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I could do with some help.
I am currently travelling on a multi carrier avios booking in the 20-25k band with longest flight in business – the avios are 240k x 2.
The routing was dub-lhr,lhr-Hnd,Hnd-Hnl,Hnl-Pdx,jfk-doh,doh-Bru.
Yesterday ( I am currently in Hawaii)as two better flights had come up for my return journey – I phoned to change the booking to dub-lhr,lhr-Hnd,Hnd-Hnl,ogg-dfw,dfw-jfk,jfk-doh,doh-Bru– the CSA said the avios were the same but would have to send the ticket off assess the tax. I phoned to today to confirm the tax (and spoke to a CSA who I had spoken to before and wasn’t sure if the booking was a cash or avios booking ! so I wasn’t full of confidence) I was then told I owned them 80k more avios and that they could not reinstate the previous booking. The mileage on great circle mapper was 24958 but BA claimed it was 25200.
I therefore had 3 options
1 be stuck in Hawaii
2 pay the avios
3 pay for the flights myself (would have cost ‘000s)
despite referring it to a supervisor several times – the outcome was the same so I paid the Avios.
Do I have grounds for a complaint/LBA/MCOL or should I just suck it up – any advice gratefully received.Personally, I wouldn’t jump to MCOL or likes but started with a complaint to understand the distance discrepancy – whether they did a mistake calculating the distance or whether you used different distances than BA use. I would ask them for the detailed calculation for each city pair and go from there. Should then be clear whether you have any grounds or not.
I don’t think Great Circle Mapper mileage corresponds precisely to TPM for the purposes of fare calculation or awards of points/miles. People report variances of up to 5%. Have you checked the actual TPM for your revised routing?
Realistically, BA will have all these mileages loaded in their system and it will be an automated calculation, so you need to be sure of your calculation before taking any action.
Voluntary changes result in a reprice which is likely that case here.
Regardless of the mileage why did the first CSA say there was no change in avios and cancel the previous itinerary leaving me completely snookered – previously they have kept the two bookings running along side each other.
Where do I find BAs TPM ?
BA doesn’t have its own TPMs, these are determined I think by IATA and are unfortunately proprietary so you may need a friendly travel agent to look these up; I used to have access, but no longer do.
Hopefully someone here may have access or advise where to find the info you need as it seems you do need the detailed info as the difference that BA says pushes you over is small.
If you use the Avios earnings calculator on BA’s site, you’ll be able to infer the distance that BA associates with each leg. It’s often not the same as the circle mapper method
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