Originally Posted by LTN Phobia

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.