Reply To: Downgrade compensation advice

[Lady London]

I can’t help thinking BA has made a mistake here. I can’t see any basis for a compensation claim as such. I only see 75% downgrade reimbursement claim for one way.

If we assume the leg downgraded was the one departing the UK then as @JDB says, you’d be due around 75% of say, 90,000? avios if peak, so, say, 67,600 as reimbursement. 60,000 if off peak. Plus as @JDB says, due to APD out of the UK being so high, the 75% cash reimbursement was so small it wasn’t even worth calculating, so about the £35 sounds right.

Your flight wasn’t cancelled or delayed so no compensation. There is only downgrade reimbursement to pay.

If you ended up with 119,000 avios then it looks like they’ve accidentally paid out to you twice!

Alternatively, their odd internal tweaking of some fare constructions may have backfired on them. Eg in this case: perhaps with RFS artificially depressing tax in the fare construction on one leg, thus pushing the true taxes artificially to the other leg you weren’t claiming on. So that most of the non-tax (and therefore 75% reimbursable) cash landed on the half you were claiming on and therefore got refunded?

My first thought about the 40,000 was that, as alongside the 19,000, it brings it up to close enough to the 75% you were owed, the only reason I could see for it was somehow BA still didn’t want to admit they were liable for the 75%, or just possibly didn’t want to be dragged to CEDR or MCOL and get told to pay it, but they were actually prepared to pay it, just not to admit they know they have to reimburse 75%. Otherwise you are someone really important, or you are affiliated with a really important corporate. Because I just don’t see BA tossing out 40,000 extra voluntarily on a dispute 🙂 .

Either way, would you kindly accompany me the next time I buy a lottery ticket?