Originally Posted by
Often1
Without clear evidence that TP discriminated against your wife as the result of her national origin or ethnicity, it is merely poor form to do so on FT. In your dealings with TP it is inadviseable in the extreme. If your claim is not sustained, then you will be properly ignored. Indeed, you yourself report the reason for the downgrade and that is TP following its own procedures (which are roughly the same across most carriers).
I never used the word discrimination and I would not use in tjis context. As to mentioning this in a complaint, I never planned to and it would be immaterial in any event.
The bottom line is that pursuant to the contract your wife agreed to with TP, it may downgrade her and refund her 30% of the cost of her ticket for the segment downgraded. That is all she was entitled to. You are not entitled to anything (presumably you would have spoken with the cabin crew and arranged for her to sit in your J seat). Indeed TP went out of its way to rebook both of you, which is not required either by contract or EC 261/2004.
Even if that sort of wording is in tariffs or CoC, it would remain a violation of contract law though, since that sort of clause makes a contract no longer binding on both parties. Wording surely is that they can offer a downgrade with refund but I cannot see that one would be forced to accept, vs. rebooking. Similarly to cancellation and refund in cases of IRROPS and no good option is found. Ticket was issued on 014 stock BTW so I assume the AC tariffs apply?
She is not entitled to a downgrade refund (it is not "compensation" but a refund) because she was not downgraded. She is not entitled to delay compensation because this was a voluntary reroute and because she was apparently ticketed onwards to YYZ. If she was not delayed at YYZ, her arrival into and departure from LHR are irrelevant. You are entitled to nothing as TP did not seek to downgrade you and did not involuntarily reroute you, nor were you delayed into YYZ.
We were both significantly delayed. More than 6 hours.
Finally, consider that if, for whatever reason, the J "cabin" was overbooked and then oversold at the gate, some passenger was going to be downgraded. TP chose the passenger traveling on the award ticket, presumably to avoid exactly the sorts of allegations you have insinuated and because somebody has to have a priority and it was not the award ticket.
That misses the point, and BTW we both were on SAUA awards.
Most airlines I am familiar with do not normally overbook the business cabin. Either when we were issued our original boarding passes the previous day the cabin was already overbooked, in which case the reasonable thing would have been to deal with the issue right away. Or overbooking occurred in the meantime, which should not have happened, with some possible exceptions related to operational issues at least on some airlines. But even then, giving you a downgraded BP at the last minute and with no explanation is not good.