Reply To: Booking Qatar Airways through BAEC

[Aston100]

Got an email from BA yesterday that there are changes to my Qatar Airways flights.
“If you’d like to book a different flight, please call us.”
Thought I’d see if I can be moved onto an earlier flight back to London (there were two).

Contacted Qatar Airways through live chat on the app. This is because they respond very quickly and seem empowered to handle changes.
Got an agent from the QRPC team in under a minute. Two minutes later he advised (as expected) that I should contact BA as that is whom I purchased my flights through.
OK, so that was expected but good to get confirmation in under 5 minutes that it is indeed BA who I need to talk to.

Phoned BA. After about 30 minutes, I got through to someone from the sales team (despite ringing the number in the email from BA and selecting the appropriate option to make changes to my flight).
After around 20 minutes of being placed on hold, the agent advised that I would need to contact QRPC, because BA can’t change my flights if the overall delay is under 5 hours.

So that was a waste of an hour.
Further evidence that the site-wide view about it allegedly being easier to handle changes and cancellations through BAEC rather than QRPC is incorrect.