Originally Posted by
cauchy
It's presumably an 'excellent' way to save money - the marginal cost of rebooking someone in London is small, perhaps even nearly zero. There's no extra cost in accommodating them on the new BA flight, and most people will take the hotel BA gives them, which might be on a very cheap corporate deal, or perhaps BA block books hotel rooms in advance for this purpose with zero marginal cost (though I might be making this up!)? Either way, I doubt it'll be much more than 50 quid per person, and BA retains the full value of the ticket. Rebooking at an outstation - well, they lose the value of the ticket, plus potentially more, and the expenses might be higher. Much, much more than 50 quid!
Not necessarily. I believe there are some commercial arrangements in place between some airlines to book each others' disrupted passengers and the costs under that arrangement may not even be anywhere near as the EC261 compensations incurred by BA.
It is also not necessarily true that outstations aren't allowed to do it as a blanket rule. I know of one station manager who stayed up all night rebooking every single disrupted passenger (777-full) onto various carriers on his own (not many have the authority to do it, I believe?). I knew he wasn't telling me a fib because a couple of years before, there was a disruption that affected me from the same outstation and I had been rebooked even before I arrived at the airport, although I ultimately did not take up the rebooked option and stuck with BA because I did not like the alternative carrier.
It may simply be an issue of willingness or authority of the particular person, or the contractors wanting to leave it to "London" to deal with it in case they did something BA did not like and got their contractual fees docked (pure speculation, by the way) etc.
I've had all sorts of discussions with various carriers over the years over similar matters and proactive dealings with disruptions (or to be more precise, complaining about their failures thereof). For whatever reason LH has been best for me so far, and surprisingly some carriers with supposed excellent reputation for customer service has turned out to be the most dire I have ever experienced. I suspect it was not so much the cost aspects but the unwillingness of the agent to do anything for fear of doing something outside the 'correct policy' in this case.