tapuach

And i'm at the airport and they say i'm not on the flight-- or rather, on ANY FLIGHT, past or future, in their system...

the avios (99,000) are taken but the flight no longer shows up...

any advice?

BA phone service doesn't answer, i've tweeted to them...

update:
via twitter they said they are working with their oneworld team to see what they can do...

FlyerTalker7654

Seriously hope you get it sorted. As you say you went through Twitter, did the airport staff not do anything to help??

LTN Phobia

It's probably just a website bug that no longer shows the bookings even though they are still in the system. If you have the PNR, have you tried entering it manually into MMB?

tapuach

okay- update...

they say the booking was never ticketed for some odd reason, and so was deleted from the system (!)

they told me to book a ticket for cash and they will reimburse me because they have no good connection options for me to get to NY before tomorrow

So i just spent $4000 on a one way ticket to NY in biz with LY

:-)

random comment/question: a round trip with throwaway return might have been cheaper, but i didn't persue it because i was worried that a round trip might cause me trouble getting reimbursed... did i do the right thing?

Yoshi212

Hopefully you have that person that promise reimbursement's details for your claim.

LondonElite

Probably not much help now, but I would have been concerned if airport staff tell me to buy with cash and be reimbursed later when they could just put you on another flight with another airline.

ianfly

me too... seriously good luck getting that money back

Ldnn1

Ouch, this may not be pretty.

On the plus side Israel has good consumer protection laws so if you end up having to pursue this legally that'll help.

Do you have anything in writing from BA promising they'll reimburse the new ticket - rather than your original ticket? Was it the twitter people that said that or airport staff?

orbitmic

I'll admit I share others' unease at this... something tells me this thread will have several more turns...

sammyg901

My mind went to this thread which suggests there is a "budget line for errors" - though a different situation and BA laid out the cash themselves

For me I think you could have a fight on your hand, I would have been extremely hesitant to pay my own cash. Did you take any screen shots showing it was cheapest? Anything in writing? I am very surprised they didn't want to put you on their own metal TLV-LHR-JFK

But hopefully you get there eventually. Did you pay the tax portion with a credit card? That could be one avenue to pursue also as they are jointly liable for the fulfillment of the purchase

corporate-wage-slave

Actually I don't see how BA have any alternative but to pay for the ticket, the fortunate aspect in this respect is that the OP paid for the ticket: this factor isn't guaranteed in these circumstances, but since RJ cancelled the ticket, due to BA's service failure, then I suspect BA will just pay up. They've done so in other cases. I would have gone for the cheapest possible alternative, but what the OP did was entirely reasonable.

But to wind back a bit: what I suspect happened here is that the OP correctly got the reservation lined up with an Avios redemption. I imagine s/he may have done this via the Contact Centre rather than online. Either way, RJ at some point told BA to ticket the reservation by a particular date. RJ is at liberty to do this, indeed BA do exactly the same to redemptions to other frequent flyer schemes. BA for whatever reason failed to ticket by the deadline, which won't surprise regulars. There are supposed to be several channels for ticketing, and the RJ one may have been put in the general ticketing channel (hence my comment about the Contact Centre) and therefore would have been done in date order. Ironically booking well in advance may make the situation worse. There is supposed to be a priority ticketing channel for RJ but I bet that wasn't used. CX and Aer Lingus are also prone to this problem incidentally.

RJ not hearing back by the deadline then cancelled the reservation, and because there was no BA metal on the reservation, there wasn't / isn't a process in place to tell the passenger that this had happened. Flights get cancelled for all sorts of reasons, overwhelmingly benignly so. I suspect had the OP looked at the details of the reservation in his BAEC account or on the App he would have noticed that the flights were missing, but there again, being an RJ booking s/he may have rationalised that away. Being RJ the usual check via BA's OLCI wouldn't have been there.

So let's not get away from the core error: this was a known and occasional BA service failure that comes from the manual ticketing process backlog. It may even be more cost effective to pay out a few tickets than staff the unit properly, though I can't see that point bringing much joy to the OP. It's happened before, and it will happen again. Luckily very infrequently, and mostly the situation is more recoverable than the scenario here (e.g. someone booking purely BA metal LHR-JFK: there's going to be a seat available sometime during the day, T5 staff are on hand to fix that).

I think it's fair to point out what the OP could have done to avoid this:

1) Check BAEC / App a few days before travel to see if it all looks good. If it's on another airline, try to see it on their system too, and RJ has a good facility for this, as it happens.
2) Check you have an e-ticket email. Some here report not getting them, I always do get them, but if you don't get one, ring up BA and ask for the number. checkmytrip.com will also have that information generally.
3) Try OLCI. Now RJ does have an OLCI facility, I can imagine the OP thought "OK it's TLV, I've got luggage to check in, it's the Shabbat, I'll leave it to the airport", but I think it's not a bad idea to check anyway, in my view.
4) Above applies with extra emphasis if the booking was changed or done via the Contact Centre.

However having said that, if it had been picked up a few days beforehand, and there was no availability, then arguably the OP may have been better off doing it at the airport anyway. However I would normally expect the BA staff to issue the ticket via LHR, though it appears the flights were full.

EC261 won't apply here, plus there is an interesting question as to who the operating airline is here (not least since it was RJ that cancelled) plus the fact that the ticket was never issued. On the other hand Israeli protection, which mirrors EC261 will apply for IDB, see the EC261 thread top posts for the links on this.

NYTA

I had something similar with DL - booked a mileage ticket through the call center with Air Europa from TLV to MAD - got to the airport on a Friday afternoon to find that the flight was overbooked and I had never been ticketed. I called DL and they put me on an IB flight to MAD that same evening. Never had to take out my credit card and buy a ticket, nor would I have expected to. If it was BA they should have put you on one of their own flights to LHR and then on to JFK or just like DL put me on an IB flight, BA should have been able to put you on LY without you going out of pocket.

trueblu

I'm glad cws says BA will cough up, I've not had this situation booking with BA, but a few years ago, I was bereaved and needed to get the next ticket back to the UK.

For some insane reason, the FT instinct still kicked in, and I saw that booking via aa.com was substantially cheaper than ba.com -- so I booked the ticket and received a PNR. However, being paranoid, I checked whether it was ticketed or not, and it wasn't. Despite several calls to the EXP desk, since the London office was closed, they couldn't ticket, but said all would be OK if I turn up to the airport -- it wasn't. Y (and W) was now oversold and they were asking for volunteers. J was out of my reach budget-wise and the BA desk wouldn't budge: although sympathetic, they refused to board me. No alternative direct flights to the UK -- all sold out. I was literally at the end of my tether...after what seemed an awfully long time, and pressing "refresh" constantly, one seat in W came up and I was able to buy that a few minutes before check-in closed. Months later when I was able to think or care about it, I did email AA and they apologised and sent me a voucher for a small part of the loss incurred, but in no way did I get the hint that anything other than my buying up a walk-up fare was going to get me to my destination.

Nonetheless, good luck OP. At the very least, record details of what was promised my whom meticulously...

tb

fransknorge

Ideally this would not be fair: why does anyone should go through tedious steps that 99.9999% of the flying public will not understand to check that his service supplier is not going through a well known issue they refuse to fix and that will left the buyer of the service stranded is beyond me.
I am also with the other here: good luck gettting your money back.

JAXBA

Sadly so.