Rebooking cancelled flights – 1 year validity rule means ticket has “expired”?
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Sorry for yet another one of these posts (I have gone back and read many of the threads), but would appreciate the advice of the various experts here on my best way forward as I’m not sure if I made a mistake by not taking some action before “the ticket expired”.
I had avios 2.4.1 tickets booked for Japan – booked May 2021 for travel in Aug 2021. Flights were cancelled and (in August 2021) I rebooked to April 2022, which were cancelled, then booked onto different April 2022 flights, which were also cancelled. I tried to rebook online a few times (just getting zero availability after trying a LOT of different dates) and phoned BA (without getting through).
Admittedly I perhaps should have made another attempt to resolve this before now, but due to my/wife’s work getting dates we can both travel is hard, so I tried to rebook today for new dates (ideally April this year) using the chat on BA’s website but got a point blank refusal and told that rebooking had to be done before 2nd of August 2022 – which a) I’d tried to do and failed, and b) certainly wasn’t mentioned in any of the emails BA sent me.
The only option they’re offering is a “refund as per ticket rules”. Various arguments as to why EU261 overrode BA’s T&Cs were rejected with the eventual conclusion that “the system just doesn’t offer us an option to reinstate expired tickets”.
Do I have a way forward here, and if so what’s the best next step? Many thanks.
I have a feeling CEDR upheld BA’s ticket validity policy, but also that someone else had the opposite outcome at court so it might well depend on how well you made your case. I think you would need very strong justification for leaving it this long though, you may have had more success documenting numerous failed attempts to contact BA, then buying a replacement ticket and claiming the money back nearer to the original travel dates. It’s worth a shot but I’d be more tempted to go via MCOL than CEDR at this stage.
BA are talking rubbish as per usual. UK261 does not specify a time limit on rebooking.
CEDR has been a mixed bag with this issue & they do not follow precedent or have any means of ensuring consistency with decisions from different adjudicators.
At MCOL BA will doubtless claim that the legislation is not intended to offer a completely open ended right to rerouting & they have a point. In return you should point out that in the absence of a limit the judge should find in your favour if your request is reasonable. In the face of 3 cancellations then rolling forward 1 year from last cancellation is clearly reasonable.
As an aside, Virgin have just rebooked me, without any resistance, for flights in 5 weeks time to Cape Town. This is following a cancellation in February 2021.
The bottom line is that BA will insist on the one year ticket validity per its Conditions of Carriage (ie contract) whereas UK/EC261 specifies a) in Article 15 that an airline cannot, in its contract, deprive you of statutory rights and b) in Article 8 1 (c) that in the event of a cancellation a passenger should be offered “re-routing, under comparable transport conditions, to their final destination at a later date at the passenger’s convenience” without specifying what that last phrase means [ie there is no time limit, but that works in both directions], so that if an airline ultimately refuses to rebook/reroute you, you have to ask an arbitrator or judge to determine what the phrase means for your specific case. I don’t think it helps that it has been left until now to be rebooked as the booking has gone ‘stale’ and there is insufficient time to get a decision from CEDR or MCOL which leaves you in the position, if you want to travel in April, of having to buy replacement tickets and to claim the money back and realistically I’m not sure how good your prospects are and MCOL would be expensive.
At this stage you need to write to BA Head of Legal setting out the airline’s refusal to comply with the APR (specifying your various attempts) send a real letter by Special Delivery snail mail setting out your case and why in accordance with UK261, CAA guidance (CAP2155) and the CAA/CMA joint letter of 21 July 2022 [specify the relevant articles/sections of each and how they apply to your case]. Note that the ticket validity argument used by the customer service agents fails to comply with the legislation and that the conditions of carriage cannot override the APR. Give them 14 days (specify a date, allowing a few days for delivery) to respond, failing which you will issue proceedings in the County Court (or file for arbitration).
Thanks everyone – the thoughts are greatly appreciated, especially JDB’s reference to the CAA/CMA letter that I’d forgotten about. I’m not 100% sure I could go through MCOL (I’m in Scotland, so on the assumption the claim would be >£5K I think it’d be a paper process at the sheriff court).
It seems a letter to BA Head of Legal would be the sensible next step anyway. I think I have nothing to lose at this stage (other than my time), and I did just find the thread about success at CEDR ( https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/victory-over-ba-at-cedr-on-ticket-validity-issue/ ) so at least I can follow the outline of StillintheSun’s submissions to hopefully put together a good argument in not too much time.
I’m not too concerned if it takes longer than April, I’ll likely go ahead and book alternate flights anyway – which I guess means I either ask CEDR for the money back, or if BA do agree to move the flights I’ll just ask them to move them to different dates later in the year (this is unlikely to be my only trip to Japan this year…).
Another data point, also to Japan, which might help:
* I booked LHR-HND return in autumn 2019 in First, for cash, for October 2020. It was a sale fare and ticketed in A class.
* The flight was cancelled as 2020 wore on, but they refunded me in the form of a voucher. I was able to rebook for April 2021, also in First.
* This also ended up being cancelled, but again I was able to move it to October 2021. The downside was that there was no First cabin by then, so I wangled a return on JAL First (as I knew they had a joint service agreement, they didn’t offer it but I asked nicely). I was really looking forward to this, as JAL First is much more pricey.
* This also ended up being cancelled, and this time I took a cash refund.That was the end of the original booking, of course.
* I then rebooked (in Club World, cash, I fare so non-refundable) for April 2022, then (as Japan was still closed) moved it to October – BA waived the change fee. The booking was made in early January 2022.
* In August, I moved the flight again to December (Japan remained closed, but sod’s law – a couple of weeks later, they announced reopening). I couldn’t move it any further out, as it was bound by the ticket expiry date from the January 2022 booking.
* As it happened, I suffered an eye injury, which meant I couldn’t fly in December 2022. It was recovering, but not well enough to fly for 14 hours. So, with trepidation, I phoned BA very early on the day I should have been flying, telling them I wouldn’t be able to make it due to my eye and asking if they could give my seat away to someone else – hopefully someone would have had a surprise upgrade!…and to my surprise, they said that in the event of illness, as long as I could get a doctor’s note, they would hold the value towards a new flight anywhere on their network. They also quoted an expiry date of August 2023, which was one year after the last time I re-ticketed the flight. They said doing that had reset the one-year period, even though online it wouldn’t let me move it any further out than early January 2023.
I emailed the doctor’s note off and the upshot is I’m now flying to New York this April. The PNR is the same as it was for the Japan flight I’d booked in January 2022, but the ticket numbers are different.
As a final twist of fate, the day I cancelled I checked for Avios redemptions to Japan… and for the first time in ages (as I do keep an eye on them), there happened to be availability in CW for this November. Needless to say I snaffled the flight, hopefully this time I’ll actually make it to Japan!
A long post, but the jist is that one-year period doesn’t always start when you think it does. And BA can be flexible if they want to be!
I’m a bit concerned that your convenience argument in your circumstances may not be strong enough, is the refund amount near enough or is the difference in cost significant for you?
Validity is one year from date of ticket issue, subsequently changing to one year from date of first travel after outward flight has been flown. This is clearly stipulated in BA T&C.
@Richie The difference between the refund and the cash prices is enough that I could very easily justify spending several days of my time pursuing it. It is a balanced argument; I would assume it’s in my favour that BA’s online rebooking system wouldn’t offer any options at all and it wasn’t (at the time) possible to get through to the call centre in any sensible amount of time.
@BJ If you’re replying to me (rather than Retron) then, yes, it may well be clear in the T&Cs, but (at least in the way BA are stating it as an rigid “the one year in our T&Cs is a hard and fast rule”) is irrelevant to a claim made under EC261/UK261, as Article 15(1) of the EC Flight Regs says:“Obligations vis-à-vis passengers pursuant to this Regulation may not be limited or waived, notably by derogation or restrictive clause in the condition of carriage.”
@JosephH the one year ticket validity is not “irrelevant” as it remains one of the factors that has to be balanced, even for UK/EC261 claims.
@Richie The difference between the refund and the cash prices is enough that I could very easily justify spending several days of my time pursuing it. It is a balanced argument; I would assume it’s in my favour that BA’s online rebooking system wouldn’t offer any options at all and it wasn’t (at the time) possible to get through to the call centre in any sensible amount of time.
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Yes, BA’s IT system is not fully compliant with Art. 8 of 261, it doesn’t offer all that it should when they cancel a flight. Passengers need to call them. You have a good argument here.
Did you forecast a date when your wife’s leave dates from work would be known? Did you attempt to contact BA on or just after to re-book?
No airline can succeed in rebutting the duties imposed by the EC Flight Regs by simply saying our conditions of carriage say this and you are stuck with them because that falls foul of Article 15. What the arbitrator will consider is the practical effect of any term and consider whether the practical effect of that term is consistent with the EC Regs having regard their purpose of providing a high degree of protection [to consumers] and also the fact that the re-routing is “at the passenger’s convenience.” The Regs deliberately stack the legal test against the airlines by virtue of these sections.
For the reasons set out in my argument (post you have referred to) the one year ticket validity on the face of it falls foul of the EC Regs. However what matters is the actual timeline in a case and BA’s response to it. My personal view is that if a an airline refuses a consumer who is seeking a re-route on a flight departing up to one year from the cancelled outbound flight then that is a breach of the EC Regs. Your outbound flight was April 2022 therefore a refused outbound re-route at any time prior to April 2023 is in my opinion likely to be a breach of the Regs. If you want a date beyond that then your reasons for that are going to be important and need to be persuasive (i.e. objectively reasonable). Even if you are within the one year from cancellation period you reasons, if objectively reasonable will increase your chances of success.
In your first post you say that BA told you you have to re-book within the ticket validity period. Are you sure that this is what you were told? To me BA said that I had to take my outbound flight within the ticket validity period, something quite different. The former suggests that they would have been prepared to rebook you beyond 2 August 2022 had you asked. The latter means that BA were only prepared to put you on a new flight between April 2022 and 2 August 2022. This is only a three month period to take your flight and in my view a breach of the EC Regs. If their conditions of carriage state that the first flight must be taken within the the ticket validity period then if you wanted a later date there conditions are prima facie in breach of the Regs in my interpretation.
I would then assert that the delay between the cancellation and you now attempting to re-book is irrelevant because their own terms and conditions would have prevented you rebooking for a later date in any event and so your delay b matters not. I would also state that the Regs impose no time limit as to how long you must wait to rebook and that having regard to Article 1 and “at your convenience” what really matters is the length of time between outbound flight and date on which you want to re-route.
I would then go on to say that if the arbitrator is against me then the delay is seeking a new date was caused by [insert reasons], particularly noting your numerous attempts to call BA and therefore that delay ought no be held against me with regard to the new dates sought.
Frankly it sounds like you have very little financially to lose if you are content to buy alternative flights and happy to stump up the cost whether you win or lose. You are also happy to spend the time to draft the CEDR documents that are required. In those circumstances throw the die and see how you get on if you can’t get BA to give you what you want by correspondence.
Best of luck!
…And whatever happens, please let us know!
My gut feeling is that if you draft it up in a well organised way headed as a Letter Before Action addressed to BA Legal at Waterside signed-for, that BA will consider for up to a month and contact you to offer to rebook the timing you’ve indicated is now convenient to you.
This is because if you let them know you mean business and put an LBA in to them that covers off the things as advised by posters here, they will know that the marginal cost of accommodating you will be less than BA Legal’s time and cost and there are so many other passengers they have easier wins on.
Good luck
In your first post you say that BA told you you have to re-book within the ticket validity period. Are you sure that this is what you were told?
I think you’re right that I misinterpreted what they said – here’s part of the chat transcript:
“I can see that the booking was made on 07th of May 2021
Please note that the ticket is valid for 12 months from the date of ticket issuance
However I can see that the last time ticket was issued on 03rd of August 2021 hence the ticket was valid till 02nd of August 2022
The ticket is not valid anymore hence I am afraid that re booking can not be done now.”So I think you’re right, they are not saying that if I had contacted them prior to August, they would have rebooked it to April, they would only have offered sometime in those 3 months. This is an important point, thanks!
(and yes, I will report back how I get on!)
@ JosephH
A plain reading of that chat transcript demonstrates that even had you called to re-book within a few months of the cancellation then BA would have refused to re-book you on the dates that you required “at your convenience” in any event. Assert therefore that the breach of the EC Regs is made out and therefore any delay by yourself, if so found by the arbitrator is of no causal effect in any event.
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