yyz-kin

Hello All - this is just a heads up regarding an issue I had on a recent flight with AC/BA. I went to check in for my flight from LHR-CPT at the BA First Desk and to inquire about a paid F upgrade. To my surprise, they told me it was going to be 65 pounds for each bag - they said that AC had issued the tickets as HBO (Hand Baggage Only) and that I had to pay.

After a few calls to AC on the part of BA, they didn't charge us. I spoke with Customer Service in the F lounge and she was able to print out our ticket conditions before, and after, a change was made on the part of AC. I have no idea why AC would issue a ticket as being 0 bags but they did. Long story short, keep your original AC receipt and if this fails, ask them to print out the ticket before and after as this will help clarify things.

mikeyyz

Interesting, was this on the $2xxx fare to CPT from a few months back? I am going in March. Did you get the paid upgrade (F lounge, I guess so?) how much was it?

I heard they removed F on 1 of the 2 daily flights - did you pay for the F seat or on the full service F flight?

yyz-kin

Yep - it was the cheap as chips deal and what a bargain! I have Emerald Status with OW so I have access to the F lounge in Heathrow. I tried to do the paid upgrade to F but was wrongly denied because the said HBO fares are not allowed.

We did the paid F upgrade on the way back and it cost about 1,000 CDN. For what it is worth, try and get the upgrade on the way to CPT as the Concorde lounge is really nice. Typically the paid upgrade from LHR-YYZ is 500 pounds and the upgrade for LHR-CPT was going to cost 590 pounds.

One word of caution - if AC sends an email that the flight has changed, look at the details and if the email indicated UPGRADE on the LHR-CPT or CPT-LHR sectors, you may have an issue.

As for F being removed, this wasn't the case last Friday and they had 747/777 4 class planes.

CorSter

Want to bump this thread as I have a AC/BA reservation booked for next month that appeared to have the same issue - booked via AC call centre with a stopover in LHR and the following leg on BA - got my BA PNR from Air Canada this morning and went on their website to check the reservation, and saw it was showing as Hand Baggage Only.

The issue seems to be that Air Canada did not enter a baggage allowance on the eticket when issuing my ticket for travel on BA and instead left it blank - in a situation like this most airlines will default to their standard allowances based on the fare class, but BA instead defaults to a 0 baggage allowance as the baggage allowance field is how they have implemented their HBO fare option. This isn't an issue if you have a straightforward connection with thru-checked bags, but once you have to re-check bags it becomes an issue fairly quickly.

Since BA's implementation of HBO fares is unique, I don't expect every AC phone rep to understand how it works - and to be fair, once I managed to convince the AC Reservations phone rep that this problem was something within AC's control (and it was not BA's standard policy to not allow bags), he re-issued my e-ticket with a 1 bag allowance - and that is now reflected on BA.com as well. I'm just glad I was able to identify this problem before arriving at the airport to avoid yyz-kin's experience as I have no oneworld status and wouldn't be checking in at the F desk, so I doubt it would have ended as well for me

pewpew

Wait, does AC not issue its tickets with the baggage allowance shown (or an improper baggage allowance of 0 shown)? Interesting. And stupid.

CorSter

Not sure what their standard procedure is, but it doesn't appear to have been done in my case anyways, at least for the BA segment. No idea if this is standard procedure at AC reservations, or if the agent that issued my ticket just neglected to do so - but given the difficulty I had in explaining to the rep I dealt with today that some other airlines base their baggage allowances on the eticket and not on the fare bucket purchased, wouldn't surprise me if it's the former.

AA_EXP09

I thought HBO was only for shorthaul flights, not flights to South Africa (clearly longhaul and not in Europe)?

CorSter

Right. But AC isn't actually issuing HBO fares - the lack of baggage allowance on the eticket just makes them appear as such on BA's side.

Guy Betsy

Then its a glitch on AC's computer system as most other 'normal' GDSs will automatically put the baggage allowance on all sectors.

yyz-kin

You definitely have enough time to sort this out. In my case, AC reissued my ticket to BA with a HBO fare. BA caught this and referred the checkin agents to the original ticket issued by AC.

I would call AC and get them to reissue or at least contact BA to rectify the issue. Keep us posted and let us know how you get on.

Oh, for what it is worth, the HBO battle I had ended up in a free checked bag that was the only one lost...

CorSter

I was able to get AC to reissue the ticket with a baggage allowance after about 15 minutes on the phone - had no problem getting it fixed once I was able to get the rep to understand the issue - namely, that BA doesn't determine baggage allowances based on the booking class like AC does, and as such an explicit baggage allowance needs to be in the e-ticket itself.

Root cause of this problem, in my case anyways, seems to be a combination of AC issuing e-tickets for travel on BA without a baggage allowance, and at the same time BA assuming any e-ticket without a baggage allowance is a HBO fare, even on routes where BA doesn't sell HBO fares - and also keep in mind that HBO fares are non-combinable so they shouldn't be on the same ticket as another airline's segment in the first place, let alone on another airline's published fare.

One thing I did get out of this whole process - the easy way to tell if you're actually booked on a HBO fare or if the baggage allowance on the e-ticket is incorrect seems to be checking the price that BA.com wants to charge to add a checked bag to your reservation - on a HBO fare it will charge the appropriate price as listed on the excess baggage chart, while on an incorrectly issued e-ticket it will try to charge a fee far in excess of that.

JO_YUL

I have one of these AC/BA tickets for an upcoming trip and am booked in business on LHR to CPT with BA. Does anyone know if I can use my AVIOS points to upgrade the BA flight from LHR to CPT even though this is an AC issued ticket?

Adam Smith

Believe it or not, but this issue appears to have been solved on AC's end.

I just purchased a ticket YYC-LHR-MAN, YYC-LHR on AC and LHR-MAN on BA (same routing in the return) and the baggage allowance transferred through to BA.

It did only transfer the basic AC J allowance of 2 bags and not my SE entitlement of 3, but I can't be bothered to try to fight that since I won't be checking any bags anyway.

cperciva

You don't have an SE entitlement of 3 bags on BA flights. A BA flight is still a BA flight even if it's on an AC ticket.

Adam Smith

BA is, in this case, just accepting AC's baggage entitlement, so if I have 3 bags on AC, I should have 3 bags on BA.

What I was saying (which wasn't clear in my original post) is that AC screwed up and my ticket doesn't show my 3-piece entitlement on the AC leg of the ticket either. Whether that screw-up is due to there being BA segments or not, I don't know.