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My 3pm flight to LHR has been cancelled. They’ve offered me an 8pm to LCY. There is a flight available with KLM around 3pm. If they refuse to book me on that, can I just book myself onto it and then make the claim?
Who is ‘they’?
Hard to give proper advice without know which airline is trying to rebook you !
Have a look at this guide @Olly
https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/07/10/what-rights-do-you-have-if-your-flight-has-been-cancelled/
Sorry folks. Should have said, it was BA.
Agent was helpful and tried to book me on a KLM flight to LHR but was unable to as I’d already checked in to the cancelled flight which meant she couldn’t change the alternative flight they’d tried to route me to LCY. A pretty strange rule.
I’m south of Rotterdam so going to try and book my own flight back from Brussels (no seats left on any day flights from AMS) and claim back from there
You can try that. It doesn’t strike me BA have acted unreasonably here – a 5h delay is part of airline travel, and they are putting you on a same day flight. So you may well end up having to pay the extra costs yourself. The original flight would get refunded though.
It sounds like it would be worth calling again, because the agent you spoke to doesn’t sound competent.
It would also help when it comes to claiming back to be able to say you’ve tried to get BA to rebook you and they failed/refused. Although I agree with @points_worrier – I’m not sure you have a strong case here.
I’m afraid your error here was checking in for the rebooked flight.
That basically means you accepted that flight as a reroute and you only get once chance of that per cancellation.
So in those curcumstances BA woun’t reimburse you the cost of any other flights.
For future reference for you and other readers you need to explore alternatives before accpting the re-route. You won’t be booted off the proposed flight whilst you do that.
But given weather and resulting cancellations over the last couple of days there likely wern’t any other BA flights to book you onto and KL may have had limited availability to be able to accept rebookings themselves.
I know it’s not perfect but I just did a dummy BA AMS-LHR booking today the only flight they are selling seats on is the 22.20 to LHR.
The OP didn’t state they checked in for the re-routed LCY flight, they clearly said they checked in for the original ‘cancelled’ flight 🙄.
That’s correct, I didn’t check in for the re-routed flight (and have not accepted that). The agent seemed very competent and was very happy to book me on the 8pm LHR flight with KLM had the system let her do so. She said it was purely the fact that I’d checked in for the original flight that meant I was also checked in to the re-routed one (even though I’d not accepted that), which meant she was prevented from re-booking.
I plan to make the case for BA for the refund of the rebooked flight which in effect gets my back to the same airport at nearly the same time as my original one. For me that sits squarely under the condition mentioned in the URL above of:
(b) re-routing, under comparable transport conditions, to their final destination at the earliest opportunity;
Which is far more convenient for me than having to get across London and then home late at night. The irony being that I’m on a different BA flight which I would happily have had them book for me were they able to do so (which they were not due to their own IT)
On a related incident, my 21:05 flight from Stockholm to LHR by BA has been cancelled, with the return flight not scheduled to arrive to London until around 14:30 tomorrow. On account of ever reducing numbers of available seats and being unable to get through to BA by phone, I’ve proactively booked a flight on SAS arriving into London at 9:30am (I really need to be in London for a work event).
Do I need to continue trying to get through to BA and if I don’t, will this cause issues when trying to claim anything back from them – e.g. new flight, extra hotel night etc.?
Thanks in advance!
Have you tried the BA website chat function @DanielD ?
I have had a good amount of success with chat where the phone lines have failed.
At the time of posting this message, the chat window was showing as available.
https://www.britishairways.com/content/information/help-and-contacts/contact-us
I found the chat next to useless yesterday, as no agents were available but worth a try if you’re having no joy with the phone lines. Have you tried the executive line? I managed to get through on that line even when the other one wasn’t working?
I think BA ideally prefer for you to have given them an opportunity to reroute you but with their IT I am highly skeptical that they would be able to trace whether you spoke to them and given that you have been trying and failed to get through, I’d recommend submitting a reimbursement request for your new flight as I will be doing shortly
Thank you both. I finally got through to the chat, albeit after some time of trying, and was told I’d be reimbursed for the flight – although we shall see if they stick to that position.
By way of an update, BA have rejected my claim for compensation under EU261 because they claim it was due to ‘adverse weather conditions’. Notwithstanding the fact that the weather conditions were largely fine on the day (I flew back to LHR at the near identical time I was due to on the original flight), they also cancelled the flight nearly 24hrs in advance, which doesn’t strike me as overly logical to be given as a reason.
If they continue to reject my claim for compensation and for reimbursement of the alternative flight I had to take, is MCOL my next course of action?
Do you have any evidence of there being another cause for the cancellation?
There’s nothing to stop you going to MCOL, but you’ll need to have a decent case to put forward. CEDR might be a better bet in the first instance as it doesn’t cost you anything.
Are you sure the cancellation wasn’t weather related? From what I recall the weather in the London area was terrible on Sunday. My OH was supposed to be camping at Goodwood but gave up Saturday due to poor forecast for Sunday. We had torrential wind and rain and overnight the worst storm I have experienced in the UK for years – it was the talk of Monday morning from London all the way down to the south coast as no one seemed to be able to sleep through it. My son was on one of the overnight flights from LAX to LHR on Sunday night and we wondered whether it might get cancelled.
Well I’m sure that my friends flight which was from Amsterdam in late morning of the same day wasn’t cancelled and neither was mine from Brussels that afternoon at almost exactly the same timings as when my original flight was due to be in the air.
I don’t think you can selectively use weather as an excuse for cancellation, which is what BA seem to be attempting
@northernlass No I have no evidence aside from what I state above which is that there were plenty of other BA flights on the same day and at the same time from the same or nearby destinations which were not cancelled.
Ultimately I can’t prove the case for compensation any more than they can disprove such a subjective rationale, but at this point they don’t appear to be willing to reimburse me for the replacement flight which bothers me far more, and is what I intend to dispute. Thanks for the guidance that CEDR is the best place to start
BA finally responded to say that they weren’t willing to refund me the cost of the replacement flight, instead only offering a replacement voucher of £200, so now I’ve had their final response, I’ve lodged the case with CEDR. I’ll report back on the outcome.
As part of the back and forth though, the BA agent mistakenly included their default response email template beneath their actual response so I thought I’d share it here for resonance:
(Email heading) An update from British Airways
Thank you for coming back to us about (your flight from / to / your recent problem with / specify).
***PLEASE ENSURE EVERY CUSTOMER ISSUE HAS BEEN ADDRESSED***
(IF NOT OFFERING A GESTURE)
I’ve reviewed what you’ve told us and our position on this matter again, (reiterate briefly what’s been discussed with customer already and explain why you can’t offer more compensation/a full refund).We do understand how strongly you feel about this. When a customer has any kind of concern, we share the feedback with the relevant manager, and focus on what we can do to avoid the issue happening in the future. (IF WE CAN SAY SOMETHING SPECIFIC ON ACTIONS) In this case, we’ve (changed x / provided extra training / changed the information we provide on x to be clearer).
(IF OFFERING A GESTURE)
I’ve reviewed what you’ve told us and our position on this matter again. We’re now able to pay your expenses/offer you (an eVoucher for XXX.XX/ XXXXXX Avios/ High Life Shop vouchers for XXX.XX), which I hope will go some way towards making up for what happened.
I can assure you that we’re also focusing on what we can do to avoid this issue happening in the future. In this case, we’ve (changed x / provided extra training / changed the information we provide on x to be clearer).
(ADD RELEVANT GESTURE PARAGRAPH IF NEEDED)
(UNHAPPY WITH REASONABLE COSTS – STANDALONE)
I see from your comments that you feel we should pay more towards your expenses, given what you went through, and you also noted that we don’t detail exactly which costs we will cover in these situations.
Under EU regulations, we have a legal responsibility to pay you ‘reasonable costs’ in this situation. I’ve double-checked the amount we’ve offered, and we do feel that the amount we’re paying you is reasonable.
We do understand how strongly you feel about this. When a customer has any kind of concern, we share the feedback with the relevant manager, and focus on what we can do to avoid the issue happening in the future. (IF WE CAN SAY SOMETHING SPECIFIC ON ACTIONS) In this case, we’ve (changed x / provided extra training / changed the information we provide on x to be clearer).
(UNHAPPY WITH REASONABLE COSTS – FOLLOW-ON FROM PREVIOUS PARAS)
I see from your comments that you feel we aren’t paying enough towards your expenses, given what you went through, and you also noted that we don’t detail exactly which costs we will cover.
Under EU regulations, we have a legal responsibility to pay you ‘reasonable costs’ in this situation. I’ve double-checked the amount we’ve offered, and we do feel that the amount we’re paying you is reasonable.
(NO PAYMENT FOR CONSEQUENTIAL LOSS)
We cannot cover the items you asked us about. This is because we’re only legally responsible for the cost of your flight itself, and any expenses you had to pay out due to the (delay/cancellation) These expenses might include accommodation or food and drink.
You can find more about what we do and don’t cover here.
(CUSTOMER MAY BE ABLE TO CLAIM THROUGH TRAVEL INSURANCE)
I know this is less than you were hoping for. If you haven’t already, you may be able to claim the rest through your travel insurance provider. If I can help by providing any information for your claim, please let me know.
Thank you for getting in touch with us about this. We do appreciate that you have a choice of airline, and hope you’ll choose us again in the future. If there are any other issues I can help with, please contact me directly.
By way of a final update, less than a week after BA’s final response letter denying my claim and then lodging the claim with CEDR, BA accepted to repay the cost of the replacement flight in full. Shows that CEDR is a solid option when BA initially refuses to act responsibly in line with the law. Shame it has to take going that far to force them into it but ho-hum
Success. Good news. I’ve taken BA twice via CEDR and been successful. Persistence and knowing your rights ( well a reasonable working knowledge of them helps)
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