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Really poor service from BA. My friend (no status) was booked to fly BA today MAN-LHR-LJU but the MAN- LHR flight was cancelled late last night and she was rebooked on a similar BA route (albeit it with a longer 5 hours connection at LHR) 24 hours later on Tuesday. This would ruin her plans for a short stay in Slovenia. There was a SN flight available today but the call centre agent refused to book onto it as she said she couldn’t see it despite the fact we could!! My friend has now booked an EasyJet flight from Gatwick and is taking a train to London. What should she do with BA and what compensation is she entitled to? Any advice gratefully received
Your friend could have got a taxi to LHR to get her original flight and BA would have reimbursed her for that, but she’s now made her own arrangements. She can claim cancellation compensation (unless BA can show extraordinary circumstances), and the cost of the replacement flight, plus the cost of getting to LGW. BA may push back by saying they offered an alternative, so your friend will need to show why they had to travel today.
TBH, I can’t understand why BA didn’t just offer an alternative way of getting to LHR, they seem inordinately dense about this issue, given that MAN cancellations are extremely common (especially atm), and they are incurring higher costs by paying out for cancellations and replacement flights.
There’s also plenty of info about claiming for all this stuff in the cancellations thread on here if you want to direct your friend there.BA will be very reluctant to pay in these circumstances instead relying upon 4.2 of the Interpretative Guidelines:-
“However, where an air carrier can demonstrate that when the passenger has accepted to give his or her personal contact details, it has contacted a passenger and sought to provide the assistance required by Article 8, but the passenger has nonetheless made his or her own assistance or re-routing arrangements, then the air carrier may conclude that it is not responsible for any additional costs the passenger has incurred and may decide not to reimburse them.”
Your friend may win in the end, but will probably have to fight for it.
@jah13 one additional thing – if your friend is returning with BA, she needs to contact them to protect her return flight(s) as she isn’t taking the outbound.
I’m not disagreeing with you, @JDB, but it’s utterly bizarre that instead of simply offering alternative transport to LHR, which would solve the problem of the MAN cancellation in most cases, BA starts messing around cancelling entire trips and re-booking on different dates. This has happened to us, and it also happened to my in-laws a few weeks ago. Drawing on our previous experience, on receiving the MAN cancellation text at 2 am (as this is how BA manages these things!), they booked themselves a taxi to LHR. They found that BA had indeed cancelled their entire outbound leg but managed to get themselves re-booked onto their original flight and ground staff confirmed that they could claim back the taxi fare. Even at £350 I’m sure this is at least comparable to the combined costs of compensation/duty of care/re-routing that BA incurs otherwise.
@NorthernLass – I’m not disagreeing with you either! However, call centre staff have no authority to agree to cover such expenses, so as to maintain central control and limit abuse. BA’s system simply rebooks the next available service within its guidelines and if that doesn’t suit the passenger has to change that in MMB or by calling. Airport staff have more flexibility to reroute, including covering ground transport, advising necessary hotel bookings will be paid up to £x cost etc.
Of course much posted here re this kind of issue. I wonder what the passenger should have done to protect their rights.
They found a more suitable alternative flight, BA could not or would not book them onto that flight, so they made thier own arrangements.
Interested how better to manage such situations?
As stated, get themselves to LHR to catch their original connection! Much more likely to get this reimbursed by BA without having to put up a fight.
The call centre could have booked onto SN, usually takes a bit of pushing though. But checking now it’s full so perhaps it was when BA checked too
Thanks for the advice everyone. The SN flight was available when they asked to be rebooked onto it. Unfortunately BA refused saying they couldn’t find the flight!
So I guess all should claim for now is a refund as well as the EU compensation for a last minute cancellation and nothing else?Thanks for the advice everyone. The SN flight was available when they asked to be rebooked onto it. Unfortunately BA refused saying they couldn’t find the flight!
So I guess all should claim for now is a refund as well as the EU compensation for a last minute cancellation and nothing else?These are the only airlines I am aware BA will rebook onto: https://www.britishairways.com/assets/pdfs/updates/rooc.pdf
Anything else you usually have to sort yourself and then try and claim.
Of course much posted here re this kind of issue. I wonder what the passenger should have done to protect their rights.
They found a more suitable alternative flight, BA could not or would not book them onto that flight, so they made their own arrangements. Note the CAA reminded BA and other airlines recently that they are required to consider rerouting passengers they’ve cancelled onto the flights of other airlines, and not just to their own flights, if they don’t have flights of their own when passenger still needs to travel.
Interested how better to manage such situations?
I agree. Passenger stated they still needed to travel as close as poss to the time booked, gave BA a chance to provide that by requesting it (and incidentally having helpfully identified a flight that did have seats that met that need which they are entitled to have) and BA refused.
So the passenger, having stated their need, which was key to the purpose of the trip, gave BA the opportunity so is now free to provide for themselves the alternative travel which they were legally entitled to have BA provide.
One might quibble if BA had offered a short delay and travel same day but they didn’t, and generally it’s fine for passenger’s circumstances or purpose of the trip meaning an offer of travel on a later day is not acceptable. @NorthernLass the passenger does not have to justify their needs, by default they have the right to say they still need to travel as near as poss to same time and certainly same day.
Why do people think they are the ones who have to conform to the needs of an airline that has just messed them around? and most of the time the airline has done this for their own commercial/operational purposes but impact on the passenger is far greater. This is why EU261 was brought in.
Do 2 separate claims – 1 for cancellation £220 per seat, the other all costs for alternate travel. I’d put in receipts for meals during that extended travel time too.
Sadly read on here many threads BA will lie and stonewall and delay but you have a very good chance if you persist.
You could shore things up by calling BA and requesting a copy of the recording of the call made to them – this will be good evidence of BA’s refusal. You have the right under Data Subject Access Rights , do it sooner than later.
Thanks for the advice everyone. The SN flight was available when they asked to be rebooked onto it. Unfortunately BA refused saying they couldn’t find the flight!
So I guess all should claim for now is a refund as well as the EU compensation for a last minute cancellation and nothing else?It’s a little tricky and it depends on the sums involved and what you consider the relative likelihood of getting cancellation compensation. If the cost of the replacement ticket is not too dissimilar to the expected refund amount, that will save a big fight. Taking a refund does not alter your rights to the cancellation compensation, so you /your friend can just hope to get that as a bonus. BA will probably say no, either on the basis of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ potentially even relying on yesterday’s storms or that you didn’t arrive more than two hours late or some other claim from their rubbish excuse file.
Well, @jah13 – there you have, in very short order, the choices! The quick, simple, no risk practical one or getting an AK-47 to shoot a sparrow.
To add a further dimension to this, consider this scenario. It happened to me.
Domestic connection to LHR that you have chosen to take as last flight of the day, overnight LHR so less risk of connection problem for long haul mid morning next day.
BA cancel domestic flight and place you on first domestic next morning that only just has a permited connection to the long haul, risky as this first flight is sometimes cancelled and frequently late into LHR.
Do you have individual rights as in taxi to LHR day prior (could have booked something in London for that evening), or until and if a failure with the connection BA have no further responsibility other than usual hotel/food if need to overnight at domestic departure Airport?
@qwertyknowsbest
If 1 ticket then if the following morning flight misses connection then the airlines concerned are responsible for reroute.If separate tix then invoke your right to still need to travel same day, give the cancelling airline the chance to provide any alternative flight(s), taxi, coach, car hire etc., and if they don’t then book and claim. Hotel at LHR would be at your cost, but then it was anyway.
PS @jah13 don’t take a refund if you are claiming rerouting expenses and associated duty of care (meals). As soon as you take a refund then BA gets to walk away from your rerouting costs.
@LL – it’s been shown here more than once that being able to show that you need to travel at a certain time/date makes for a stronger case against BA, should it come to that. There’s an element of who is being the most reasonable at play, and people have lost at CEDR/MCOL because they didn’t cover every single base with their argument.
@Querty – reduce the risk by never booking the last flight of the day! I would say that a taxi is only an option if BA can’t otherwise get you there in time for your connecting flight. In my case our long haul leg was departing from LHR at 11 am, our 7 am domestic was cancelled and the next one was full. We weren’t notified until 4 am so trains wouldn’t have got us there on time – though we had that much luggage I don’t see how that would even have been possible!
No @NorthernLass passenger does not have to justify his need to travel same day. The legislation explicitly gives passenger the right to say they still need to travel as close as reasonably possible to their original travel timings and that includes if other airlines’ flights would have to be used to achieve this. This doesn’t have to be justified by the passenger. Obvs on a shorthaul short break in particular, the impact of a delay is much greater on the purpose of a trip.
The discussions that have arisen on HfP around reasonableness of an alternative travel date have been when a pasenger takes another choice he also has – to delay their travel to a later date convenient to themselves. In that circumstance there’s a feeling here that the passenger should have ‘reasonable reasons’ if they decide to choose a much, much later travel date, and in particular there has been advice that it could look unreasonable to pick, say, Christmas travel dates if your original booking was at a much less desirable time.
That’s all, and such concerns are definitely not relevant to this case today. Where the passenger has simply still needed to travel as near as possible to his booked time in accordance with his right, and illegally BA has failed to provide a reroute conformant to the passenger’s choice when it was available on another airline and particularly when the passenger contacted BA and requested rerouting asap and even mentioned the other airline’s flight that met his need.
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