Forums › Frequent flyer programs › British Airways Executive Club › Flight wasn’t ticketed
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@JDB…When you’re in a hole, stop digging
I took it as read that you would be on the anti BA, everything is BA’s fault team and you are very welcome to join those who don’t think it is necessary to check one’s travel arrangements. Airlines process millions of bookings/tickets and sometimes make mistakes. That won’t change.
I make no apology for making an effort to make sure my travel and my family’s travel runs smoothly by carefully checking all the flight tickets, hotel bookings, train tickets, excursions etc. in advance and encouraging others to do so. It’s very easy and I prefer that option vs some drama at the airport.
*runs off to check email for next US flight in Oct* !!
@MichaelC The email does not give you the assurance!
You can have a 125- number in the email but it may still fail to be ticketed and fail to appear in the app. I had it a couple of weeks ago, and went through every step in the process on the previous page (except rebooking… I made it on the flight!)The ticket number ended up being the same as the original email, so seemingly the email can be taken as ‘all being well, you will have this ticket number’ … but not that they have ticketed it yet.
@JDB Train analogy does not work because you don’t need to have received a ticket. You can pick it up either from the counter or from self-service machine at the train station (even if you selected email delivery). So no you don’t need a physical ticket until before boarding.
BAH holiday comparison doesn’t work either because the balance needs to be paid 4-7 weeks in advance and if you don’t your pay in full your booking would be cancelled and you would receive an email.
We are talking here about 24 hours before the flight or at the airport situations.
I once had a situation where I spotted that I didn’t have a ticket number a month before flying, but BA was not able to ticket until 1 hour before OLCI opened despite me chasing obsessively. It is ridiculous and as a season traveller this never happened to me on any airline.
This is also not necessarily IT issue, but poor ticketing management (queue system in 21st century hello??), staff training, and simple lack of care and sense of responsibility towards customers by BA.
@meta – I know the BAH example doesn’t exactly work; it was merely an attempt to illustrate in simplistic terms how erroneous the notion of the fact one can see a booking in MMB and manage it is – it means nothing in terms of being good to fly. Similarly, a business travel agency booking will work in MMB but not be valid for travel until ticketed.
You must use a different rail company to me! On GWR, you can no longer pick up app booked tickets at a counter (also most now closed or short hours) or ticket machines, neither of which was anyway very satisfactory when it was theoretically possible. As I might have done in the old days, I check whether I have any train, theatre tickets etc. in whatever format with me before leaving the house.
I hear what you say re BA’s lack of care/responsibility but I find that’s a pretty widespread issue in many sectors and that, as a customer, one needs to make up for the shortcomings of many organisations these days.
I certainly don’t endorse what’s happening, but merely suggest one should look out for problems, use some self-help and thereby protect one’s interests. BA’s failure to ticket at all or correctly most commonly arises following changes when one needs to be particularly alert. It’s a combination of poor staff training and IT. I recently had a BA booking cancelled and rerouted on QR who cancelled it because BA hadn’t re-ticketed within the required 72 hours. I picked this up immediately (via alerts) and waited on the telephone while BA rebooked the seats and re-ticketed the booking there and then. I have experienced these issues with Qantas, China Eastern, (the now nearly deceased) Grand China Air, Aerolíneas Argentinas and probably others. AR is a largely Sabre based airline but still has (re)ticketing issues mostly on rescheduled flights with a number change.
I’ve never checked ticket numbers before.
Just assumed as it was in MMB all was well.
I’ll always check now though..We once had a problem leaving Istanbul in that our infant was showing as already flown.
Even BA couldn’t sort the problem out, so after 90 minutes, I booked new seats and claimed back once home.
Which BA also made very difficult.
So even with correct tickets, you can still have a problem.!!You can request an eticket receipt on finnair website
And 99.999% of BA customers wouldnt know that and 100% shouldn’t have to. If the web site is the primary booking platform then all information should be easily visible on there. If Ryanair or Ezyjet did this there would be uproar.
Perhaps BA is incorrectly assuming its passengers have a bit of common sense??
When I buy my train ticket online/in the app I receive a receipt. Can I get on the train or go through the barrier with that receipt? No, I need my electronic ticket. When you go to see Oasis, will they let you in with your Ticketmaster receipt? No. Why should it be different for travelling by air?
Common sense would not be expecting a customer to know when they have/ have not been ticketed, especially when there is nothing on the BA website to state that the booking is not fully completed, and where is the common sense expecting a customer to go to a competitors website to check? I don’t go into ASDA to ask for a receipt for something I purchased in Tesco and no average customer should be expected to jump through hoops to make sure they have a valid reservation.
Thanks to this thread I checked all my bookings and my next flight doesn’t appear to be ticketed! I did notice that Award Wallet picks up the 125- ticket number if that helps anyone.
This thread has got quite complicated but going back to my original question, is it safe enough to be confident that if the booking is in the app, I received a confirmation booking email and payment was taken then all is good? I can’t find a confirmation email and payment was not taken looking at my card. So I’ll definitely be checking these details in future.
@Gavvy – clearly we have different definitions of ‘common sense’ but whatever important transaction I’m entering into, I check all the details. My family rely on me to do this when we are travelling together but will reflexively do so for themselves when travelling individually. It’s called making sure everything is (e)tickety-boo. Now you know the derivation of the expression.
This thread has got quite complicated but going back to my original question, is it safe enough to be confident that if the booking is in the app, I received a confirmation booking email and payment was taken then all is good? I can’t find a confirmation email and payment was not taken looking at my card. So I’ll definitely be checking these details in future.
It should be but no it’s not. You really should check to see if there is a 125- ticket number. Notwithstanding what @JDB says about my apparent inexperience and not widely travelled the issue is 100% BA’s fault. So we can either leave it until we try OLCI and find a problem or try using Finnair or RJ or Royal Air Maroc websites to make up for BA’s inconsistent IT.
I wonder how many of JDBs travelling companions would make it on the plane without having him do all this laborious due diligence on their behalf. We all need an AI robot to hand.
@Gavvy – clearly we have different definitions of ‘common sense’ but whatever important transaction I’m entering into, I check all the details. My family rely on me to do this when we are travelling together but will reflexively do so for themselves when travelling individually. It’s called making sure everything is (e)tickety-boo. Now you know the derivation of the expression.
You’ve made this slightly bizarre argument multiple times on here, but unfortunately it’s not very persuasive. If BA made clear that you needed your e-ticket number to travel, and made it clear where and how to check it, and what to do if there was a problem then I would perhaps have some sympathy with your argument. But they don’t, they don’t, and they really don’t.
Upthread you made an analogy with a train ticket, or buying a gig ticket – if you’ve ever done either of those you would have received emails clearly saying things like “your tickets are attached to this email, you need them to enter” or “this email is not your ticket, it will be sent separately” etc etc. BA do not do that. You manage your booking with the PNR, on their website it’s (nearly?) impossible to find a ticket number even if you go looking for it, there is nothing anywhere (outside of very small print presumably) saying that you need to check your booking has been ticketed, or that you even need a ticket number. It is not, despite your claims, obvious to someone making a booking that they would need a ticket number – it just isn’t made clear.
Clearly if you spend a lot of time on here or Flyertalk then you will pick up this issue sooner or later, but we are part of a very small minority of the travelling public. I’m sure other airlines have managed to screw up here as well, but it is to some extent a BA problem – they just aren’t very good at ticketing, so many more people have initially unticketed flights. They also aren’t very good at sorting out payments, so if it’s not done within a (?) week the payment details fall off. They also aren’t very quick at getting through the backlog, so it’s normally over a week. It won’t happen on low cost airlines because they have their own ticketing systems and simple tickets. It won’t happen on American airlines because their IT is years ahead. and we’re in the UK so BA will feature more highly.
I’ve re-booked a flight that BA cancelled which hasn’t yet been ticketed. The flight isn’t for 6 months so I’m not going to stress about it just now but if I hadn’t spent time here I would have assumed that there was no issue with the re-booked flight.
Just in case anyone is wondering…. If you haven’t been charged, have you Avios deducted, or been given a ticket reference, and can’t check-in 24 hours in advance. Well that’s kinda like you didn’t get charged for buying a girl (boy) a drink, didn’t dance with her, didn’t get her number, and she didn’t agree you go back to your place….
How many hints do you need that you ain’t “on the flight”. Sorry if that sounds crude/rude, but I’m not sure how many hints you need…..
Just in case anyone is wondering…. If you haven’t been charged, have you Avios deducted, or been given a ticket reference, and can’t check-in 24 hours in advance. Well that’s kinda like you didn’t get charged for buying a girl (boy) a drink, didn’t dance with her, didn’t get her number, and she didn’t agree you go back to your place….
How many hints do you need that you ain’t “on the flight”. Sorry if that sounds crude/rude, but I’m not sure how many hints you need…..
At last, some common sense. It’s like relying exclusively on your car’s parking sensors, cameras etc. nobody with any long term driving experience, common sense or nous does. When you hit something, it must of course be the manufacturer’s fault.
I got bumped yesterday on a flight from SMS-TNR. It’s odd because there were 4 legs on the reservation and I’d flow the previous 3 all ok. I turned up at SMS check in yesterday and they said there’s no ticket in the system. I had my reservation details and the flight was on their website. It was full and there was no shifting them. I called the local agent and they had a go, but all to no avail. It’s the downside of letting an agent do your booking as you don’t really have control to monitor what’s going on. I was nervous because we have an international connection tonight. Fortunately there was a flight today and we got on it and upgraded to business class 🤔. The seat was identical, the extra was a meal BA Eurotraveller pax might turn their nose up at. We got put up in a bit of a flea pit overnight.
Made it into TNR this afternoon and have a day room until the flight to CDG tonight.
I really don’t know what happened and will probs never get to find out…..but it was bit nerve racking until getting in this afternoon.
Just in case anyone is wondering…. If you haven’t been charged, have you Avios deducted, or been given a ticket reference, and can’t check-in 24 hours in advance. Well that’s kinda like you didn’t get charged for buying a girl (boy) a drink, didn’t dance with her, didn’t get her number, and she didn’t agree you go back to your place….
How many hints do you need that you ain’t “on the flight”. Sorry if that sounds crude/rude, but I’m not sure how many hints you need…..
If you were given a PNR and your account was showing you as being on the flight and you were able to pick a seat, that would appear to be a fairly big hint that it might be reasonable to assume youre on the flight, no?
Just in case anyone is wondering…. If you haven’t been charged, have you Avios deducted, or been given a ticket reference, and can’t check-in 24 hours in advance. Well that’s kinda like you didn’t get charged for buying a girl (boy) a drink, didn’t dance with her, didn’t get her number, and she didn’t agree you go back to your place….
How many hints do you need that you ain’t “on the flight”. Sorry if that sounds crude/rude, but I’m not sure how many hints you need…..
At last, some common sense. It’s like relying exclusively on your car’s parking sensors, cameras etc. nobody with any long term driving experience, common sense or nous does. When you hit something, it must of course be the manufacturer’s fault.
@Ihar You’re saying that at T-24 when you try OLCI you discover the problem of not having a ticket. How’s that different to what I said in my reply on 12 September?But the issue is that BA has failed to issue the ticket. How is that the customer’s fault? Of course it makes sense to check well before you fly that all is correct but the issue is that BA is putting the onus on the customer to make up for the failure of its own systems. As @slidey says if you have a booking reference, can see the booking in MMB and can select seats would you think you have a valid reservation or would you think “uh oh Houston we have a problem”? BA could partially solve the issue by making the ticket number much easier to see in MMB.
@JDB Your analogy to a car’s technology is again wide of the mark. Everyone relies on the sensors and cameras to work. If they don’t is that your fault or the car manufacturer? Who is responsible for fixing the faulty sensors / cameras? It is up to the driver to bring the issue up with the dealer but you can quite easily work out they aren’t working – the screen won’t show anything and the sounds from the sensors won’t be heard in the car so you know there’s a problem.Also car manufactures will issue a recall if it turns out that a lot of customers are experiencing the same fault.
The issue with BA and its failure to ticket is that the information that they haven’t done what they said they would is hidden in the depths of MMB or relies on passengers trying to use a rival airline’s systems to find out. That’s like expecting Volvo drivers to ask Tesla drivers to check whether Volvos parking sensors are working.
Plus BA routinely do not issue tickets until closer to the time or if you change the itinerary it goes into a waiting list of things to be actioned by BA. The passenger has no visibility of when it will be ticketed. Unlike car manufacturers BA knows that it has a problem in failing to actually issue a ticket but instead of putting in a procedure to catch the issue before it inconveniences passengers it does nothing and then expects passengers to have to phone BA in a panic to notify them that they haven’t issued a ticket.
The 125 number should be in APP, (not in website) check there, if it’s not ring BA
Just in case anyone is wondering…. If you haven’t been charged, have you Avios deducted, or been given a ticket reference, and can’t check-in 24 hours in advance. Well that’s kinda like you didn’t get charged for buying a girl (boy) a drink, didn’t dance with her, didn’t get her number, and she didn’t agree you go back to your place….
How many hints do you need that you ain’t “on the flight”. Sorry if that sounds crude/rude, but I’m not sure how many hints you need…..
If you were given a PNR and your account was showing you as being on the flight and you were able to pick a seat, that would appear to be a fairly big hint that it might be reasonable to assume youre on the flight, no?
It is indeed “a fairly big hint” but it is, as you go on to say, an assumption and we all know the upshot of assuming things. The factors you highlight don’t seal the deal and can be present in a variety of scenarios where intentionally or by mistake a ticket hasn’t been issued and no (e)ticket = no fly.
I don’t see the point of all this endlessly blaming BA (even if it were correct to do so) because that gets the passenger precisely nowhere. However, I take the apparently old fashioned view of checking my tickets etc. before any journey to the airport, theatre, station etc. And it is a ticket you need, not a receipt, not an itinerary, not a booking confirmation etc. Nothing compares.
I’m with @JDB on this. The analogy I would make is someone walking around Rio or Joburg after dark half drunk wearing a load of expensive jewellery and getting mugged. The mugger is the criminal but the muggee (mug?) could still have taken some pretty simple steps to avoid the situation arising.
However, I take the apparently old fashioned view of checking my tickets etc
For 99.99% of the population checking manage my booking in the app *is* checking my ticket.
I recently had reason to check a relative’s booking on a Turkish airline midway through the booking process (on the website) on the airline’s app. The booking could be seen, along with a big red banner warning this was not a ticketed itinerary and could not be flow.
This is 100% BA’s problem to fix, not the customers. And it can be fixed.
This is 100% BA’s problem to fix, not the customers. And it can be fixed.
It is 100% BA’s fault. But it’s not a problem affecting them – their business is operating quite nicely thank-you-very-much.
Problems/mistakes/glitches happen all day, every day. To all companies. The difference between the good and the bad is what they do about it. IIRC from the previous (very long) thread about this issue, the OP got on a flight the next day (even though the OP was equally to blame) – and no legal contract was actually in place.
I’m either really lucky or it doesn’t happen often. Just in case, I’m putting down 5, 13, 43, 45, 63 and 324 as my lottery numbers this week
However, I take the apparently old fashioned view of checking my tickets etc
For 99.99% of the population checking manage my booking in the app *is* checking my ticket.
@memesweeper – well then, with the transition to e-tickets, this would appear to be another lost skill along with the inability of many to spell or use grammar/vocabulary correctly, do basic arithmetic in their heads, read a map etc.I still can’t believe anyone believes the customer should be checking for 125 ticket numbers before they fly
Where exactly do BA explain the onus is on the customer to check for the ticket numbers in the “ Your e-ticket receipt” emails?
No judge in this land would side with BA when a customer has paid for a booking and had that confirmation emails of said booking.
BA are responsible for fulfilling their side of the purchase contract ie issuing ticket before the flight not the customer.
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