Strange BA email – Potential service disruption may affect your journey

[GaryE]

Son is travelling 24th July to Corfu (BA Holiday) and has just received the following email:-

Potential service disruption may affect your journey. Review your options:-
1. Do nothing keep booking as is
2. Change to another flight FOC
3. If you cancel your booking a refund will only apply depending on the T&Cs of your fare rules.

If we cancel these flights we will notify you by email or text

Anybody else had this or understands what it means – he has failed to get thru on phone and is nnn waiting on the chat!

[pauline]

I have not received an email but have this message in MMB – I am travelling Edi – heathrow – Lisbon on 18/7 – looks like the Edi – heathrow is going to be cancelled

[SamG]

All shorthaul flights to/from LHR until 24th July have the option to rebook FOC in the same cabin (ET/CE) within the next 180 days or after that in the same fare class . Not to get a refund.

They implement it somewhat clumsily but there is no reason to suspect your flight will be cancelled (and indeed they’re prioritising flights like the Greek islands vs Euro biz cities like Brussels who’ve had their scheduled gutted)

Reminder if your flight is cancelled and you still want to travel – DO NOT TAKE A REFUND. Try have BA reroute you or have them note their refusal, buy a new ticket and submit the receipt as rerouting expenses at the earliest opportunity as is your UK/EU261 right

• This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .

[CoSec]

Just found the same warning when I went in to manage my booking for a flight on Sunday. The flight is still showing on time in BA flight status on the website and tickets are still apparently being sold for it. The message has not previously appeared when I’ve logged into MMB, although the last time I did that was probably a couple of weeks ago. Did not receive the usual get ready to fly email a week before the flight. Together these (the, seeming, “warning” and no get ready to fly email) obviously prompt a concern that the flight has been earmarked for possible/probable cancellation. If SamG’s explanation is right that it’s a generic offer to change your booking free of charge if you are worried about service disruption this summer it presumably is being sent to/seen by everyone with a flight out of Heathrow in the coming weeks, and it would indeed be a clumsy and alarming way of making that offer and why is it appearing seemingly only now? It outs one in a real quandary (and state of anxiety) change flight (and all associated arrangements – with no guarantee that the revised flight will be any more “reliable”) or hang on in with the booking on the basis it’s just a general offer to travellers for a period and with fingers crossed.

[yerumaa]

I see the same message when logging into my booking. I’m flying from AMS to EWR via LHR with BA. It looks like the first leg (AMS-LHR, BA439) might be up for cancellation? The flight also no longer seems to be on sale when I tried booking a ticket online just now. Could it be that it’s sold out? Is there any way to verify? I’m just worried about my connection as I really need to be in NYC the next day.

[SamG]

As you’ll have seen in the news – Heathrow are limiting numbers, BA are having to take seats off sale etc, it’s a very fluid situation. a “sold out flight” may literally be sold out (considering how many cancellations there are + this is a peak time of year) or it’s been restricted by BA to help limit the number of passengers passing through the airport on any day.

Turning on this “CB4D” functionality at least offers passengers some flexibility without having to further clog up the call centres

The vast majority of flights that remain on the timetable within 14 days do operate (100k passengers per day is the cap passing through LHR so a lot of passengers are travelling without issue) so I wouldn’t panic too much

What I will say is different this time is if BA does cancel your flight they likely will not have an option out of LHR to book you on (as LHR wants to reduce passenger numbers – they don’t want airlines just moving you to another flight).

For short haul BA has temporary rebooking options through to end Aug (or later) on Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss, Aegean, ITA Airways, TAP Portugal and Turkish Airlines on top of the usual Iberia flights. If you can find a good option on these airlines then you can have the call centre rebook you. If they give you a line that they aren’t partners tell them to check their “additional guidelines”, speak to a supervisor or hang up and call back

If not if you still want to travel – DO NOT TAKE A REFUND. Try have BA reroute you on Easyjet/Ryanair etc. They’ll say no, have them note their refusal/delete any rebooked segments from the booking/protect the return if applicable, buy a new ticket and submit the receipt as rerouting expenses at the earliest opportunity as is your UK/EU261 right. Be prepared for a rejection, send a “letter before action” and then file a MCOL claim.

[SamG]

yerumaa wrote:

I see the same message when logging into my booking. I’m flying from AMS to EWR via LHR with BA. It looks like the first leg (AMS-LHR, BA439) might be up for cancellation? The flight also no longer seems to be on sale when I tried booking a ticket online just now. Could it be that it’s sold out? Is there any way to verify? I’m just worried about my connection as I really need to be in NYC the next day.

AMS flights are capped due to their own problems so this doesn’t surprise me. If it does cancel then consider going on a Rotterdam – LCY flight. Bit of a hassle to get across to LHR but AMS is having worse issues than LHR at times and best avoided

[yerumaa]

Thank you, Sam, that’s very helpful. I’ll keep an eye out and will consider those other options. Fingers crossed!

[mecrash]

I have the message in MMB.
I called to try and reroute out of Gatwick with turkish, they refused as my flight isn’t cancelled.

[BillNick]

Same message for me today in MMB. Flying LHR >> IBZ on Friday.
The flight I am on was a last minute addition to the schedule added by BA about 6 weeks ago. I am 99% sure of this as I had a SeatSpy alert setup and when I looked at moving onto this flight there was full avios availability and the cash price was like £98 vs £400+ on all other flights.

Now today, the flight doesn’t show up to book cash or avios – could be sold out?

But this topped with the strange disruption warning message worries me. This flight is 1 of 3 leaving LHR for IBZ on Friday….law of averages also supports my suspicion at least one them will be cancelled?

MMB will allow me to move onto another flight FOC – I am thinking move onto the Iberia Ex service from LGW, to avoid all the chaos at LHR – what do you think??