Originally Posted by
callum9999
This seems to be a common line of enquiry on sites like this - where someone decides what BA (/any organisation) might reasonably want to do and so assumes that is therefore the correct (and legal) thing to do.
I think we can all see why BA wouldn't want to take a risk where someone is connecting on separate tickets in a country where they aren't permitted entry, the actual question that needs answering however is does BA actually have the right to choose not to take that risk.
With the usual caveat of me not being a lawyer, none of the conditions of carriage quoted seem to give them that right. A clause saying something like "you must have the correct visa/documentation to enter the final destination stated on your BA ticket/itinerary" would be very reasonable to include, but if it's not there, how can you argue they can simply decide that on the day?
Thanks, Callum. I think you are onto something in saying that people assume that whatever BA (or other large organisation) want, they can have. I suppose people just assume that they must have drafted their Ts & Cs to protect their position.
My experience of working for many large organisations all over the world (I am a management consultant) is that they frequently get enormous amounts wrong! And yes, they do have this "corporate obstinacy" (as I like to term it) in assuming that they are right. I have spent my working life telling them that, often, they are wrong!
Your second point is also a good one. I must admit that, after the first couple of responses to my original post, my heart sank and I expected to find a clause like the one you say in the CoC - but it's not there! And as I thought about it as I couldn't sleep last night, it is rather harder to define "final destination" than one might first think.
Take the following examples:
A-B (o/w) - "final destination" (in the sense you mean) would clearly be B
A-B-A (rtn) - again, fairly clearly B
A-B-C-A (multi-city) - final destinations (if it is not oxymoronic to talk about final destinations in the plural!) would seem to be B and C
BUT what if time spent in B was <24h - is this then a transit? What if it's a small airport with no airside transit facility? What if the US (where there is no such thing anyway)?
In short, I think it would take several pages of the CoC to define "final destination" robustly - hence why they haven't tried!