,000 for a wedding and might originally say this is non refundable. We were eventually told by a court that we could only keep any money that we could prove was a direct loss to the hotel – either actual costs incurred in planning or potentially some foregone profit if the cancellation came very late.

  However, what we definitely could not do is keep all the money if someone cancelled say a year before for a peak date that we knew we could resell. In those circumstances we could only keep say £1,000 for costs incurred.

  My understanding is that this law theoretically applies to flights as well, but it’s never been tested in court.

  So this would mean that if you cancel a peak flight say 6 months out, you should get ALL your money back, minus a small admin fee, because the airline will clearly be able to resell your seat and not ‘lose’ anything.

  This would completely upend airline pricing, of course, but my understanding is that legally it would stand up (although I don’t know the exact law concerned.)

  • Chris Heyes says:

    2 Mar2 March 09:09

    Matthias It’s actually written in all “LAW” T & C “Must” be easy to see & understand and ABOVE ALL RESONABLE
    I imagine the case Robs referring to was foul of the above, as are a lot of unreported cases
    (Rob was just putting his slant on the case)

    • meta says:

      2 Mar2 March 09:31

      Have a look at the way BA’s website is designed and how easy it is to see that tickets are not changeable. Both on the app and on the desktop.

      • marcw says:

        2 Mar2 March 09:47

        It’s not that “easy” neither straightforward. It doesn’t show you while you select the fare. It’s only after selecting the fare it’s written at the very bottom. But before they tell you whether you want to select (pay) for a seat, how many avios you’ll earn with this booking, whether you want to use Avios to receive a discount, whether you want to add a hotel stay or car rental to your booking… it’s not straightforward.
        How difficult is it to add: no-changes allowed, no-refunds allowed in that fare box (which already BA uses to show seat selection and baggage allowance) – or/and the penalties incurred?

        • AJA says:

          2 Mar2 March 10:42

          Marcw that was Meta’s point. The BA website is opaque and T&Cs are not clearly displayed. It ought to be reasonably easy to code software such that when you select a restricted fare a screen pops up saying “this fare is not flexible and no changes are possible. By clicking continue you accept this.” Buy then again we are talking BA and IT and we know how flaky that is.

  • Howard says:

    2 Mar2 March 09:14

    I’m not sure this would completely upend airline pricing, people are paying for the flexibility to cancel relatively last minute (where there would likely be a cost to the airline due to not being able to resell) rather than 6 months out.

    • Rob says:

      2 Mar2 March 09:47

      BA offers you flexibility – at a price. Effectively, you have accepted a 75% discount on your ticket price by giving up the right to cancel.

      In this case, if the hotel had quoted two prices – one refundable, one not – it would have been on stronger ground.

      • Howard says:

        2 Mar2 March 12:19

        I could be wrong but i would have thought that most of the expense fully flexible fares that BA sells are booked and/or cancelled less than 6 months in advance.

        BA could probably live with allowing cancellations up to 6 months before the trip. Your example in a later comment of gold member block booking would not be valid given that here we are talking about cancelling 6 months in advance and therefore they would have enough time to resell.

        After several (non-covid) years BA would have enough data about how many bookings are made and then cancelled.

• Sam says:

  2 Mar2 March 09:03

  Unpopular opinion:

  Maybe BA will make each tickets T&C 100% clear and obvious in future.

  Most people on here understand how flight tickets work, but why assume everyone else will?

  Could be an easy win here, and there is no bad side for clarifying important ticket restrictions.

  • Matthias says:

    2 Mar2 March 09:23

    Yes, I think it’s easy for BA to fix this and I doubt they will sell any fewer tickets if they put the non-ref clause in bold (as Rob says, most people know it anyway.)

    Bit like websites asking you whether you accept their cookie policy or wish to read the 10-page document that explains it…

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    2 Mar2 March 10:11

    Well crucially there’s no alternative – nobody is selling a flexible ticket for the same cost as BA’s non-refundable one, so they don’t have to worry that by publicising the terms of the ticket people will go elsewhere

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