Reply To: Downgraded / denied boarding?

[Froggee]

Downgrade compensation is woefully inadequate in EC261. A business class fare can quite frequently, if not generally, cost more than 4x an economy fare. So receiving 75% back is not compensation as it could leave you worse off than if you’d just booked economy in the first place. Sure this is different for the price of Avios bookings but the whole point of Avios is receiving something of outsized value.

I had a similar situation a long time ago on a misconnect where nobody told us we’d been given economy tickets as we ran for the second flight of the day to Singapore. The misconnect was part weather and part BA not being able to find any steps at Heathrow to get us off the plane from Edinburgh. I decided not to get on the flight to Singapore (lower back issues). Mrs Froggee showed solidarity. We ended up being split up for the next day’s flight. They rebooked me in SQ J whereas Mrs Froggee had a choice of J via Tokyo (which she did not fancy) or economy with SQ on a later flight to me. I was Gold, Mrs Froggee would have been silver hence me getting the last J seat available I guess. Separate PNRs as work flights.

I offered to swap so she could have the direct flight (I was willing to go via Tokyo!) but computer said no as the agent couldn’t transfer my flight to her – it would have been released into the wild to get taken by whoever was on the waitlist.

It was a rubbish experience. I complained to BA who replied with a generic “sorry, not sorry” and I gave up. I’d had misconnects with Air France and KLM in the prior few years which were even worse so just took it as part of the joy of international travel. Still not as bad as the time it took me 48 hours to go from my flat back to my flat with a night at Heathrow following a misconnect and then a night on a flight that turned round and came back after five hours.

BA did refund a portion of Mrs Froggee’s fare which went to her employer. Sometimes life just sucks.

Sad face.