Flight Cancellation – thoughts required on the least worst alternatives

[valdimpala]

So, having carefully planned an Edinburgh-Toronto trip for July, BA have earned themselves a brown star today by cancelling my outbound flights.
Luckily there is an earlier Toronto flight, but… there are NO EDI-LHR flights available and all the online re-booking options involve an early EDI-LCY leg.
Quite frankly I don’t fancy getting across London, during rush hour, from LCY to LHR on the tube in the middle of July with family and luggage – I just don’t need that stress/sweat in my life.

Anyone got any thoughts on how to make the best of a poor situation?
Will other re-booking options appear if I leave it a few days?
Will BA allow us to fly to LHR the night before? (any hotel recommendations for an overnight near LHR with 2 kids?)
If we do go for a LCY flight what’s the best way to get to Heathrow?
As all the alternatives involve extra cost – are BA on the hook for any of the costs?

P.S. Due to other accommodation/car hire bookings I don’t really want to swap dates for the Toronto flights – even though there are EDI-LHR options available the day before and after my original booking.

[Davidmof]

Hi
The same thing has happened to me for June flight, lucky the earlier flight from Toronto has connecting flights to Glasgow that suits have you looked at Glasgow flights then a taxi
Regards

[Froggee]

Yep – look at Glasgow options.

If I had to get from City to Heathrow, if the timing allowed it, I’d just pre-book a car. BA should pay for this.

In terms of other options appearing, if BA have seats on earlier flights to Heathrow then they should offer them to you.

If it were me, I’d go down the night before and stay at the Sofitel but it might be a battle to get BA to pay for that.

[SamG]

Definitely avoid the London transfer, it’s a crappy one however you do it! Either night before or Glasgow.

Have you checked the timetable or a dummy booking ? You may need to call in to get all the available options, the online tool isn’t the best !

[Froggee]

If you give the actual dates/times people might chip in with more. If it’s literally a case of the EDI-LHR flights being sold out then you are limited. But BA owe you a duty of care.

[LeeH]

This happened to me a week ago, but they cancelled the MAN-LHR and LHR-MAN portions of my trip and couldn’t offer a suitable alternative, and point blank refused to book me with another carrier. I’d booked the trip before I’d made the decision to finish with BA, so I booked with a different airline (direct, MAN-YYZ), instead, and took the refund, and now I’m freeeeee.

If you’re not tied to BA because of status, it’s worth shopping around. Air Transat has a decent premium economy offering (they call it Club, but it’s a bit better than BA premium economy, and not as good as actual Club/First). They fly from Glasgow, so you’d have a drive or train ride at the start and end of your trip. And they don’t have a loyalty scheme but the pries are decent, and I’ve always found the service to be fine.

[Lady London]

Why would you take a refund and meekly walk away letting BA get away with not providing what they are legally obliged to do, whether they feel like it or not.

If you’d left the booking in place and noted their refusal, then you can follow a simple process to get the full cost, whatever it was or however big it was, paid by BA. (A late cancellation by BA would usually mean much higher costs for a replacement flight.)

In addition you claim and receive reimbursement for any meals falling within any required extended wait or travel time due to having to switch to the other flight. Plus you claim and receive all ground transport costs to and/or from your original departure and landing airport, if other airports had to be used, as the obligation of the airline is to get you from the origin airport you booked, to the deoarture airport you booked, even if additional forms of transport are required on a reroute.

The only reason to just meekly walk away taking the refund to let the airline that cancelled your flight completely escape having to pay you all of the above, is if the total cost of the elements above, is more than covered by you choosing a refund for the cancelled flight (not BA stonewalling and bullying you into it).

Do me a favour and at least tell me you’ve submitted your claim for £220 for each cancelled journey? So for LON-MAN £220 and for MAN-LON £220. You are due this for each of your outward and return journeys cancelled, as well as either rerouting costs or refund.

[NorthernLass]

@LL – jumping on this, does BA owe us anything for cancelling our MAN-LHR which should have been a 1550 departure, and only giving us the option of the 1300 departure to change it to online? It’s not the end of the world but it’s meant having to re-arrange our Covid tests at considerable inconvenience and what’s REALLY annoying is that they are still selling later flights even though MMB said there were no other options for us apart from the 1300 departure. It’s more than 14 days out, so no compo.

[LeeH]

Lady London wrote:

Why would you take a refund and meekly walk away letting BA get away with not providing what they are legally obliged to do, whether they feel like it or not.

If you’d left the booking in place and noted their refusal, then you can follow a simple process to get the full cost, whatever it was or however big it was, paid by BA. (A late cancellation by BA would usually mean much higher costs for a replacement flight.)

In addition you claim and receive reimbursement for any meals falling within any required extended wait or travel time due to having to switch to the other flight. Plus you claim and receive all ground transport costs to and/or from your original departure and landing airport, if other airports had to be used, as the obligation of the airline is to get you from the origin airport you booked, to the deoarture airport you booked, even if additional forms of transport are required on a reroute.

The only reason to just meekly walk away taking the refund to let the airline that cancelled your flight completely escape having to pay you all of the above, is if the total cost of the elements above, is more than covered by you choosing a refund for the cancelled flight (not BA stonewalling and bullying you into it).

Do me a favour and at least tell me you’ve submitted your claim for £220 for each cancelled journey? So for LON-MAN £220 and for MAN-LON £220. You are due this for each of your outward and return journeys cancelled, as well as either rerouting costs or refund.

Claims for the MAN-LHR journeys have been submitted. Not sure why you thought that I walked away “meekly”. I’m flying on Monday and it has been impossible to contact BA for the last few days. Literally dozens of calls, all of which got disconnected, so I needed to rebook elsewhere or miss the trip, completely. I’ll be fighting for the compensation, but I also want to be able to actually fly.

[Lady London]

NorthernLass wrote:

@LL – jumping on this, does BA owe us anything for cancelling our MAN-LHR which should have been a 1550 departure, and only giving us the option of the 1300 departure to change it to online? It’s not the end of the world but it’s meant having to re-arrange our Covid tests at considerable inconvenience and what’s REALLY annoying is that they are still selling later flights even though MMB said there were no other options for us apart from the 1300 departure. It’s more than 14 days out, so no compo.

If you accepted you’re stuck with it. As @ChrisC has said BA is not required to pay your consequential losses, if they cancel your flight. They are only liable for compo and the duty of care elements because that’s all there is a law requiring.

So if you have costs of moving other elements, such as Covid tests or you’re going to miss a night of the holiday you’d paid for and can’t get back because BA’s cancellation means you now reach the resort a day late, you cannot recover these costs as airline conditions of carriage (ie the contract) say they are not liable and there is no overriding statute for those things. Mostly you only have what’s in statute as what we call EU261 on here.

Compensation is meant to cover any such losses. Duty of care is what airline is supposed to provide, but mostly doesn’t, so that lets you pay those and recover reimbursement from the airline – duty of care is covering your extra costs so no extra just your out of pocket expenses. Compensation is the ‘extra’ element.

If BA cancels a flight ignore MMB unless it suits you. You get to choose another flight whether it’s in MMB or not. If there’s a seat being offered to you to buy on a better flight for you, that same day, you can check this yourself trialling a booking as though it was a new one online, then if BA refuses to reroute you onto thst flight then you are fully within your rights to keep a record of BA’s refusal, purchase it yourself and claim off BA. If it goes to MCOL I’d like to see BA explain to the judge why they failed to provide this when requested. Don’t worry about the price BA will have to repay you and serves them right.

(Though I am fully awaee of the cashflow issues that could make this not as easy as it sounds. I would likely find some reroutes difficult too. BA is fully aware this is the situation of a lot of passengers too, unfortunately.

You can also buy another airline’s flight if they refuse. So don’t be bullied and if you can’t reach BA, keep a record of at least 3 serious attemots to reach them before you reroute yourself.

[NorthernLass]

Thanks, LL. Only BA flies to GCM so there aren’t any other options apart from going via the US which is very inconvenient at the moment (2 lots of entry requirements to contend with) There are certainly cash flights available on the other MAN-LHR service but would be a huge amount of hassle just to have a later MAN departure. The earlier departure means we’ll need to buy extra meals as there is now a 21-hour gap between our flights (unless you can use the lounge the day before a long haul connection). The real PITA is that we will need a much earlier start not for what’s a very long journey anyway, especially bearing in mind that people are being warned to arrive at airports with a lot of time to spare due to current queuing times.

[valdimpala]

Froggee wrote:

If you give the actual dates/times people might chip in with more. If it’s literally a case of the EDI-LHR flights being sold out then you are limited. But BA owe you a duty of care.

The outbound is scheduled for 20/07.
I’ve tried a dummy booking and it does look like there is no EDI-LHR flight that will get all 4 of us to LHR in time for the 13:10 flight to Toronto.

Leaning towards getting a EDI-LHR flight the night before – just got to build myself up to calling them, as they don’t offer that as an option online. I’m assuming (maybe wrongly) we would be able to check our bags through even though there would be a significant gap between flights.

[valdimpala]

I wonder if I could persuade them to put us on an Aer Lingus flight EDI-DUB-YYZ ….

[Froggee]

I think Aer Lingus would be a push as they don’t appear to get a mention in BA’s “guidelines” as per below.

If it were me, I’d change to GLA-LHR on the 20th and just pay for the taxi through to Glasgow myself. BA should cover it but I doubt they would without a fight. You should certainly ask. The 9:40 flight would not be too punishing and getting into GLA for 7:30-8:00 would see you miss the worst of the traffic.

If you want to park your car at the airport it might be worth asking them to change the return leg to GLA also.

Second choice would be Sofitel at LHR the night before. But the last time we did that our kids didn’t sleep particularly well because of the excitement and it made it a long flight the next day! I doubt BA would cover the cost of a hotel at Heathrow given they are offering alternative flights to London.

The LCY to LHR option would be my third choice. I did it with a wife (taxi to Paddington and Heathrow Express) but not with my kids. As you say – stress and sweat.

https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/traveltrade/bookings-policies/policies/standard-customer-guidelines

[valdimpala]

Froggee wrote:

I think Aer Lingus would be a push as they don’t appear to get a mention in BA’s “guidelines” as per below.

If it were me, I’d change to GLA-LHR on the 20th and just pay for the taxi through to Glasgow myself. BA should cover it but I doubt they would without a fight. You should certainly ask. The 9:40 flight would not be too punishing and getting into GLA for 7:30-8:00 would see you miss the worst of the traffic.

If you want to park your car at the airport it might be worth asking them to change the return leg to GLA also.

Thanks for your thoughts.
I think you’re right, getting to Glasgow for the 0940 Heathrow flight should be no more painful than getting to Edinburgh for the 0700/0725 London City flight. I would rather drive myself than rely on a taxi, so I may as well ask to change the return leg to Glasgow as well.

• This reply was modified 54 years, 11 months ago by .

[masaccio]

Were it me I would take a flight to Heathrow the previous night, stay in the Sofitel and have a nice meal in their restaurant. Whether that fits your budget is another matter and depending upon the age of your kids, a fine dining restaurant might not be what you want (though they do have another restaurant).

[valdimpala]

Changing to Glasgow, or flying down the night before… both require a call to BA, and right now I’m having no luck getting past the canned messages!

[Froggee]

They don’t want to make it easy. Have you tried “talk to agent” on live chat or phoning one of the overseas call centres?

[The real Swiss Tony]

Just a quick data point – got an email both yesterday and today from BA asking me to call re q ticket rebooking. Via the Bronze line I was through in 15 mins yesterday afternoon an 5 mins this morning, so unless I’m just lucky, people might need to steer away from the call centres being impossible to contact line.

(My flights are more than a month away, but it needs to be sorted else it won’t be ticketed).

Was going to add as a side note, if staying at the Sofitel with kids who wouldn’t appreciate a fine dining experience, there are options landside in T5 – although a quick look at the terminal may suggests that may no longer be the case. Had a meal with my troupe in I think Carluccios a few years back which did the job.

[valdimpala]

Alas I’m a humble blue… so I suspect no special treatment for me, after sitting through the all the canned messages and options, I just get “sorry we can’t take your call right now, please try again later” and then get cut off.

Still leaning towards switching to Glasgow flights – I think it will work better for us.

[Froggee]

Try some different options! I’ve had that message on the gold line and tried a different option and then got through. But do try the live chat also.

All this really does show how awful BA are though.