Just thought I’d share a recent experience that culminated in great experience with BA ground staff (and an equally appalling experience with Iberia)...

We recently flew LHR-MAD-LHR on BA and had a separate IB ticket (with a buffer night in Madrid each way) MAD-LEI (Almeria)-MAD for the Easter break.

On the day of travel LHR-MAD, we had an email notification from Iberia that due to a pilot strike in Spain, our MAD-LEI (operated by Iberia regional Air Nostrum) had been cancelled. I called IB straightway and the chap on the line told me the other remaining Iberia air nostrum flight only had 1 seat left (we needed 4) so he rebooked us on Vueling from MAD-BCN-LEI. We had no problem with that.

I then became doubtful about whether we could keep our free baggage allowance as BA EC gold on the rebooked Vueling flights (our original IB booking was a fare that itself allowed no baggage but we knew that each passenger with Oneworld Emerald status would get a free bag), so called Iberia again about an hour later to check regarding the baggage allowance on the rebooked Vueling flights. I was then told that the chap earlier in the morning had in fact made a mistake in rebooking us on Vueling, that we needed to be rebooked in Iberia air nostrum, that there were in fact 6 seats available (not just 1 like we had been told by the chap earlier that morning). I said that’s great, go ahead and rebook us.

That’s when it all became a nightmare with Iberia, because they then said to rebook again it needs central office supervisor authorisation and this may take several hours. The agent said they are only allowed to make one change without supervisor authorisation and they wouldn’t accept the fact that the reason my booking required 2 changes was due to their own error. I was promised a call back within 2 hours, which never came.

I called back back at least twice to check on the status of my booking but each time was told that here is nothing they can do to speed things up and I would need to wait. Meanwhile, the number of available seats on the flight that we were awaiting rebooking on went down from 6 to 4 (we were worried that all those on the cancelled flight would book onto the remaining service so if we didn’t get rebooked, we would hen be told there were no seats and that would have taken out a chunk of our holiday in Almeria).

We reached LHR a couple of hours later for our LHR-MAD flight. In desperation, I asked if BA could at all help with the IB ticket. I was not optimistic, as it was a completely separate IB ticket not even linked to our LHR-MAD BA booking. To my utter amazement, a lovely lady at the BA T5S galleries club ticket desk simply endorsed by IB ticket over to BA (ie issued new ticket numbers beginning with 125- ) and booked us the last 4 seats on the remaining IB air nostrum flight (the one that IB said needs a supervisor authorisation).

We flew as planned and there were no issues with the new BA ticket.

Amazing service from the BA team- hopeless service from Iberia.

If anyone ever gets into trouble with an Iberia ticket and is getting nowhere with Iberia, it’s worth asking BA to help.