Originally Posted by
janetdoe
You need to start over from the beginning. BA, as the operating carrier who canceled you flight, has a legal obligation to provide the following assistance, pertaining to cancellations where notice was provided more than 2 weeks in advance:
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes...g_2004_261.pdf
See specifically Article 8:
You should have never even called AS, just called BA and told them that under EU 261, you are entitled to choose the option of
(b) re-routing, under comparable transport conditions, to their final destination at the earliest opportunity and forced BA to find you any routing in F. Or choose
(c) re-routing, under comparable transport conditions, to their final destination at a later date at the passenger's convenience, subject to availability of seats and demand BA to give you any seats where they are selling at least 2 F seats.
Hopefully it's not too late to do this. But you need to get out of the mindset of "I can only take what is offered" and move into a mindset of "BA has a legal obligation to fix this and get me re-routed in F, at the closest date on any planes that has 2 empty F seats, even if this means significant routing changes or expense on their part."
You had an F ticket, they canceled the flight, they need to get you to your destination in F at the earliest possible date or at your convenience. Anything less is unacceptable.
The bull$#!+ runaround about award availability is completely irrelevant. If they try to give you BS about being moved into business class, start talking about involuntary downgrade compensation. On an award ticket, that means they would owe you 75% of the price of a full-fare F ticket.
The law says 'seat availability' not 'fare bucket availability'.
I agree with you and you raise excellent points. Unfortunately we are limited in the time we can travel (traveling on the earlier flight was the best possible option) and F in that flight is 100% booked right now (or at least not showing for sale on BA). They offered to fly us the night before in F on other flights. They gave me options of travel the day before - their first inclination was to book us on a flight 24 hours before. But that is not feasible for us due to our schedules, and if we took a late night flight, we'd have 8-12 hours in London (or LHR) to kill before our next flight on to JNB. We'd rather fly straight through with short layovers to maximize our time at home before the trip. So we chose to sit in CW for the flight that is still running (and leaves 1 hour earlier than our originally booked flight) and wait to see if F opens up. One seat in F opened up, but AS was unable to get it upon request from BA, and BA shows no seats for sale in F for the flight.
I am not sure what else we can do at this point as the dates of our travel are quite fixed other than to take the downgrade on our first leg to Club World. We need a very early morning flight from NYC (JFK, LGA, EWR) to LHR to make our evening connection onward to JNB and those are limited on any airline, let alone BA/AA.
I was also interested in using this opportunity to change our entire itinerary around to get on the LHR to CPT nonstop, but nothing in F was available for sale for that flight and it is only 1x/day. Right now we are flying to LHR then JNB to CPT. However, there is nothing available in F for the desired nonstop flight to CPT. We are booked in F on the LHR to JNB leg and business on JNB to CPT (Comair flight).
Are we entitled to any comp at all for the downgrade on the first leg? We paid 80K each (AS miles) for the tickets. It is just the JFK to LHR leg that is messed up.