British Airways has stopped selling tickets for short-haul flights from Heathrow

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• James says:

  29 Jul29 July 09:13

  They have also withdrawn some LCY

• Lady London says:

  29 Jul29 July 09:38

  All as predicted. Miraculously BA will be able to accommodate anyone paying an outrageously high fare even if it means denying travel to someone who paid a fair and lower fare months ago who will lose a lot of money in car parking extra charges, potential loss of uncancellable hotel where they’re travelling to, and possibly things like redoing covid tests if required for the other, ex-EU trip, they were connecting to possibly on a separate ticket or even separate airline, may even miss their ex-EU, and all for no compensation.

  Unfortunately despite this meaning some travel passengers booked and paid for will now be taken away and effevtively ‘auctioned’ off to others, BA and the nomperforming airports have got it sewn up to classify as ATC requiring this and not their own attempts to reduce staff pay packages that have backfired on them.

  I hope you’ve all got decent travel insurance because the knock-on effects of this could be very costly for some people.

  • Allan says:

    29 Jul29 July 09:49

    How are they managing to call it an ATC restriction at this short notice?

  • Stu N says:

    29 Jul29 July 09:55

    LadyLondon, I usually enjoy your contributions but you seem to have taken a bit of a flier on this one.

    From the article:
    “Whilst travel agents have been blocked entirely from selling tickets, some ba.com availability remains bookable because this is the only way that agents can rebook.”

    BA are basically saying “We can’t rebook people if we have pulled all our inventory from the system so anything that is available is now full fare Y/ J to discourage new bookings”.

    • AirMax says:

      29 Jul29 July 11:13

      Thank you for interpreting it Stu. Not sure about GDS or NDC but it’s evident that they aren’t trying to sell more.

      • meta says:

        29 Jul29 July 11:27

        It’s the limitation of their IT. It is the way decided to design their IT and it’s deliberately designed like that. Nothing else. Just like their 12 month validity rule. It is just that. IATA systems allow all sorts of things in case of irregular operations, but BA is not using it and not training their agents to know about them.

        • Nick says:

          29 Jul29 July 12:40

          @meta it might be a limitation of BA IT but it’s also the limitation of every airline around the world that uses Amadeus as PSS. Yes BA’s IT is crap, but not everything is by their design or entirely their fault. I’d like to see you try getting Amadeus to change anything…

        • meta says:

          29 Jul29 July 13:41

          @Nick That’s not true. There are no such limitations within Amadeus. Bad airlines pretend there are. I have been rebooked beyond 12 months validity on many airlines during pandemic. Airlines can keep inventory hidden as I have also been rebooked on a flight when flights were seemingly off sale pre-pandemic.

        • Nick says:

          29 Jul29 July 13:58

          I meant the sale class limitation, which is 100% an Amadeus thing. Ticketing limits are an IATA rule, but as you say technology-wise this can be overruled.

    • meta says:

      29 Jul29 July 11:32

      It is not discouraging new booking though. Anyone can book those and claim from BA later should they wish. BA decides to cancel your ticket, you can book yourself one of those flexible tickets straight away on the same flight. You can go to court and I am pretty sure you’ll not only get the price difference returned, but compensation as well. Flight took off and you were practically denied boarding.

      • Lady London says:

        29 Jul29 July 12:35

        What a good idea @meta. So we know BA is going to get away with an exemption from payng compensation due to being able yo point to the exceptional circumstance of “Air Traffic Control made us do it”.

        But if you are still able to purchase a seat on that same flight, albeit it will be at a very high price, then that turns your claim into a denied boarding one. For which exemption from paying compo does not apply?

        It would be nice to imagine that in court BA’s protestations of “but we only left seats available on flights we offloaded people from because we only wanted travel agents to be able to use them”, would not hold up?

        • Jen T says:

          29 Jul29 July 17:57

          Significant air traffic control restrictions are generally available online at the Eurocontrol website – easily checked by members of the public. I don’t think that “excuse” has been used much this year, as another writer above suggests.

      • Stu N says:

        29 Jul29 July 14:13

        @meta it will cut new bookings to a trickle. Passengers at this time of year is almost all leisure traffic so no-one is going to shell out that amount of money to get somewhere unless they really have to. Even “family emergency” type situations, you’d probably look at alternatives given the eyewatering price of a full fare ticket on BA.

        • meta says:

          29 Jul29 July 14:33

          You’d be surprised how desparate people are to get away. Travelling is still a privelege mind you. People have money saved up so money is not usually a problem. See @Froggee’s family trip report to Jersey for example.

  • Ian says:

    29 Jul29 July 17:20

    I’ve just checked Manchester to Heathrow tomorrow and BA will offer me an economy ticket for £111. That doesn’t strike me as an “outrageously high fare”.

    • Rob says:

      29 Jul29 July 17:25

      No rules on flights into Heathrow, only out of it.

      • Pete M says:

        29 Jul29 July 20:20

        Husband’s company just paid over £700 one way to fly him LCY-BER later in August…

• Brian78 says:

  29 Jul29 July 09:41

  Terrible use of apostrophes in their statement

  • Mike says:

    29 Jul29 July 11:56

    That is what I thought too. Do BA not have anyone that can grammar check before release.

    • Alan says:

      30 Jul30 July 10:30

      They don’t have people with a decent grasp of IT or geography outwith the M25 so I wouldn’t be hopeful!

• Roberto says:

  29 Jul29 July 09:50

  There does seem a lot of capacity still in the short term. My next Malaga to London flight on the 12th of August in one of 9 flights that day into Heathrow (5) , Gatwick (2) and LCY (2).

  I was fully expecting some of the flights to have been culled by now as its T+14 today but as yet all remain in place.

  Tickets are available for 8 of the 9 flights. The last is full to the brim. Demand must be sky high still as are the prices on most of them.

• Insider says:

  29 Jul29 July 10:03

  This has been the case for a week or so and extends further than today and tomorrow on some routes

• Lady London says:

  29 Jul29 July 11:17

  I would expect this to repeat from now at least for peak summer weekends

  @Stu N yeah I take a lot of fliers as you say :-). That’s how it’s presented but auctioning is a natural consequence.

• BJ says:

  29 Jul29 July 11:19

  It is increasingly unacceptable to me that while state run companies and organisations along with individuals who are totally or partly reliant on State benefits are all subject to targets and sanctions yet the private sector from energy to transport and everything inbetween largely escape such accountability, regulation and sanctions and continue to profit in the face of enormous failures in consumer standards, servicing and protections. Surely at some point something has to give and the private sector must be brought into line? And for clarity, I am not referring to the self employed or small business owners but to those large national and multinational organisations.

  • Andrew says:

    29 Jul29 July 13:04

    State run organisations are subject to more sanctions than large private companies?? Councils have been on a go slow for over two years now, getting an appointment with your GP takes weeks, ambulances have waiting times of hours and schools closed because it was hot for two days. Users of these public services have literally zero comeback over these deficiences. At least when an airline cancels your flight they’re obligated to get you where you wanted to go and maybe pay compensation as well. Energy supply is also hugely regulated. Thank heavens there’s a price cap even if it has caused over 30 private companies to go bust over the last year.

    This isn’t a public sector good, private sector bad issue. All companies and organisations have been screwed over by disruption from covid, lockdowns and now rising costs and all need to raise their game to get back to the level of service they were providing three years ago.

    • John says:

      29 Jul29 July 14:25

      @Andrew

      * Councils are on a “go slow” as you describe it because they have been decimated by cuts to staffing and services. Their already paltry salaries are less competitive than ever in the labour market.
      * GP surgeries are private businesses. They are essentially reimbursed by the NHS for seeing you. Perhaps the consultation recharge isn’t generous enough, or perhaps being GP is actually quite sh** and too few people want to prescribe anti depressants for their whole career.
      * Did independent (private) and academy schools exceptionally remain open during Covid and/or the heatwave? No they did not…

      • Andrew says:

        29 Jul29 July 14:55

        I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make @John. I agree with everything in your post. My post was merely pointing out that these problems exist in both the private and public sector and a user of these services actually has more comeback when the provider is a private company which is completely contrary to what @BJ wrote.

• Colin MacKinnon says:

  29 Jul29 July 11:49

  Yes, still Avios tickets INBOUND to LHR from Scotland.

  Obviously you don’t need as many staff to unload bags as you do to load them!

  • Nick says:

    29 Jul29 July 12:38

    Somewhat unbelievably, BA actually has the staff, this move is entirely driven by the HAL cap. This is only imposed on LHR outbounds, not inbounds, hence the view you’re seeing. There are actually Europe-LHR O/Q class tickets available for €40 this weekend, but nothing outside Y/J outbound.

    What hasn’t come out in the press release (for obvious reasons) is that BA accidentally breached the HAL cap last weekend because of other (external) issues… this move is to prevent the same happening this week.

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