Thanks everyone! This is all fantastic help, and a wonderful welcome to a forum! Definitely a place I'll be staying around.
- First off, I absolutely agree on United having done the right thing. Heathrow was in a state yesterday (esp. T5, as I'm sure you'll see on other threads), but they acted quickly to resolve the issue, all things considered. On a compensation point I'm just curious about the letter of the law, as Dave began to hint at above, and the "statement of your rights" document United provided sort of suggested by omission. In our situation, it seems that because the flight was cancelled but we were rerouted for arrival in under four hours, we should be able to claim 300EUR. Extreme weather would be an exception, but I've read that only applies if other airlines make the same decision, and that can't be the case because we flew with BA to the same destination just two hours after the United cancellation. Instead the extreme weather was in EWR was in the morning (when we checked in, they said the plane hadn't left yet), and that meant United didn't have a plane in LHR to take at/around the original delay time. And from what I've seen on briefly on other posts, extreme weather is only an exception if it affects your flight specifically; the airline not having a plane in place even due to bad weather isn't enough. Now whether it's ethical to still claim is another question entirely....! Is it worth me posting separately on the dedicated thread for this?
- The baggage replies are really helpful, so thank you again. My plan's still to put 50USD of toiletries etc. per person to BA as that's their initial offer, and then charge the rest to Amex. One question: do I have to demonstrate that the items in the suitcase had equivalent value to what I spend? It's a much more meagre shopping experience if I have to think which original items we actually kept receipts for! (Also, I'm making an assumption that both BA and Amex are covering my and my partner on a per person basis, even though we shared a suitcase... My Amex policy doesn't mention anything about a per-suitcase basis, or about claiming from the airline first, so fingers crossed!).
We have a long trip ahead of us, but I feel a lot more prepared to sort the admin headache after this FlyerTalk help!
