Dear all,

I'm a new member so apologies if I'm in the wrong place. I'd really appreciate any advice from seasoned experts, please.

I booked BA flights with Iberia (as they were cheaper, and because they allowed us to secure the price of the flights for 72 hours (for £10 each) whilst we confirmed all of our party could take booking annual leave) last August. Immediately after booking, I entered the 'manage my booking' page on ba.com and paid to book our seats. At that time, it was showing that we were flying from, and back into, Terminal 3 at LHR. I had the BA app from a previous flight and noticed on there some time later that our outbound flight was now showing as departing from Terminal 5, whilst the inbound flight was arriving into Terminal 3 - rather unusual, I thought, figuring that we would end up flying from and into the same terminal eventually, but I changed our plans for getting to and from the airport accordingly.

I received an email on Tuesday 6th February informing me of a schedule change of 10 minutes for our inbound flight and I logged in to accept it. I had no problems doing so. Afterwards, I had the thought that the schedule change may mean that we are now returning to Terminal 5 (this is now, apparently, confirmed to be the case - though I've had no written confirmation of such) and/or that the plane may have changed (meaning we may want to amend our seating.) It was then that I discovered I can no longer access the 'manage my booking' page on the BA app or website (using various browsers on different devices, in different households, having deleted cookies etc..) It states that they are not able to find my booking with the reference.

I made contact with BA through various channels and have been told many a different tale - from the online chat operator stating it was '100% correct' that I'd booked the flights within 24 hours prior, and that's why I couldn't access their site (I booked in August!), to being told on a call and Twitter/X that it's Iberia's IT issue causing me to be unable to access the BA site (?!) Some even had difficulty finding my booking at all - and some had the billing address listed as 'dummy'. One told me that they'd 'arrange for my booking to be unlocked within the hour'. However, the last person I spoke to, who was a manager in the Newcastle office, assured me that there are widespread IT issues meaning some customers are being denied access to their bookings, but that access should be restored within 24 hours - days later, I'm still unable to access it and I'm growing concerned. I foresee issues checking-in to our flight in a few weeks' time because I don't envisage it being sorted. I've had a cursory look online and in relevant Facebook groups (where I've also posted about this), and can't see that anyone else seems to be having a similar issue. If it really were a widespread IT issue, I'd have thought others would be reporting on it, and perhaps BA would release a corresponding statement.

Following this, I received a further email from Iberia this week advising me of a further schedule change to our inbound flight - this time for a whole two days later. I spoke to Iberia on Twitter/X and they arranged for me to be called - that person initially told me that our inbound flight is showing as the original time we'd booked (18:05) on the correct date; he couldn't understand why I'd received an email stating our flight was two days later, but that it was definitely at 18:05 on the correct date. After some to-ing and fro-ing, he later reneged on that and told me it is for 17:55 after all (obviously this 10-minute change isn't an issue (it's the same schedule change I was notified of in the first place), but I'm finding their apparent inability to confirm a time concerning.)

I am able to access my booking on the Iberia site, but it tells me to manage my booking via the BA site, which, obviously, I can't. The Iberia site shows the seats we booked for the outbound flight, but not the inbound flight (just stating 'not available'), giving me cause for concern that something has gone wrong. I want to be able to check our seats are still the same and have the option of moving them if we so choose. We may want to request special meals or special assistance. Heck, we may even want to upgrade - but I can't do so online any longer. I'm old enough to remember the days of paper tickets, but now that we've been able to access these things online, I want to be able to do so at my leisure.

I submitted a complaint to BA on the advice of one of the agents I spoke to and hoped it may be a quick resolution, but from things I've read online, I expect I'll be waiting months to hear.

I've travelled to the States a lot and, in the days before COVID, would book with whichever third-party site was cheapest. Since then, due to waiting months for cancelled flights to be refunded by Netflights, I've only ever booked directly with the airline. Perhaps I should have done the same for these flights, but I thought I was still doing right by booking with Iberia as a codeshare to BA.

Does anyone have any advice please? If there's anything I can do to re-gain access myself, I'd gladly try.

Thank you! ​​​