-
We recently returned from a trip to Japan we booked a year ago in CW. Everything seemed fine until we tried to check in on line (using BA app) 24 hrs before return flight and it said it was unable to and we’d have to use check in desk.
When we arrived and tried to check in we were taken to one side and told our return flight had not been “ticketed”, whatever that meant. The gentleman said we need to “phone avios and sort it” or they could not board us. When I said I had no idea who I would even call or what number to use, his best advice was the same one we used a year ago!
After much frantic googling for a number we tried both USA and Japan numbers listed on BA site but no one was answering. To say we were getting frantic by this point was an understatement.
Luckily the guy dealing with us had decided to also try to call BA and got through to someone in London. After much toing and froing he handed phone to me saying they wanted to speak. The BA guy told me our return flight ticket had not been issued because we had not paid an £874 balance. I told him we had paid everything and had never received any request from BA for any additional money. In desperation we paid what he was asking for so we could board, having no time left to enjoy lounge access or relax.
On our return I raised a complaint with BA and they have just come back us. They are very apologetic and explained the confusion was caused due to a “scheduling change” which caused an error. They have refunded us the additional money and credited us 20000 avios as an apology.
I have to say, their email was very apologetic and I am glad we have our money back plus compensation. I just thought it might be interesting to others and a warning if we ever are unable to check in on line again, to not leave it to getting to airport before questioning it.
So sorry to hear this, that must have been an awful start to the trip. Sadly you are a victim of BA’s woeful IT and extraordinarily poor customer service at the airport
The airport staff are useless. If the computer says no they have no option but to call the same numbers you can, it’s pathetic. You were booked and ticketed and any half trained agent should have been able to see this.
You are far from alone. I was once forced to pay almost £2000 to board my OH on fully flex ticket which had been changed. It took 6 weeks to get the money back with the actual amount being just £95! In my case no IT blip just incompetent staff from airport to reservations and back office!
20,000 Avios for such dire handling is paltry. Had they offloaded you you they would have been on the hook for Full EU 261 compensation.
Having just re read you post it sounds like the e-ticket simply had to be re associated to the booking! That is such a basic function and every check in agent is trained in it. Only last week the handling staff in Dublin did this for me and it took 20 seconds!
Thanks Paul for sharing your experience and while I would not wish it on anyone, it’s nice to know we are not alone! You are spot on that the check in staff were hopeless (and frankly a little rude, at least at first, when theybtreated us like we had done something wrong).
It was the return flight and given that we were effectively stranded abroad, there was more than a little feeling of being hijacked for money given we’d had no inkling of the issue awaiting us.
It was all incredibly stressful and I am so glad of forums like this, and people like yourself, that will help us deal with this if it ever happens again.
It was the return flight and given that we were effectively stranded abroad, there was more than a little feeling of being hijacked for money given we’d had no inkling of the issue awaiting us.
.Yes, almost certainly a simple re association of the ticket. You booked a round trip, the return schedule changed and due to BAs IT, the ticket number was stripped from the return sector. It happens a lot. The ticket number is however visible in the booking and there is a simple entry to link it to the sector and hey presto all is well. There is only ever a problem if the ticket number is not known but that could not be the case here as the outbound sector was all good.
It would be a different matter if you had 2 separate bookings however.
As for the staff ….a great British original!!
20K Avios is a paltry amount as @Paul says. Go back to them and ask them to re-consider. Technically denied boarding in EU261 is “(j) “denied boarding” means a refusal to carry passengers on a flight, although they have presented themselves for boarding under the conditions laid down in Article 3(2), except where there are reasonable grounds to deny them boarding, such as reasons of health, safety or security, or inadequate travel documentation;”
Which is what happened to you, though slim chance in reality of claiming it. Id be wanting 20K Avios EACH for the stress, no chance to use the lounge, etc.
Are there really so many un-ticketed bookings in the system that they shouldn’t be flagged up as anomalous???
Great minds think alike lhar.
Even 20,000 each … well … a bit mean.
Aren’t we hearing far too many cases of BA having failed to complete ticketing functions that they should be completing these days? This must be happening to a lot of people who don’t read HfP that we never
hear about.In the old days long long ago BA agents were actually properly trained including in ticketing and it was a very very rare ticket which would have to go to the back office to be priced or ticketed.
Are there really so many un-ticketed bookings in the system that they shouldn’t be flagged up as anomalous???
Simple answer = yes. There are possibly more un-ticketed bookings in the system than ticketed ones. In any event, each passenger taking responsibility for their own bookings seems a perfectly reasonable position.
Are there really so many un-ticketed bookings in the system that they shouldn’t be flagged up as anomalous???
Simple answer = yes. There are possibly more un-ticketed bookings in the system than ticketed ones. In any event, each passenger taking responsibility for their own bookings seems a perfectly reasonable position.
Well yes I have a responsibility to book, pay and ensure I have a r ticket by email. This is file!
I am also responsible for responding to any schedule changes email they send.The problem is twofold
1. BA do not always send the correct emails. Moreover their wording is often ambiguous and I have found myself deleting email believing they were spam and calling.
2. BAs IT is poor and losing the ticket number is all to common. On more than one occasion Same day changes have been processed but the ticket not re validated and associated. That was just last week in Dublin. So yes passengers should take some responsibility but the airline, whose system you cannot control and who have taken the money must bare a greater responsibility. They could start by simply training staff to assume the customer is right until proven otherwise.I think it’s reasonable for a passenger to assume that having completed a booking on the BA website, and being sent a PNR, the booking has been made. That BA’s systems don’t always generate a ticket off the back of that such that you need to go hunting in non-obvious locations for a ticket number isn’t reasonable. Sadly necessary, yes, but BA cocked up yet again.
First off, as others have said, sorry that you had to experience this. The silver lining, I suppose, is that you got your cash back without huge hassle – I suspect there are countless BA passengers in similar circumstances who have had to endure the usual BA bulls*it and web of lies to get their hard earned back, when it was taken from them erroneously.
Sadly, as others have said, finding a ticket-trained staff member at T5 is a rarity – they exist, but very rarely. In the regions and outposts, it is not far off impossible. Providing a phone number for both staff and customers to call, with no real hope of the person answering actually being trained sufficiently well (or caring enough, frankly) to sort the issue is poor form, but all too common. That said, it’s at least representative of most British customer service, true to the “British original” campaign!
I think it’s reasonable for a passenger to assume that having completed a booking on the BA website, and being sent a PNR, the booking has been made. That BA’s systems don’t always generate a ticket off the back of that such that you need to go hunting in non-obvious locations for a ticket number isn’t reasonable. Sadly necessary, yes, but BA cocked up yet again.
The ticket serves the purpose of it being actually confirmed from inventory in the CRS, effectively crystallising the purchase as tickets should (ha – but aren’t always!) be issued only after payment has been made. The problem with relying on the PNR is that they are often created first, before ticketing takes place, and – indeed – you often get PNRs without tickets (such as, for example, when an agent tries to hold inventory or as a whiteboard for playing around with itineraries). Ticketing can’t happen without the PNR, because much of the data needed to ticket is stored in the PNR, and the PNR needs to be shared with various organisations (such as, for example, to kick start cross-carrier ticketing with super PNRs). Technically, the airline could wait to send the PNR to the customer until ticketing has happened, but – for whatever reason – most don’t. I suspect that this is because most are using third-party CRS (such as PARS, Sabre, New Skies, Avantik – and in BA’s case – Amadeus, through Fly) rather than building their own (such as Deltamatic for DL and, latterly, VS). Fly itself is an abomination and is probably in part to blame for a huge amount of the crap we see each day from BA.
An approach that might work is for sweeping to occur – for all tickets not attached to a PNR, sweep them up once a day and try to make contact through PNR data with the customer with a call to action (“hey, can you give us a call?” or “yo, log in at airline.com as we need to check some things”, for example). The remaining tickets – of which there are likely very few, as all tickets should have a PNR referenced – could be handled manually, passed back to an agent (with an expiry date – “sort this by five days from now, or we’re cancelling”) etc.
It would be great if we lived in a world where a schedule change didn’t require re-ticketing, but in most cases, they do. That’s a rather foundational change that would require substantial overhaul at this point, so I don’t see it occurring. The best thing airlines can do is be proactive, empathetic, friendly and helpful – unlike, in this case and many more like it, BA.
@masaccio – I think saying a passenger can reasonably “assume” anything sums up the issue! They can’t and shouldn’t. Many of the posts on this topic seem to consider an air ticket more casually than a train ticket or theatre, concert ticket etc. where it seems quite normal to look for the actual ticket, in whatever format, rather than just rely upon some email booking confirmation, in order to get through a train ticket hate, enter a show venue etc.
@AL a schedule change only requires re-validation, not re-issue. It’s a lot simpler, more reliable and less bureaucratic to let either the passenger or the travel agent take responsibility for their own booking(s). I think BA is getting rid of FLY, but these issues around un-ticketed bookings aren’t caused by FLY, but most commonly agent error.@JDB it’s been pointed out to you repeatedly why your stance isn’t reasonable on the subject of flight ticketing.
Email booking with ticket number constitutes a valid travel document as per IATA rules. It is actually legally binding.
The fact that BA (and many other airlines) cannot sort their IT out that it does not happen again is a commercial decision.
If I was @Steve_J, I would send a complaint to CAA. They aren’t very likely to do anything, but perhaps they may issue a warning if enough people come forward.
But that doesn’t help in most circumstances. If you book a flight and receive an email receipt containing a ticket number – all good.
If something is then changed, by the customer or the airline, the ticket may or may not need to be reissued. If it does but isn’t for any reason the customer does not receive a new ticket number, nor are they informed that the original ticket number is no longer valid and that they need a new one.
The analogy keeps being trotted out that if you check tickets for other activities then you should for air travel. In principle I agree and because I know how to I do, but if the airline does not provide any direct means to actually do that it is a ridiculous scenario whichever way you look at it.
That’s all very clever that you know this @AL, but seriously how does this help a customer? Are all passengers supposed to know the inner workings of airline ticketing?
As someone who leads a customer-facing organisation, if I pulled off shit like this, I would be fired. If this were my org, we’d fix the email comms if the backend was unfixable.
@AndrewT – given how much time people spend analysing even watching videos to choose the perfect seat or a lounge, check menus and drink brands etc and other minutiae, it doesn’t seem a big ask to check you actually have a valid ticket. It seems such a basic and obvious thing to do for any type of travel, I’m surprised so many people challenge this every time despite reports of unticketed bookings.
Garghhhhh!
I can’t take this any more.
Sure if you have booked travel but can’t be bothered to check that payment has exited your credit card/Avios stash then some of the fault is with you.
But if you have paid your money/Avios and it turns out British Airways have messed up their end of the bargain, how on earth can you – @JDB, in all seriousness, say “it doesn’t seem a big ask to check you actually have a valid ticket”?
As others have pointed out before, you book, British Airways take payment. You receive this:
————————————————————————————————————————
Thank you for booking with British Airways.Ticket Type: e-ticket
This is your e-ticket receipt. Your ticket is held in our systems, you will not receive a paper ticket for your booking.
————————————————————————————————————————So yes @JDB it does seem a big ask to check that you have a valid ticket because there are no instructions on how to interrogate British Airways systems to see if it is indeed held. Sure, as someone who has been trained on these systems and with a brain the size of a planet, and an interest in such things, it is not a big ask for you. But have you met people?
It is amazing how someone so smart can be so mind bogglingly dumb.
It’s like when engineers design complicated processes and expect the general population to follow them. When the process falls over, the genius who designed the system blames the thousands of people for not following their Byzantine process rather than accepting the fact they are the big dumbdumb. Because people are going to be people and if you don’t realise that then when dealing with people you are the one who is failing epically.
Phew. Well said.
Dashes off to check for the 100th time I have 125 numbers on my next two flights
I’ve been offered more than 20k avios for CE meal being served stone cold and then somehow reappearing as some mish-mash of 2 different dishes on the menu and a torn section of a dirty napkin. From memory I think they opened with 32500 which I immediately accepted as it was overly generous imo. I was sat on the plane and at no point did anyone employed by BA request/ demand I take my card out and provide them with hundreds of pounds for something I’d already paid for.
There’s a broad and varied POV on what is and isn’t considered reasonable/ decent that regularly change per post. But current comments seem to agree that BA are hard balling you and 5 minutes of your time is probably worth it to ask them to reconsider events and assess again what your stress, financial outlay (! It’s irrelevant that they’ve issued a refund. They’re own errors and and failures created a situation where you were essentially extorted a sizeable financial outlay on threat of being denied boarding if you couldn’t raise the funds. If you hadn’t had the funds, by their own words, they would’ve deemed it legitimate and reasonable to leave you stranded for widely known IT infrastructure failings that creates a direct risk to customers potentially being denied boarding for factors outside their control and exclusively of BAs creation.This Labours the point somewhat but it’s also factually accurate and essentially forces the person dealing with it to acknowledge and assess the actual impact of their failures and it’s impacts to you on a personal basis at the time
I think the solution is simple
When you buy a ticket all you should have to do is check you get eticket receipt email , with a eticket number .
When you make any changes , to different flight you should get another eticket receipt with eticket number (it may be the same) . If you don’t follow it up.
You should check you get these emails. You should have to do anything else more complicated .
Are there really so many un-ticketed bookings in the system that they shouldn’t be flagged up as anomalous???
Simple answer = yes. There are possibly more un-ticketed bookings in the system than ticketed ones. In any event, each passenger taking responsibility for their own bookings seems a perfectly reasonable position.
The trouble is that even when the passenger is aware that their reservation has not been ticketed it is pointless chasing BA until close to the date of travel as BA prioritise issuing tickets based on how close to departure you are.
The other problem is that in OPs case it was the return flight that was not ticketed meaning you are likely to be somewhere else and then facing the prospect of an expensive phone call unless you can do so through roaming or phoning a local number.
These issues usually arise because of some failure by BA to take payment or Avios or there was a change to the underlying reservation. BA has some way to check its systems as some people receive a text or email requesting the customer gets in touch but again this is OK if it’s at least a day before flying but less OK when you are in a foreign country. And as with most things IT related BA is nothing if not inconsistent. One would think BA could make things easier.
I definitely take responsibility to check my own reservation has been ticketed but I still think if things go wrong it’s mostly down to BA. And wrongly down to me to resolve – it should be BA doing the hard work.
I think the solution is simple
When you buy a ticket all you should have to do is check you get eticket receipt email , with a eticket number .
When you make any changes , to different flight you should get another eticket receipt with eticket number (it may be the same) . If you don’t follow it up.
You should check you get these emails. You should have to do anything else more complicated .
No, it’s not the customer’s responsibility to do these checks. Their ticket notifications should check whether the PNR they are reporting on has related e-ticket records and if not, send an email along the lines of “Your reservation has been held while we process your payment. You will receive further confirmation of a valid ticket within X days.”
No customer-friendly organisation should send misleading confirmations if they know there is a significant risk of confusion.
Having a ticket number and a booking PNR does not help when that e ticket number has fallen off the return trip as in this instance. You won’t know this unless you interrogate the system very closely. The BA system will pick up an issue with the PNR / Ticket and block checkin forcing a manual check at the airport. The assumption by software developers being that airport staff are trained, competent and helpful.
At the flight editing stage airport staff should be checking unticketed PNRs and looking to fix the issue but there are so few of them with any ticketing knowledge that this now rarely happens. Checking the non ticketed list also highlights potential no shows when flights are oversold.
There is a great deal that can be done by staff but unless they have the skills and the interest it simply does not happen
That’s all very clever that you know this @AL, but seriously how does this help a customer? Are all passengers supposed to know the inner workings of airline ticketing? As someone who leads a customer-facing organisation, if I pulled off shit like this, I would be fired. If this were my org, we’d fix the email comms if the backend was unfixable.
Concur entirely – that’s exactly what should happen, and is a good example of the contempt that BA has long shown its customers. Financial performance, not customer satisfaction, seems to be the mark of success at BA, and maybe IAG. Sweeping regularly, and alerting customers/agents when there is an unsuccessful action on the ticket after a successfully issued ticketing action, would be a good start to cleaning up house.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Popular articles this week:
