Originally Posted by
tobiashenry
Thank you for everyone's input and feedback. I do recognise that is my responsibility to be on time, rather than being in time. The gate was actually at A level, which I do believe I have a realistic probability of getting through with only one rucksack.
The gate agent did tell me the gate is closing in a few minutes, which I safely assumed was the boarding gate. Instead, he was referring to the security gate. I should not have waved goodbye to my friends and lingered at the terminal for a few minutes.
I booked a new flight through Avios today and I will see if there's anything that Customer Service would do in relation to my prior flight. It's extremely difficult to get hold of BA to try to rebook for another later flight since they said they removed all ticketing desks at Terminal 5.
Does anyone have similar experience and get their avios/taxes back?
I would be more panicked if at checkin I was told the gate was closing in a few min. I mean I would have to go through security plus rushing to the gate, etc. I would not wait and waving goodbye, etc. So I'm sorry but exactly this is the reason BA have the hard deadlines for T5. I agree currently BA almost never leaves on time for various reasons however the T-35 rule is there for many years. I don't think you will be the only person who get caught out of this unfortunately and here in FT we hear this time to time. You mentioned this was an Avios booking, well the ticket condition doesn't let you get back anything normally. The only option you could have is to submit a request for an FTV before the scheduled flight time. (Calling BA normally could worked too but I agree at the moment it's almost impossible to get an agent within that timeframe) I would suggest to send a nice request to BA, explain your situation and set you expectation you will get back nothing. BA might refund the Avios, might not it's up to them. Please do let us know how did this go as it can be a datapoint what BA currently offering in situations like this.
T-20 is also the official time-limit for boarding gate closing and I know loads of flight still boarding and t-5 or even later, however if you think you could stay in the lounge much longer and you are not there T-20 and in that instance they boarded the flight already, BA can offload you without any problem. I would recommend to go to the gate T-20 the latest and see what is the situation. I would also not recommend to check just the screen for boarding (in the lounge) or flight closing info as sometimes agents just go through the gate open - boarding - flight closing - flight closed message in a matter of few second.
I know we have some experts here who already know which plane and which gate is goin, etc but as a general advise I would stand by what I posted here.
EDIT: I just wanted to clarify that though T5 doesn't have any ticketing desk at the moment, (sometimes some checkin agents who knows they way around the system and trained can do ticketing still) however as this was an Avios booking it was always the case to call the call center. I can't remember if ever in T5 you could do anything with Avios tickets voluntarily even tickets outside of the 24 hours of flight schedule, unless it was a last minute flight cancellation or some big delay, etc.