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I booked a return flight to Madrid via BA and the outbound was with Iberia, inbound with BA.
When I checked in via BA’s app to get the boarding pass, a pop up in the app made me check in via Iberia and not BA. Other passengers were allocated our booked seats for some reason too but this affected some other passengers.
I happened to check the BA app today to see if my tier points had landed and noticed the booking has disappeared. I’ve contacted BA chat and they’ve said we were no shows for the outbound and they’ve cancelled the inbound tickets. They told me off for using the Iberia ticket and not BA.
This is very odd, firstly the app made me check in via Iberia, I could not check in the normal way I’m used to for a BA operated flight. Secondly, they’re partners and I clearly did fly on the outbound and they’ve scanned my ticket multiple times.
Waiting for them to resolve this but it’s another example of very concerningly poor IT. Last year I posted on here when I noticed my return flight from Italy didn’t exist as they never issued a ticket. Only if I found the original confirmation email and noticed there was no e-ticket number would I have realised before turning up to the airport.
Currently they’re still saying I didn’t show up for the flight, even with the Iberia ticket number. Not sure how else to convince them that we did, it’s laughable.
Send them passport page copy with Madrid stamp if you have it?
You always check in with the airline you fly with. Even if you use the BA app it will simply send you to the website of the operating airline. That’s the same at the airport where you use the airline’s desk and not who you booked the ticket with.
BA has control of your whole itinerary (so IB cannot, for instance, change stuff as they are simply operating one of the legs).
I wouldn’t muddy the waters with what app you used (and I don’t even understand why a BA person will say you flew with an “IB ticket” and not a “BA ticket”, all that sounds obviously made up) simply tell BA you flew the outbound and they wrongly cancelled the inbound. If they don’t fix it this sounds to me as a cancelation on their end which will give you ample rights under UK261 (compensation, rerouting, etc.)
Just to detail on the concept of “cancelation”. When you show up at the airport for your return flight BA will tell you you don’t have a ticket but you do have one, you flew the outbound and it is clearly them denying boarding or cancelling your itinerary.
@sturgeon, so are you now stuck in Spain or elsewhere with no ticket to fly home?! When was your inbound flight support to depart?
Thanks all. I’ll call their ticketing team shortly and I’d be astonished if they can’t resolve it.
@sturgeon, so are you now stuck in Spain or elsewhere with no ticket to fly home?! When was your inbound flight support to depart?
Yes. The return flight is tomorrow though so I have time to sort. This type of incident has never occurred with any other airline and this is now the second time something like this has happened where due to no fault of my own, a ticket/leg doesn’t exist/has been cancelled and I’ve only happened to realise due to diligence.
They’re looking into it and will call back in 4-5 hours. At least the flight isn’t today as whilst I’m sure it will be resolved, if I was due to travel later today I’d be a bit more anxious considering how appalling their systems and IT are.
Missing the tier points from the outbound flight also means I won’t hit my milestone to retain bronze either so I imagine that will be another palaver considering I was allegedly a ‘no show’ for that flight.
@sturgeon – I hope you get this resolved. The evidence you need (per last para of your first post) including for missing TP/Avios is your boarding card rather than the ticket.
You will not easily get this resolved, and may have to buy another ticket and claim back later.
Do keep your original boarding card, and present yourself for your original return flight – you should be due denial of boarding/cancellation compensation if they don’t let you board due to incorrectly believing you didn’t fly the outbound flight.What does the boarding card actually prove? Still doesn’t prove you flew the first leg. Especially given very often digital these days.
Not suggesting you didn’t. Just wondering how you demonstrate it. Passport stamp helpful I guess – though even then (laughably) they may suggest you flew with someone else!!
I don’t have a boarding card. I had an Apple wallet boarding pass and I also have a pdf of the boarding passes which I gave to my partner. If I didn’t have the latter I wouldn’t actually have a boarding pass as the Apple wallet pass expires and deletes automatically. I wasn’t issued paper passes as we had carry on luggage and used the digital
Passes to go through security and board etc.BA said they’re now sorting it and should reinstate the flights later today after they asked to see my boarding passes (I only had the PDF to share, not sure what I could have shared if I didn’t have these).
Hope you get sorted soon 🤞. I’d be interested to know how this happened, if you ever find out, because plenty of people fly mixed airlines – look at the number of readers here mixing BA and IB for 241 bookings!
I’m guessing if it was 2 separate bookings this wouldn’t have happened 🤷♀️
I don’t have a boarding card. I had an Apple wallet boarding pass and I also have a pdf of the boarding passes which I gave to my partner. If I didn’t have the latter I wouldn’t actually have a boarding pass as the Apple wallet pass expires and deletes automatically. I wasn’t issued paper passes as we had carry on luggage and used the digital
Passes to go through security and board etc.BA said they’re now sorting it and should reinstate the flights later today after they asked to see my boarding passes (I only had the PDF to share, not sure what I could have shared if I didn’t have these).
Your boarding pass hasn’t been deleted automatically. Open your Apple Wallet, scroll to the bottom and you will see a “View ## Expired Passes” button.
Genuine proof of something is usually very difficult to achieve. But personally I’d say the archived apple pass or PDF export and the passport stamp are overwhelmingly persuasive.
Over 5 hours later they’ve emailed me to call them for an update. Which is simply that Iberia have said we didn’t board the outbound flight and that’s that. Clearly that’s not true plus other passengers were allocated our seats. I was also asked which seats we were moved to (I happened to remember) but we were moved twice and I seriously doubt the flustered staff noted down where we ended up. In fact, I was on an emergency exit row and when the passenger allocated to my seat turned up, I heard the flight attendant tell him his bag wasn’t allowed in the overhead locker on that row as it was too big (which seemed like an outright lie just to avoid them having to move me again.
I’m still on hold 45 mins later as they’re continuing to insist that oneworld and Iberia say we didn’t board the flight and there’s nothing they can do. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
The only thing I can think of which I’m sure is unrelated, is that after the boarding passes were
Issued I changed my loyalty number back from
RJ to BA after I had allocated seats. However, from all I’ve read on here that’s fine and your selected seats don’t disappear if you remove your loyalty
Number. At the very least, that should have just caused an issue when boarding and the seats to be reallocated, not the system flatly refusing to acknowledge we even boarded the flight.This is very hard, a boarding pass on its own doesn’t prove you boarded. Neither does passport stamp prove how you got to Madrid airport. However it’s clear you didn’t teleport across, ” beam me over Scotty “. However as @avanti says both together are more than reasonable evidence. Clearly someone is just being a jobsworth, computer says no.
If BA continue to be intransigent, you may have to pay up. However will certainly win at court when get home. Reimbursement and compensation.
They’ve flatly refused to do anything. Tickets are still available for the flight. What am I meant to do, buy new tickets for cash which are 500 euros each? Or they’re available for Avios but I don’t want to spend those if they won’t be reimbursed.
They’re just saying now to contact Iberia.
This is very hard, a boarding pass on its own doesn’t prove you boarded. Neither does passport stamp prove how you got to Madrid airport. However it’s clear you didn’t teleport across, ” beam me over Scotty “. However as @avanti says both together are more than reasonable evidence. Clearly someone is just being a jobsworth, computer says no.
If BA continue to be intransigent, you may have to pay up. However will certainly win at court when get home. Reimbursement and compensation.
So do I need to take this to a small claims court? Are BA at fault here as they sold me the ticket rather than Iberia who flatly tell BA we didn’t board the flight? Or would I just raise a claim for compensation via BAs process rather than going to court?
Firstly try BA before going to court. Claim for new tickets and i think EU261 denied boarding, others on HFP may advise better than me. Also claim compensation for stress and time.
If BA refuse you will have to go to court or CEDR, others advise
Did you pay by credit card, if so use section 75 to claim orginal costs back if you don’t want to go to court. But expect this will still leave you out of pocket
Just now I think you should book the avios flight back, get home, document everything then submit a claim and formal complaint to BA to be reimbursed.
I’ve no idea if you would be able to access the airport records, but surely when your BP is scanned on boarding, it registers somewhere? They have to know who’s on the plane in case of any disasters.
I had an almost identical experience a few months ago. Outbound I was redirected to do seat selection on Iberia’s website and they offered a great deal to upgrade to the flat bed business seat LHR-MAD for just £70, so of course I took them up on the offer.
This of course resulted in an Iberia-issued business class boarding pass, and the next day I found out my return flight had been cancelled as BA marked me down as a no-show.
What was worse was they didn’t notify me. I only found out as it was a corporate booking and Amex GBT notified me. Thankfully I was there for a few days as it too the Amex agent about 36 hours to get the return flight reinstated.
Still missing tier points for this but given the scrapping of Exec Club, and I’ve already renewed Silver, it’s a moot point. But shocking that IAG cancel your flight because you pay them extra to upgrade!
Just now I think you should book the avios flight back, get home, document everything then submit a claim and formal complaint to BA to be reimbursed.
I’ve no idea if you would be able to access the airport records, but surely when your BP is scanned on boarding, it registers somewhere? They have to know who’s on the plane in case of any disasters.
I opted to rebook with cash just in case they refuse to reinstate Avios. Almost £700 for two one way economy flights.
I will claim via BA and as far as I understand I’m owed £350 per passenger under EU261, reimbursement for the return leg (the cancelled flight), reimbursement of the new flights I’ve booked and possibly also compensation for any additional claim (time spent resolving, stress etc although I know full well this will probably be ignored). Is this correct?
I have no idea how Iberia can claim we didn’t board when the boarding passes were scanned at the gate. Plus not that they’d go to this length, cctv clearly shows that we boarded. There was clearly a f*ck up with seats being doubly allocated (still wonder if this was due to me removing my RJ number once I was in the lounge) and I’m sure the flight attendants didn’t update the manifest once we’d moved seats several times. I’m astonished really that they can claim we didn’t board the flight. If there was a disaster then this is especially unnerving.
BA did this to me once a few years ago on a straightforward BHD-LHR return. When I went to check in for the return leg, I discovered it had been cancelled as they said I didn’t take the outbound. I sent them the boarding pass and they reinstated the return. I can only say it must be due to BA’s shockingly bad IT!
I am against taking selfies on principle, but your experience is making me rethink that. Has it come down to this that we need to photograph ourselves with boarding gate screens in view and on planes, as kidnapped with today’s newspaper?
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