BA2763 AMS to LGW cancelled on 1 August – what are my rights?

[Graithe]

Hi all,

First time dealing with all of this so need some advice.

On Monday 1 August my BA 2763 flight from Schipol to Gatwick was at 1930. I had already passed security and was having a meal when I got the notification on the app at around 1800 that the flight was cancelled. Very last minute, obviously.

No other flights seemed to be available to book on the BA app for that evening. No BA staff were in the terminal. So I called the hotline.

I insisted they book me on the later BA flight to Heathrow which still looked up for sale on Skyscanner but they claimed it was full. I asked to be rerouted on Easyjet or KLM or any other airline that evening but they refused, claiming it wouldn’t be possible in the time frame available.

I was then given no choice and rebooked on the 7.10 am flight next morning to LCY. As it so happens, the terminal hotels were all full that night so I ended up having to pay for a shower and then sleeping in a massage chair all night before taking the flight first thing in the morning.

What are my rights here, can I claim all expenses PLUS cash compensation? How much am I entitled to? Where should I start? With BA complaints department? Does anyone have a link?

All your help and advice is very much appreciated 🙂

[harley]

Sorry to hear. You will be entitled to compensation but it depends on the reason ba cancelled the flight- sometimes they dont kick a fuss and sometimes they use a strict reason to deny it. You can start the process for this by filling out the complaint and claims form on their website. Regardless of the reason for cancelling you will be entitled to duty of care so in your case the shower and any food purchased will be covered. Regarding rerouting unfortunately BA lied to you as they always do and it is EC261 law that if they cannot reroute you then you can be put on a different airline. I have only learnt this the hard way and now what i do is simply book the other airline ticket if the airline cannot reroute me and then try to claim the cost back after

[harley]

I believe if compensation is approved should be circa £220

[freckles]

Start with this page

https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/delayed-or-cancelled-flights

It will link you to this one where you can start a claim

https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/delayed-or-cancelled-flights/compensation

[meta]

Full EU261 rights unless it’s extraordinary circumstance and only if BA didn’t take all reasonable measures to avoid it. Unlikely that they wouldn’t know about it at check in.

You should have really taken a taxi and go to the city and book yourself a hotel there and taxi back. BA would have covered it. You would have been entitled to duty of care.

You would also been perfectly within your right to rebook yourself on any other airline, including later BA flight if it was available via Skyscanner that evening and claim the cost from BA.

Now you can try and claim £220 and all expenses you had. I would first also try to find out the exact reason for cancellation. I’ll check if it is still available via Expertflyer, you only have a window of 72hrs to find it out yourself.

[meta]

Can’t see anything on Expertflyer. We might already be late for that.

[Lady London]

Were you on an avios ticket?

NA agents will often say a flight is full when actually it’s not full, if your ticket is an avios ticket. This is because they are searching only for avios seats and those may all be sold or these days, not exist ob thr flight being searched.

BA is not allowed by law to deny you any available seat in the cabin you booked, ie any seat being sold, if they cancelked your flight. You are entitledcto any seat free of charge no mstter how much it could be sold fot.

[Graithe]

meta wrote:

You should have really taken a taxi and go to the city and book yourself a hotel there and taxi back. BA would have covered it. You would have been entitled to duty of care.

You would also been perfectly within your right to rebook yourself on any other airline, including later BA flight if it was available via Skyscanner that evening and claim the cost from BA.

Yeah as the rebooked flight was at 7.10 am I didn’t fancy making the trip back into the city and clearing security again for 2 hours at 4am. For future reference, do I ask for the refund and then rebook myself, or just leave it to claim the refund later together with the additional cost of the flight I’ve booked myself?

meta wrote:

Can’t see anything on Expertflyer. We might already be late for that.

I tried looking earlier but as it was my first time on that site I didn’t know if I needed a premium membership or not?

Lady London wrote:

Were you on an avios ticket?

Yes I was. I was insisting that there were tickets available online and the agent was claiming there weren’t any. It took all my willpower not to scream at him.

[Lady London]

Hey @meta when you said tbe checkin staff would have known about the cancellation, are you saying passengers on the cancelled flight were not told and were checked in anyway, so that they would be stuck airside so it would be much more difficult for them to exit and find a hotel BA would have to pay for plus transport to and from?

[meta]

Yes, exactly. I think it’s very sneaky and I’ve seen this practice a few times before not just with BA, but with other OW airlines. Confuse the passenger and make them suffer so they forget about claiming and their rights.

I saw this a few times now. Every flight of the day departs normally apart from one which is cancelled usually after check in. I don’t think they intended to fly it at all.

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[Graithe]

@meta For future reference, do I ask for the refund and then rebook on another airline myself, or just leave it to claim the refund later together with the additional cost of the flight I’ve booked myself?

[meta]

No, don’t ask for a refund just rebook yourself then claim.

[John]

Graithe wrote:

@meta For future reference, do I ask for the refund and then rebook on another airline myself, or just leave it to claim the refund later together with the additional cost of the flight I’ve booked myself?

DO NOT ask for a refund, you paid BA to transport you to Gatwick and therefore if BA does not transport you, BA must pay for someone else to transport you.

If you get a refund, then you have no longer paid for BA to transport you, so BA has no obligation to pay for another flight.

A refund is different to compensation and reimbursement of your expenses, both of which you are entitled to.

[JDB]

While the OP had a terrible journey and didn’t claim their rights at the time, I do find the conspiracy theories that BA knew before check-in the flight was cancelled but nevertheless checked in those passengers to get them to go through security to avoid compensation etc not only beyond absurd, but also factually completely incorrect. It is also so insulting to the staff on the ground who are trying to do a job in very difficult circumstances. How would doing this really help anyone? It’s great that people provide help here to sort out their journeys/compensation, but to posit fake trumpian conspiracy theories with zero evidence helps nobody.

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[ChrisC]

Well said @JDB

On Monday I checked in at 8pm at SFO for my 10.15 PM AA flight to JFK. I asked the agent if the flight was OK and she tapped a few keys and said yes. As did every display screen in the airport. That agent had no reason to not be truthful to me or anyone else who was checking in.

45 minutes later I got a push notification saying the flight had been cancelled. I and another passenger told the agents at the help desk of the the cancellation so we could be rebooked.

We knew before the AA agents did!

[AJA]

While I agree that in OP’s case it was unlikely the check-in agent was aware of the cancellation when checking them in I still find it very annoying when it happens. I do agree doing so would cause more problems but I can also see some agents doing so just to avoid the inevitable confrontation.

My recent flight back from Lisbon was cancelled 5 days before but despite informing me to log into MMB to rebook there was no option to do so despite there being 2 other flights on BA still operating. Worse I only received the notification at 10:45pm which seems extremely odd. By notifying me so late in the day they reduced the chances of me phoning a European call centre the same day to exercise my right to reroute or rebooking. I am guessing they were banking on me not reading the email until the following morning.

Of course I phoned the US customer service number knowing it was still likely to be open given the time difference but not many people would know that.

I also searched BA’s website for flights so knew before I got through to the call centre which was my preferred option. Even so the call agent tried to push me to book the much earlier flight. They were OK when I said I would prefer to take 2 of the 4 seats in Club on the 4:35pm flight.

I am cynical but am pretty sure BA deliberately notified me so late in the day so that they had a chance to sell the remaining seats to others before I had a chance to rebook. I can’t believe they decide at 10:30pm at night which flights to cancel 5 days in advance.

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[JDB]

@AJA I think you will find that it’s pretty tough working in BA’s flight operations centre at the moment and they are working round the clock in a very, very difficult highly pressured environment. The AMS situation was a very late cancellation of the outbound flight due to be on G-MIDX that wouldn’t have been known at the check in time.

In respect of your LIS cancellation I don’t know, but they are juggling so many moving parts at the moment with lots of external issues on top of their London staff shortages, LHR caps etc. A cancellation decision that might be taken for all sorts of reasons is as likely to be made 5 days ahead at 10pm as 10am and I’m not sure if you would have been much happier if they had held back the news until 8am the next morning.

There is inevitably a lack of co-ordination in that ops people do their jobs in response to the situation they face for specific reasons, but other teams then have to pick up the pieces to rebook, pay compensation etc. It’s chaotic and it’s a nightmare as a passenger when staff aren’t properly briefed or given authority to rebook etc. but I just don’t think there is any malign intent. It’s a complete nightmare for BA and particularly the front line staff dealing with the fallout.

[AJA]

I would definitely have been upset if they had knowingly delayed advising the cancellation until the following morning. I want to be notified ASAP. That’s not unreasonable.

Do you know which team in BA is responsible for deciding which flights to cancel? You suggest it is flight-ops but i thought it involved more than just one team especially 5 days in advance. I would have thought the revenue teams would also be involved. And do they really make those decisions 24 hours a day for flights 5 days ahead? I can see last minute cancellations happening at any point in the day given that a long haul flight departing in SFO at 5 or 6PM local would be middle of the night in London but LIS is in the same time zone as LON.

My point is that BA deliberately decides which flights it is cancelling 5 days ahead of time, that’s not IRROPS. Is that sort of decision made at 10:30pm in LON?

[JDB]

@AJA yes, these are generally pure ops decisions, but obviously they have protocols relating to revenue and likely disruption. At 5 days they can see issues such as an aircraft that’s going to need to go out of service or now needs to be used elsewhere, staffing rosters looking impossibly tight, now potential cap breaches, expected ATC or airport problems etc etc. You could call it IRROPS but at the moment it’s just OPS at T-5!

[ChrisC]

It would be flight ops as that includes crewing and no crew being available would override revenue management so close to departure.

If this was a cancellation months in advance then rev man would be the lead team looking at advance bookings against past history etc

Whilst 5 days seems a long time if you have a set of crew allocated to a flight in 5 days time and their flight(s) today get delayed that could have a knock on effect of their hours and availability.

It’s not a job I’d like to do with so many factors to consider. Especially if you get thrown a curve ball like the LHR and AMS (and others) caps and then weather and then a plane going tech

[Lady London]

AJA wrote:

While I agree that in OP’s case it was unlikely the check-in agent was aware of the cancellation when checking them in I still find it very annoying when it happens. I do agree doing so would cause more problems but I can also see some agents doing so just to avoid the inevitable confrontation.

My recent flight back from Lisbon was cancelled 5 days before but despite informing me to log into MMB to rebook there was no option to do so despite there being 2 other flights on BA still operating. Worse I only received the notification at 10:45pm which seems extremely odd. By notifying me so late in the day they reduced the chances of me phoning a European call centre the same day to exercise my right to reroute or rebooking. I am guessing they were banking on me not reading the email until the following morning.

Of course I phoned the US customer service number knowing it was still likely to be open given the time difference but not many people would know that.

I also searched BA’s website for flights so knew before I got through to the call centre which was my preferred option. Even so the call agent tried to push me to book the much earlier flight. They were OK when I said I would prefer to take 2 of the 4 seats in Club on the 4:35pm flight.

I am cynical but am pretty sure BA deliberately notified me so late in the day so that they had a chance to sell the remaining seats to others before I had a chance to rebook. I can’t believe they decide at 10:30pm at night which flights to cancel 5 days in advance.

I think check-in agents are often aware and want to avoid confrontation. Particularly outsourced ones.

When I flew several times each month on different routes and airlines I developed the habit of asking the checkin agent “Is the flight on time?”. This was because certain flights were literally always late and by a predictable amount, but I was not being told.

So each time I made sure to check in at the desk, and to ask the question not to get the answer, but to watch them before they gave the answer. It was classic. I watched which direction the agent’s eyes slid before giving me the answer. If it was to the left (usually slightly upwards), there was a problem whatever the agent said. Anything else you could mostly believe them.

[Lady London]

@AJA I think cancellations are often decided long before you receive the email. I think the reason is IT – literally millions of messages to go out and the time it takes for the computers to get those out.

[Graithe]

Just to clarify to everyone – I did not deal with a check-in desk as I was using hand baggage only. I checked in the night before on the BA App and when I got to the airport I went straight through security. The App was showing that everything was fine and the flight was on time. I only got the notification on the app that the flight was cancelled very very late – less than 2 hours before we were due to fly.