2 flights on same day with same flight number at LHR - unexpected consequence
The purpose of this post is to detail an unexpected consequence when Flight AC868 (the only daytime flight YYZ-LHR) was seriously delayed on 23 Aug. A similar situation could happen again, so be warned.
Instead of leaving at 09.10 on Wednesday, it was delayed to 23.45 (reason not relevant here). So, instead of arriving at LHR on Wednesday evening, it arrived on Thursday at approximately 11.40. We had rescheduled our transfer from LHR, on the basis of the flight number and an estimate of the arrival time.
The normal process is that the transfer company monitors the flight arrivals. However, the rescheduled AC868 did not show. They found AC858 arriving at 11.00, assumed we had made a mistake, and so sent the car for then.
My daughter, living in London, was in contact with the transfer company, and had set up the transfer. She called Air Canada in the UK. The agent insisted that AC868 arrived at 21.00 (the Thursday flight) and knew nothing about the Wednesday delayed flight. The agent was quite rude about it, and seemed to think the caller was an idiot. As were in the air, we knew nothing about all this. When we failed to come out from AC858, she managed to persuade the transfer company to wait longer, so they still were there when we arrived. If she had not been involved we would have been really messed up, as we had an outsized piece of baggage, requiring more than a regular taxi.
The baggage carousel at LHR showed our flight number as AC868 followed by a letter. It did not show on the arrivals board - I am guessing that 2 flights with the same flight number arriving at LHR on Thursday upset their systems. YYZ was not messed up as Wednesday's departure was still (just) on Wednesday.
I have experienced a similar situation when a LHR-YUL flight was delayed from the afternoon to the next morning. In that case the rescheduled flight had a new flight number so LHR and YUL did not have to deal with 2 identically numbered flights on the same day (and we got 600 Euro compensation as it was from the EU - unlike flights from Canada).