Hi everyone, hoping for some advice because we’re honestly a bit stuck and getting quite desperate.



My partner booked a flight from Boston to Málaga months ago to visit for Easter through the British Airways website as an Executive Club member. She chose a flight operated by Iberia, Boston to Madrid, with about a one hour connection and then a short internal flight to Málaga, arriving at 8am on Friday morning.



A few days ago Iberia sent her a cancellation email saying that flight had been cancelled. Shortly afterwards she received an email from BA saying she had been rebooked onto a flight from Boston to Málaga via Heathrow.



The problem is that the new flight leaves Boston at roughly the same time but instead of arriving at 8am on Friday morning she now arrives somewhere between 7 and 8pm on Friday evening, so almost 11 hours later. On top of that she now has to sit in Heathrow for about 9½ hours.



This creates a real problem because it means she now has to miss a full day at work at the last minute and ask for a day off, which is going to be very problematic.



What’s also frustrating is that BA didn’t offer any alternatives at all. There were just the emails saying the flight had been changed. The link in the email errors out and the BA website throws an error every time you try to manage the booking.



She finally called BA and the agent treated it like a voluntary change and said if she wanted a better option she would have to pay a minimum of $2,000.



The thing is that there are very few connections that Thursday, so we do understand options are limited. Because of that she asked if they could simply move her onto the same schedule as the original flight but one day earlier, leaving Wednesday evening and arriving Thursday morning at 8am. That would solve the problem for us because we could rearrange things on our side.



But BA is refusing to do this unless we pay the fare difference.



The irony is that if you look at the outbound flight by itself it’s actually quite cheap right now. We can’t cancel and rebook the whole trip because her return is Easter Sunday, which is extremely expensive, and that’s exactly why we booked months ago.



What I don’t understand is that in the past when BA has cancelled flights for me, the system always asks you to accept the new booking and if you don’t accept it you’re given alternative options. I’ve also always been able to move a day earlier or a day later when the connection didn’t work. In this case none of that happened.



At the moment the BA agent we spoke to either doesn’t understand the situation or simply refuses to look into it.



Please, there seem to be people here who really understand the rules and regulations around this. What should we actually be quoting when we talk to BA again?



We phoned the call centre over the weekend and we’re going to try again on Monday morning in the hope of getting somebody more competent, because at this point I honestly think the agent we spoke to was either malicious or incompetent.



Time is running out because the flight is scheduled for this coming week and we’re getting desperate.



Any guidance would be hugely appreciated.



And finally, if BA just refuses to sort this out, what do we do then? To be honest, this day is incredibly valuable to us and this isn’t really about compensation. No small amount of compensation is going to make up for losing the day, losing a day at work, and all the trouble this is causing.



But regardless of that, what is the minimum we should expect from BA here under the EU rules and regulations, given that I do not consider this to be a reasonable alternative?