Rescheduled flights, paid for and Avios rights

[lizmurray09]

Hi there,

Completely lost with this.

Family of 3 flying lhr to lys at new year. 1 x paid for ticket and 2 x avios redemptions.

Flights timings change on both outbound (moved c2.5 hours earlier to 0605am) and return (c3 hours moved later)

There are alternate flights available closer to our original booked times and especially on the outbound I really want to avoid a 4 am airport arrival time with a grumpy 6 year old!

What are the rules? Due to their time changes, should I be allowed to change both the revenue and the avios flights or do avios flights rely on reward space? Currently reward space on the preferred return flight but no availability on the outbound.

I have been on the phone 3 times, cut off half way through conversation twice and once told no go on the avios move at all even though there’s available on the inbound. The guy did say I would be eligible for compensation for the move if we incurred hotel costs, which we would do if we have to be at Heathrow at 4am.

Help, I’m completely confused!

TIA
Liz

[JDB]

Schedule changes do not give rise to statutory rights, but BA published policy is to allow rebooking for time changes of over two hours and you don’t need Avios availability. There is a CJEU decision saying that bringing forward a flight by more than one hour is tantamount to a cancellation, but I don’t believe BA accepts that.

I’m amazed BA suggested you might be eligible for compensation – I think you may mean ‘right to care’ expenses but I would be wary of relying on that, as although it means an incredibly early start, booking an airport hotel is essentially voluntary. Ultimately you need to persuade BA and moving the flights is part of their guidelines given the extent of the schedule changes.

[lizmurray09]

Thanks JDB, I thought as much about the hotel costs being covered, completely dubious, I think he was responding to my response to their unwillingness to do anything and trying to get rid of me tbh!

I will call again and try and persuade them that they should move due to the guidelines.

Cheers

[lizmurray09]

Just an update in case this comes up in search for anyone. I called the avios help line again and got a more helpful response. The very helpful BA avios agent pushed through the changed outbound flight on the basis of the over 2 hour schedule change and there was avios availability on the preferred flight home anyway. I then had to call the revenue line to change the other ticket, this all was fine, had to make a firm reminder of the 2-hour change policy which is here https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/traveltrade/bookings-policies/policies/standard-customer-guidelines?clickref=1100lxKcbuKB&DM1_Channel=AFF&DM1_Campaign=UKI_GB_EN_PHG_ALWAYSON&DM1_Site=PHG&dclid=CLun55-CpYEDFWkOBgAd-f4O4Q#schedule
as initially the BA agent wanted me to pick up the difference in fare. All was good in the end though and all sorted.

Thanks
Liz

[SamG]

always worth going into these things armed and ready! It was 4hrs for a good while during COVID so some agents may have forgotten about it being back to 2hrs. I’d say with BA it’s actually quite unusual for the same flight number to have such large schedule changes, normally they just cancel things !