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Just another point of reference re payment from BA for delayed bags:

On our CW trip to Australia booked with a 241, they didn’t send our luggage onward from LHR. They were only returned to us after 5 days elsewhere in AUS

Our total claim came to around £1600 including a new suitcase needed for an internal flight. We didn’t shop fancy, just Zara, Target etc but my wife also bought all new makeup.

TBH at the time, I didn’t think BA would pay up but to my surprise around 2 months after submitting, they paid out the full amount!

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@LondonFly you can book through Kiwi.com with their disruption protection. Going through Momondo usually adds it on free of charge.

If/when your first flight gets cancelled, or if you will be missing your connection, they will show you other travel options with similar times/dates/airports. I had this happen with a TUS Air flight I was supposed to take yesterday and got rebooked on a similar itinery through a different European city.

Yes the insurance is only health but I feel thats the meain risk for us and the Battleface policy is so crazy expensive for the small cover it provides. They will also only offer policies within 7 days of travel I think.

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Easyjet definitely did set up some sort of ticketing arrangement with ELAL shortly after the October 6th 2023 massacre.

I have just looked back over the replacement flights they booked for family members at the time who were originally flying to Amsterdam with Easyjet and got rebooked on an ELAL service by the call centre.

Maybe they have since cancelled that arrangement? I did hear it was open to abuse as ELAL was allowing fee free flight cancellations as credits so people were booking many seats on very cheap Easyjet flights to/from TLV, waiting for them to rolling cancel, get rebooked on ELAL then cancel for credit thats valid for 12 months.

@Nepweno Could you get rebooked on BA then if they did cancel, they have no problem rerouting on AF or any other “normal” airline. I don’t know how it works though if the booking goes back to Virgin if the BA flight got cancelled instead of BA.

Regarding insurance:

I definitely wouldn’t rely on any UK insurer other than specialist ones like Battleface that have a policy specifically for the situation in Israel (very expensive and limited cover).

Theres a really good English speaking insurance provider that I have used (and claimed on) multiple times before on group trips I ran to Israel. For under 60s its under £3 a day, includes quite a few pre existing conditions, from a reputable insurer, non self funded claims etc. Egert & Cohen

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It’s very weird that BA won’t rebook you on LY.

Even easyjet are rebooking people on LY and now *A airlines.

They used to even let you do it through manage my disruption but now it takes a quick phone call – I suppose an attempt to encourage refunds/vouchers.

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Hi Lyn

Yes thankfully we landed back in the UK safely yesterday. I ended up booking a new flight myself and have a case open with Pegasus trying to claim it back.

Worst case I’m okay with that being the cost of getting home safely.

Just after we landed in Turkey the government there announced they are stopping flights to/from Israel, so we were very lucky!

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BA165 that was due to land in Tel Aviv at 15:05 was turned around to London due to rocket alarms at the airport when coming in for landing.

This makes me believe British Airways will make a statement soon about cancelling all flights to/from TLV for a while.

The Turkish airlines have also stopped servicing TLV which leaves basically only Israeli and charter airlines still flying.

Hopefully if they call off flights then they will amend the cancellation policy.

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Thanks @BA Flyer IHG Stayer

I misremembered the rules and thought it included flight to the UK – but seemingly it’s only with EU airlines!

Guess we will have to spend the night in the airport then as even though Pegasus have offered us a full refund if we would like, I can’t see any other reasonable flights to get us home.