Another BA cancellation

[vetjames]

Hi All.

Advice please. What options for any additional compensation do I have?

BA have cancelled a flight from AMS to LGW this evening — this flight was already a rebooking for a previous cancellation into LHR. BA are not offering any flight options on their website for today. The first available flight is tomorrow morning.

I am on a business trip and do not have time to spend hours sorting this out. I have already paid for an alternative flight this evening on KLM.

At present, I have not requested a refund from BA but plan to later today.

Thank you!

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

There are literally dozens of threads that already answer your questions!

[Matt]

And if you pick up only one thing from the other threads, don’t request a refund!

[AJA]

You ordinarily need to contact BA to give them a chance to rebook you before going off and booking another airline especially if you are expecting BA to for the bill for the alternative airline.

The fact that you don’t have time to do this is unfortunately not BA’s problem even though it should be.

At a very minimum screen shot the fact that you’ve not got the ability to get back today on a BA flight. And also screenshot the fact that MMB doesn’t even suggest an alternative.

If you are certain that there are no other flights on BA today suitable to you by all means submit the cost of the KL flight to BA but expect them to push back.

Also claim for the cancellation compensation when you get back. BA will probably try to weasel out of paying blaming extraordinary circumstances.

[PeteM]

If it’s a work trip… does it hugely matter?

I don’t think compensation will be payable given this is because of the storms.

[JDB]

Matt wrote:

And if you pick up only one thing from the other threads, don’t request a refund!

Sometimes, taking a refund is the lesser of the evils unless the cost of the replacement tickets is disproportionate to the refund. The refund doesn’t compromise any cancellation compensation claim and although it would compromise a rerouting claim where the passenger has gone off and made their own arrangements, if the refund is say £150 and your new tickets cost £200 say, you are going to have a big battle on your hands to get £50 when the refund will be quick and also, in this instance and another today on a different thread the pax haven’t really gone through the motions with BA to be confident of a successful claim.

[vetjames]

I agree with the above. Life is too short!

[SamG]

If work were paying that’s what would have happened for me, the TA would handle it all, they wouldn’t expect or want me spending hours on the phone to BA arguing about it !

[AJA]

I am with you @SamG – when I travelled on company time and dime I had a direct line to the company travel agent so all I had to do was call them and say book me on the next flight in the same cabin. They’d do all the work and I’d just get an email with the new ticket PNR reference. Quite often the TA would call me with advance notice of a cancellation and offer a number of options and I’d just choose and they’d get on with the nitty gritty I also had the luxury of travelling around Europe on flexible business class tickets so on more than one occasion turned up at the airport and saw there was an earlier departure so just asked the check in desk if I could move to it and was accommodated.

But I was assuming OP maybe runs his own business and didn’t have a company travel agent since he said he booked himself on another flight.