Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
Yes, but the advice in this thread at the time was very clear, repeated seveal times by multiple FTers - wait until BA organise a policy. A number of FTers, experienced in this area, pointed out that BA often needs time to sort out rebooking policies. The cancellation comes first, then a pause, then a viable rebooking policy. This has happened before and will happen again. Now ideally this would be compressed to a day rather than a week, but the advice given was to hold off rebooking. So I do think you have some responsibility for this too. It's not really about the money, it's a big company which sometimes moves quite slowly.
I find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to disagree with you on this CWS!
While you are spot on about the “best practice” of waiting being well-known to seasoned BA travellers, and that anyone on the FT forums that was offered this advice should indeed just have waited before attempting to rebook, the reality is that very few of the affected passengers (i.e. only those who may be on FT or other similar forums) would have access to such advice. It is not surprising that the average (“uninformed”) traveller may panic upon receiving the cancellation notice and immediately contact BA I’m an attempt to salvage their travel plans. Doing so should not preclude them from being able to access the same rights available to them under the law.
Ultimately, the law does not allow BA to breach passenger rights while it goes about figuring out how to comply with the law. And if does feel it operationally necessary to breach those rights, those passengers that were initially not allowed bookings that were subsequently permissible, should then be offered a chance to amend bookings.
I lay the blame squarely on BA’s feet - they took their own sweet time officially communicating the cancellations even though we know the decision to cancel BKK had been made earlier, I don’t see why they could not have figured out a rebooking policy in that time period before the announcement. This would have afforded all passengers the same rebooking rights from day one of the cancellation announcement.