BA cancelled flight less than 7 days before departure and refused re-routing.

[HarryB.]

Hello fellow HfPointers, I had an Avios flight booked for the 27/6 from IBZ to LHR which BA cancelled in the evening of 24/6. There were no seats available for myself and my 4 co-travellers until the 29/6 which was 2 days too late for us to report back to our workplaces. On a very long and arduous phone call I had with BA I tried to get us re-routed with another airline of the IAG for the same date even though they were connecting flights. It was first suggested that we could get from IBZ to BCN on Vueling and then from there to LHR on BA but after “a chat with his manager” the operator sternly told me that we couldn’t be booked on the Vueling flight and that the flights had to be BA or Iberia. I promptly found a number of Iberia connecting flights that would work for us and after more chats with his superior I was flat out told that we could not be re-routed and that the only options were to be moved to a BA flight 2 days later or get a refund which had little use for us.
Being abroad, with bad signal and desperate to get something sorted, I got us rebooked on a Wednesday BA flight and then proceeded to book Avios flights for Monday the 27/6 with Iberia+BA at a cost of 30,000 Avios and £21 per person. In the meantime the Wednesday flight was cancelled again two days in advance.
BA acted in a totally negligent and unsympathetic manner disregarding rules around re-rerouting and being willing to leave us stranded abroad, out of pocket and in trouble with our employers therefore I would like your advice on what’s the best avenue to pursue in order to fairly compensate us. If we didn’t have a sizeable Avios balance then we would have simply stayed there trying to sort out issues around accommodation, subsistence and additional time off with our employers. Their cowboy tactics ruined part of our holidays and made a massive dent to our Avios balances therefore I’d like to get properly reimbursed. I have been looking into relevant governmental guidance but the wording is at the most confusing or unhelpful.
Many thanks in advance!

[SamG]

Key question is – have you accepted a refund?

Hopefully not, in which case fill out the customer relations form on the website for your EU261 compensation and refund of the tickets you bought to reroute yourself, along with screenshot of the calls to help prove you did give them an opportunity to reroute you.

If you did accept a refund then this makes things more difficult as that is one of the remedy options available and ends BA liability. However you’d still get the compensation and you could try asking for the difference back stating you took the refund due to BA refusal to help

Your travel insurance may also assist

Quite odd you couldn’t get a BA+IB rerouting but lots of odd things happen with Ba call centres, if you’d hung up and called again you’d likely have been rebooked. But appreciate that isn’t so easy or what you want to be doing on holiday!

• This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .

[AJA]

I found out the other day that contact centre staff have been asked to avoid rebooking BA Avios reward tickets to IB since some robot in Madrid is in the habit of cancelling tickets overnight, which then causes obvious problems the next day. That is probably why you were “flat out told that we could not be re-routed and that the only options were to be moved to a BA flight 2 days later” Of course that doesn’t help you when you are trying to get home and apparently the issue can be overcome if the BA call agent adds a specific keyword to Avios bookings on IB, which gets added in automatically if the booking is made from scratch on IB, but otherwise needs to be entered manually.

Either way definitely claim for the cancellation compensation, I’d even go for it twice since the second flight was also cancelled but I am not sure if BA would pay out. If you go that route do two separate claims for each flight as you want to avoid BA wriggling out of paying if on one claim.

[meta]

It would be helpful to give @HarryB. some pointers in regards to relevant legislation.

1. Article 5, 7 and 8 or EU/UK261 deal with cancellation/delay/re-route
2. Article 15 deals with the fact that airline (BA) didn’t inform you with all the options under article 8. If you accepted a refund because you were not informed of all the options, you would need to obtain a recording of the call from BA before proceeding with any legal action.

Good luck and do come back to let us know of the outcome.

[Lady London]

claim compensation + all duty of care amounts you possibly can, and I would include the costs of all calls to BA, for each seat, separately and for each of the flights separately.

This is the kind of story that reveals the lies of BA claiming publicly they are cancelling people only well in advance.

As BA is such a sleazy airline these days given we keep hearing about them treating their passengers like this we know the rest of your story. BA is going to deny, deny, deny your claim.

So start now and write up a blow by blow timeline of this whole incident step by step and each step details and results. Send the claims for compo and duty of care in for each flight separately giving them 14 days to pay. Don’t hang around after that, send your LBA to their Waterside address signed-for, in separate sendings for each flight, on Day 21. You can give them 21 days to pay in full on each LBA before action is taken.

If they fail to pay I’d MCOL them separately for each flight.

Btw I wouldn’t ask for my avios to be refunded for the replacenent ticket, I’d tell them as I had lost faith in them I have no use for the avios and so my claim is for 1.6p per avios spent on those tickets being the standard selling price and that’s what you want to receivw back as you don’t want any more avios. Plus any cash you had to pay out of course. This is a perfectly acceptable valuation in court if it comes to it btw.

[SamG]

I checked expertflyer and the cancellation code on Monday was OPEY – operational reasons and the Y meaning in scope for EU 261 compo

I believe you must have then been rebooked onto an LCY flight today – which was cancelled with code CCRY – which I believe is cabin crew shortage – again the Y meaning in scope for compo

I’d certainly have a go at claiming for both, you’ve got 6 years so perhaps do the Monday one and your reroute and then the Wednesday one afterwards

[yonasl]

SamG wrote:

I checked expertflyer and the cancellation code on Monday was OPEY – operational reasons and the Y meaning in scope for EU 261 compo

I believe you must have then been rebooked onto an LCY flight today – which was cancelled with code CCRY – which I believe is cabin crew shortage – again the Y meaning in scope for compo

I’d certainly have a go at claiming for both, you’ve got 6 years so perhaps do the Monday one and your reroute and then the Wednesday one afterwards

Hi Sam. Where on Expertflyer can one see these details? Thank you

[Froggee]

@HarryB – read this just so you are clear what BA should have done for you according to the law. It also shows your entitlement to compensation.

https://www.caa.co.uk/passengers/resolving-travel-problems/delays-and-cancellations/cancellations/

[meta]

CAA website is not the most accurate one.

I would always refer back the main legislation which is actually very easy to understand.

[SamG]

yonasl wrote:

SamG wrote:

I checked expertflyer and the cancellation code on Monday was OPEY – operational reasons and the Y meaning in scope for EU 261 compo

I believe you must have then been rebooked onto an LCY flight today – which was cancelled with code CCRY – which I believe is cabin crew shortage – again the Y meaning in scope for compo

I’d certainly have a go at claiming for both, you’ve got 6 years so perhaps do the Monday one and your reroute and then the Wednesday one afterwards

Hi Sam. Where on Expertflyer can one see these details? Thank you

Under flight status. They only stay there for a few days though and occasionally don’t seem to be there for delays

[HarryB.]

Thank you all fellow HfPointers, your help has been truly valuable as even though I’m an experienced flyer that was the first time coming across such an experience.
I have now initiated EU261 for the 2 cancelled flights (2 seperate claims) and made a 3rd claim to get reimbursed for the replacement flights that BA made me book to ensure were back to the UK on the same day. I’ll update you here with any outcome to make my small contribution to collective knowledge on how such cases go!