-
Myself and my husband were flying BA Club World from Hong Kong to London Friday evening on a flight booked with avios. We were unable to check-in online via the app so ensured we were at the check-in desk when it opened. At check-in we found that despite being booked on the flight our ticket numbers hadn’t been issued so they were unable to complete our check-in. What followed was a 90 minute telephone call back to the UK spending most of the time in a queue or on hold trying to speak to someone who could issue the ticket numbers. We were transferred to incorrect departments, told that the agent and supervisor we were speaking to was unable to do this etc etc. Meanwhile we also instigated an online chat and managed to get a ticket number issued less than 5 minutes before check-in closed. The desk manager at Hong Kong was very sympathetic and tried to assist contacting BA but ultimately she was unable to help us.
I wish to raise a complaint to BA as that was a very stressful 2 hours at the end of an amazing holiday. Does anyone on here have any experience of a similar situation or any advice on the best way to register our complaint or even if we would be entitled to any compensation? Appreciate any tips/advice please. Thankyou.
There are regular reports of this happening – it’s really important to check that you have a ticket number starting 125 on your booking or confirmation email. At least you got on your flight which hasn’t happened for some people. I think ground staff can now only re-ticket via the BA call centres, which isn’t helpful, either.
There’s a fairly easy complaints form to complete on ba.com but I don’t know what they would offer. There’s no formally recognised compensation for this so you’d have to decide what to ask for and see what BA’s response would be.BA will toss you a few avios but that’s it even though this is clearly their error.
Were there any previous changes to the booking? That would be a sign to double check in MMB that you had been properly reticketted.
One of the problems with BA withdrawing the ability of contracted check in staff to do anything other than make simple changes / rebooking is that what was once a relatively simple task to reissue the ticket taking a few key taps and taking seconds now takes much longer.
The app is the best place to check this, if it’s just showing a – then you’ve got a problem
I don’t know why the check in there couldn’t get this resolved, my understanding is they have a phone number to a back office who can look at these kind of issues. Slightly surprising, I could imagine this at a Greek island station served twice a week or something but HK you’d have thought would be more proficient!
Not sure what compo you’d get, maybe some Avios
I had this as well but I booked a codeshare flight operated by Qatar on the BA website! I was denied boarding as even though the ticket numbers were showing on my ticket. they could only see my old reservation date and not the new one i had changed to, even after typing in the ticket number into the Qatar and BA website which both showed my new dates on the system. Absolutely ridiculous.
Similar, but not quite the same. We had an experience with a Virgin UC booking where we were kept waiting for around 40 mins at check-in at the UC Wing at Heathrow because of issues with my wife’s ticket, relating to what we believe was an error made by them in reticketing following COVID disruption changes. We had ticket references.
During that time the agent was trying to get through to the ticketing team downstairs, who weren’t picking up. All-in in took us about a hour to get through UC check-in and security, somewhat longer than the 10mins they claim 🙂
In our case, following feed-back to the executive team, which included other issues with the journey that we weren’t happy with, they awarded us 10K Virgin points each.
Thankyou for your replies.
@BA Flyer IHG Stayer there was a change to our booking as we were originally booked on the 23:45 flight but BA cancelled that flight and rebooked us on the 23:00 flight instead. As this new flight showed in our app we didn’t think there would be any issues. Will know what to look for with any future flights!I have just received an email saying my payment was declined after adding the return flight to my journey. I have ticket numbers for the outbound flight but not the inbound flight.
Has anyone had this before? I have the the right card details so no idea why it was declined. I’ve used the same card again, but hoping for no problems. They told me it could take another week?!
Who was the email from, BA or your card provider? Apparently if BA has your card details longer than a week, they need to repeat the payment process.
think this is the scenario I encountered 8 weeks ago in February .
My husband and I were denied boarding at Dehli airport for our return BA business flight to Heathrow on a Companion fare .
We were advised at check in that ” the ticket is not on the system ” despite having paperwork showing both ticket numbers valid until July 2025 and also we had paid for seats.We also had received email reminders to check in .
Despite this we were unable to check in and also were unable to sort the problem out with Customer Services as UK offices were closed as it was 3.30am UK time and I was unable to get through to India customer services.
The check in staff member stated he could not help as he did not work directly for BA and advised us to buy new tickets which we did with Air India.
Four hours after our flight departed I received an email asking me to contact BA as ” you may encounter issues with your reservation ”
Despite filing a claim the same day there has been no contact from BA apart from generalised emails with no reference to our situation .
We have now filed a claim with CEDR both for the cost of our Air India flights plus compensation of £1040 for being denied boarding.
I now understand BA did not process the booking correctly but this was not evident at the time of booking.
I do not know what compensation I will receive but will update this forum in due course .Yes please do update @Jennieb .
It’s completely unbelievable that we are seeing repeated reports of this with unticketed BA tickets.
Other companies I deal with used to.encounter this issue with card authorisations expiring if the actual billing did not take place within 7 days, including IME Amazon. But since at least a year now,none of the companies I’ve dealt with has had this problem.
Amazon snd 1 other seem to have been able to use authorisation codes much longer than 7 days after they obtained the code by me giving card details and approving the transaction initially with the bank. So clearly other companies are finding a solution to this problem so wby not BA ?
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Popular articles this week:
