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Hi
I know lots of us are affected by the resent BA flight cancellations. I was due to fly KL to LHR next month but it’s been cancelled.
This was part of a stopover as I’ll be in Bali and I was flying to KL then home to London as no direct flights from Bali to London.
I have been provided with an option of Bali to Doha arriving 23:40. Then Doha to London departing 01:45. I’m flying solo with my 3 year old so as you can imagine, those flight times are a pain. I appreciate no one could care less about his sleep but as a parent, I do care.
My ideal solution would be Bali to Singapore then Singapore to London. I was told I should take my connection to KL then get a three hour taxi to Singapore and hope to claim it back. That to me is ridiculous.
I have called once and spoke to someone via Instagram but they have simply said they can only do what was quoted to me on the phone. I have a feeling it doesn’t matter if I try to call and speak with someone else, they’ll simply look at the notes and give me the same information.
Any advice or should I just suck it up and take the Doha flights.
It’s super frustrating as they have also cancelled my Doha flight in February. They cancelled my 07:00 departure and offered the 01:45 departure again. Who in their right mind wants to fly at that time!
It would be helpful if you could provide the exact itinerary which has been cancelled, including airlines, e.g. it’s not clear if your Bali-KL flight is on the same booking as KL-London.
Also, have you read the article and thread on the recent KL cancellations? There are lots of posts with info about re-routing options readers have managed to secure.
If you wait for the rebooking guidelines to be published – https://www.britishairways.com/travel-partner-connect/disruptions – hopefully they’re going to include Malaysian Airlines and you can maintain similar timings. Otherwise you should be able to look up a better timed Bali-Doha-UK flight and ask for that instead.
Assuming this is the same ticket you won’t get BA to reroute you via Singapore as they’d need to put you on Singapore Airlines which they won’t do on an advance cancellation. Do not attempt to overland transit KL to Singapore , it’s far more than 3hrs and a taxi wouldn’t take you anyway!
Jumping on this thread. I need to vent as I’ve had a bit of a nightmare start to the day.
I received an email from BA at 05:45 this morning telling me that my flight BA508 to Faro from LHR at 09:25 today was cancelled. To say I am annoyed is an understatement. I suspected there were issues yesterday when I could not download my boarding pass.
I logged into MMB to be presented with a message that BA had rebooked me on the BA508 departing on Saturday 19 October. All I needed to do was accept the flight. Obviously thatis not what I wanted to do so so I looked online to see what other flights were operating and there was a flight departing LGW today at 16:40 so I phoned BAEC to ask to be rerouted onto that.
Unfortunately by the time I got through the automated processes to speak to someone that flight disappeared and the agent offered me the BA2660 departing LGW tomorrow at 08:15 so I said yes please do that. They put me on hold for ages and then came back to tell me that BA’s booking systems had technical issues and that they’d failed to book me on that 08:15 flight so please hold. So while on the phone I managed to book myself onto the BA2662 18Oct departing at 16:40 from LGW at a cost of £560 for 2! Then the BA agent came back to me and said they had actually managed to book me onto the 08:15 flight after all!
So now I had two bookings! I asked if it was possible to change the original booking on the 08:15 flight tomorrow to the 16:40 flight and then refund the one way booking I’d just made using the 24 hour cancellation rule. They put me on hold and amazingly they came back and did what I had asked which was amend my original booking to the 16:40 flight and refund me. So well done BA for that.
My questions now are:
1) am I eligble for compensation for the original cancellation today as I have subsequently received an email informing me that “We’re extremely sorry that your flight has been cancelled at short notice. This is due to aircraft serviceability”
2) Can I get BA to pay the first night of my hotel tonight which I will have to pay as I won’t be turning up until tomorrow and
3) Will BA pay the difference in taxi fare to get me to LGW instead of LHR? I live 25 mins from LHR so my taxi would have been £36 but the cost to LGW will be over £70.@AJA – sorry to hear about this; not what you need. In principle you should be eligible for compensation on the basis of the cancellation reason given, but BA has been known to change its position as these automated messages aren’t necessarily accurate and “aircraft serviceability” is relatively vague but positive. BA is not liable under 261 to pay for your missed hotel night (they are required to pay extra ones, but not missed ones) and unfortunately many insurance companies operate on the same basis. For the taxi, it’s a bit marginal as you chose LGW. As a starting point you should claim all three elements from BA and they may pay the extra cost/loss as a matter of goodwill. If you can claim on insurance, you would need a refusal from BA anyway.
@JDB Thanks for that. Just spoke to the hotel to let them know we will only be turning up tomorrow evening and they asked me to send an email to their reservations team confirmng that. They did say that the full cost of 7 nights would be payable as we are too close to the original check in time to amend the booking to only 6 nights. So I will try asking BA to pay for that. As for the taxi I think I am not being unreasonable as BA’s only LHR option was to fly on Saturday 19th – it’s not my fault that they didn’t offer any sooner flights departing from LHR.
What a rotten start to your holiday AJA.
One way or another this must be the fault of BA basically selling flights they haven’t arranged adequate contingency to run. (Contingency of equipment, of staff, of resources if a contractor out of LGW lets them down.) It’s just not acceptable that time and again people are only told their flight is cancelled so late that their efforts to reach it have already been made.
So I hope you do get paid back by BA including particularly compensation for cancellation.
Did you ask for same day flight on TAP or perhaps another solution eg via Madrid? I’d have thought it would add even more bolster to a claim, if refused.
If you’re insured and nice and British you might let this lie. But personally I’d be annoyed enough, especially if no exceptional reason for cancellation can be assumed to be successfully pleaded, to make a separate claim on BA for the loss of the hotel night and anything I could work out in terms of loss of enjoyment of 1/7th of my holiday.
I’m imagining that weasel words in the contract probably protect BA from such a claim but that wouldn’t stop me thinking about it as the loss of part of your holiday plus lots of stress and effort, has been caused by BA’s neglecting to run their business with reasonable contingency, and with disdain for passengers (the late notice which we’re hearing they are doing repetitively especially on short haul). It would lose all my goodwill for BA because it’s so unnecessary to put passengers through this stress and cause them these losses.
Please let us know what you are able to secure from BA.
BA seem to use robots for sifting claims, so I would try and take advantage of this:
Put two online claims in:
One simply stating that your flight BAxxxx was cancelled with just XX hours notice, and the replacement flight BAyyyy arrived XX hours later than BAxxxx was scheduled for. (use hours,, not days, since hours is the compo definition). Therefore since your arrival was delayed by more than two hours, and the distance between London and Fao is more than 1,500km, you claim £220 compensation. Hopefully, the robot just pays out.
The other: my flight BAxxxx was cancelled and I was rebooked onto BAyyy, which arrived XX hours later at XX:XX the following days. Please find attached the bill from my hotel for one night, £xx.xx . With the change in departure airport from London Heathrow to London Gatwick, I also had to pay £xx.xx for a taxi, receipt attached.
As JDB says, the loss of a night at a hotel is not usually covered, but an extra night is. Hopefully, by phrasing as above, the robot thinks it is an extra night and not a lost night!
A loss of a day’s holiday might be the subject of a third message, perhaps an email to BA customer service asking for 20,000 avios – after all, they seem to hand out 20k for anything at the moment, and if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
By keeping it simple, in three seperate claims, then you won’t fall foul of someone being able to approve one and having to pass to someone else to approve another bit etc. And the robot might be kind!
Thanks for your response Lady London. I did look to see if there were any TAP flights from LHR today but they only had economy seats indirect via LIS departing at 10pm and the business class flights tomorrow were indirect leaving LHR at 6am and then a stop in Lisbon with an arrival tomorrow later than the flight I am on. Call me cynical but I suspect those with higher status than me were accomodated ahead of me.
I thought I was at risk when I couldn’t download my boarding pass yesterday. I am annoyed that they didn’t tell me sooner as I may have been able to be re-routed on BA today if I’d had the opportunity to call yesterday afternoon. What is also annoying is that as late as 5pm yesterday BA were still actively selling seats in CE for my flight this morning.
I hope tonight’s hotel cost should be paid as there is no way BA could get me there today so the loss is a direct result of BA cancelling at very short notice. I mean what’s the difference between paying for a night’s accomodation at LHR verus at the destination. My insurance provider seems to only pay £50 towards costs after 12 hours delay and then a further £10 per 12 hour delay. The cost of accomodation seems to only be payable if I cancel the trip.
I am now slightly concerned that my return flight back to LHR next week may also get cancelled at the last minute. But I will face that issue next week if it happens
Thanks Colin. I will do as you say. And thanks for the amount. I thought it would be that but it’s good to know. I will of course let everyone know the outcome of any claims.
The saga continues. I have just had my replacement flight cancelled! Now offered a flight on Monday which I really don’t want as that means we have barely 48hours in destination.
Now on hold to BA to explore options. At this point am inclined to cancel but will now lose entire hotel bill. What are my options now?
Insurance.
If it was a BA Hol then there are extra separate rights snd BA hols duty desk is best to help as well.
2 separate compo claims 1 for each flight
Extra out of pocket for any extra journey to the airport, any hotel that turns out to be needed (though make sure to ask to give them chance to provide)
Anything via say Madrid (nice lounge) on IB? Or horrors even LH via FRA etc-?Meanwhile be nice and throw yourself on the mercy of BA. They must know they’ve really screwed up. So if you’re extra nice it might be easier for them to come up with something.
I take it the dreaded LCC’s have nothing? Would have thought they might.
Good luck and let us know what happens.
Update. Finally got around last Friday to claiming for the original LHR-FAO cancelled flight.
We accepted a reroute LHR-LIS-FAO on TAP in business class (paid for by BA). Was very impressed, both planes spotlessly clean and much more spacious than BA. Nice food to LIS, only coffee or tea offered on short flight to Faro.
Didn’t claim for the second flight that was cancelled due to the weather issues. Also didn’t try claiming for the two nights hotel missed. May try a claim on travel insurance.
Kept it simple as suggested by Colin above though claimed expenses and compensation at the same time as the webform allowed it.
So claimed for the hotel in Lisbon, taxis, food and drink plus toiletries as luggage was checked through to Faro despite the night in Lisbon.
Got an email at 4:30pm today accepting claim paying £350 each and £273.70 expenses. Should be paid within 14 business days.
Pretty pleased with that. Thanks everyone who gave advice and encouragement at the time.
Sorry to hijack thread. Just wondering what is typical wait time from BA once a claim is submitted online for a flight disruption. I submitted a request for compensation 3 week and not had any response. Is this a typical time frame?
Sorry to hijack thread. Just wondering what is typical wait time from BA once a claim is submitted online for a flight disruption. I submitted a request for compensation 3 week and not had any response. Is this a typical time frame?
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground – BA will either respond inside a week or take many weeks! They also seem to have a habit of quickly closing cases without a resolution, without necessarily informing the passenger. The fast responses are mainly the simplest claims expressed in brief/clear terms digestible by AI.
Sorry to hijack thread. Just wondering what is typical wait time from BA once a claim is submitted online for a flight disruption. I submitted a request for compensation 3 week and not had any response. Is this a typical time frame?
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground – BA will either respond inside a week or take many weeks! They also seem to have a habit of quickly closing cases without a resolution, without necessarily informing the passenger. The fast responses are mainly the simplest claims expressed in brief/clear terms digestible by AI.
Thank you. I’ll leave it a few weeks and contact them.
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