Originally Posted by
Misiu
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?
Since this is a journey from the US to Spain, which does not involve any flights operated by a UK airline, it falls under EU261 rather than UK261. Still, the rights your partner has are essentially the same. One important note is that legally speaking, the rights are against IB who are the operating airline. BA are merely acting as IB's agents in this situation.
A flight cancellation triggers Article 5 of EU261, which in turn gives passengers the right to choose between one of the following 3 options under Article 8:
a - reimbursement within seven days, by the means provided for in Article 7(3), of the full cost of the ticket at the price at which it was bought, for the part or parts of the journey not made, and for the part or parts already made if the flight is no longer serving any purpose in relation to the passenger's original travel plan, together with, when relevant,
- a return flight to the first point of departure, at the earliest opportunity;
b re-routing, under comparable transport conditions, to their final destination at the earliest opportunity; or
c re-routing, under comparable transport conditions, to their final destination at a later date at the passenger's convenience, subject to availability of seats.
Your partner would therefore be entitled to choose to get a refund just for the outward journey, if that suits her best. She is not obliged to get a refund for the entire journey just because she chooses to refund the outward part - note "for the part or parts of the journey not made" above.
BA's rerouting offer under b) should have included the earliest available alternative flights. If flights are particularly busy it's possible that they have done so, but it doesn't sound like they have tried particularly hard. A short hop from Boston to New York would unlock a lot more options, for example. If your partner can identify same-day flights with availability that BA haven't offered, she should insist on BA rebooking her onto them.
Finally under c) your partner has the option to be rebooked at an alternative date of her convenience. As you say, BA's internal guidelines do envisage this (see
here) so there is no clear reason why an agent would suggest that this is a payable voluntary change. There is no requirement for the original fare class to be available for such a change.
Regardless of which option your partner chooses, she is likely to be entitled to €600 in compensation since her flight was cancelled with less than 14 days' notice and she was not offered re-routing arriving <4 hours later. This compensation would be payable by IB as the operating airline.
Unfortunately, the fact that she booked with BA, whilst the flights are operated by IB, makes this a more complex situation to solve than if she had booked directly with IB. She will ultimately need to pursue IB if BA refuse to honour her rights under EU261. Now IB are not exactly known for handling EU261 claims well either, but it's important to direct claims the right way to begin with.
There is the option to escalate to AESA (the Spanish equivalent of the CAA/FAA) if IB reject the claim incorrectly, or after 1 month in any case. Ultimately it might need to go to court, though I cannot say which country would have jurisdiction since that depends on many factors including residency.