Keep checking your reservations!
 

Something weird happened this week to my reservation. I had a flight from USA to LHR on American with a connection to Madrid with British Airways in a single ticket, and the connection (the second leg) was gone! Turns out they had canceled that flight. I called and they moved me to the new flight later in the day.

What it was odd is that I did not get any email or message about it missing, and the web page just showed the flights without any messages or warnings either. I had to double check the ticket I bought three months ago to see if I had made a mistake (it was a multi-city ticket for the way back).

Either the flight just cancelled and protection hadn’t occurred, it needs manual intervention, or u are traveling in the future and they wouldn’t notify you u til closer to departure.

happens all the time.

It’s always BA’s fault
 

The problem with mixing AA trips with BA, is that many times the BA flights just don’t go. Case in point BA #303 CDG-LHR at 7:15 am never goes, and it might have connected to many earlier USA flights. Pre-COVID and Post.

And Ba customer service, of any small kind, is either provided by well meaning immigrants who are just happy to not be subjected to rocket attacks at home, or just plain non-existent at any level from the “locals” who speak English as a primary language.

BA-A second rate “Flag” carrier, for a third world nation, with the worlds “best” fourth world airport.

YMMV but my experiences with BA HAVE ONLY left a bad taste in my mouth. I would put on my flame retardant suit, but, what the heck.

I see. So it may have been just a coincidence that I noticed it before it got solved.

Tell us how you really feel.

Completely. I tend to check critical reservations Sunday mornings as many major schedule changes go through on Saturday nights. If it still needs work, it will say something like check back to see what changed (even though I can see the change and check against my initial reservation manually).
If the flights are pretty far out, or involve a different airline those may take a while to resolve.
If I have a strong preference for an alternative still on the schedule, I may call Monday or Tuesday to have them update the reservatioon to my prefered alternative. Otherwise, I let it ride. Usually resolves in a couple of weeks and then I get an email notice

BA303 has flown every day for as far back as I can see on FlightAware, and mostly on time.

Okay.

As stated, YMMV. “Mostly on time” into LHR! MY experience has been with specifically #303 a 75% fail rate, resulting in missed connections, loss of upgrades, and extended”lounge crawls” in T3. It just became easier with less angst to change in the US. Granted, this was pre-COVID, and back when I flew OneWorld. Happy to see improvement. Other BA experiences (MUC, AMS, etc) resulted in à strategy involving USA to CDG, and trains on the continent,and. vice versa..

Ticketed OMA/ORD/LHR/BLQ landing at 13:10 - award April 4
BA cancels last leg now get in at 3:30, I saw an IB flight ORD/MAD/BLQ for $ call to ask
AA agent says no problem she will do an even swap, was emailed a confirmation with 2 ticket numbers on IB
I asked for the IB PNR so I could do the seats myself - long pause she couldn’t t get it, put me on hold for 30 minutes
A supervisor came on and said she had done an incorrect ticket swap.
Here is where things gets bad, said all she has now a flight getting in at 11:40 pm - the BA flight landing at 3:30 ( which we had seats on) is no longer available for award ticketing.. I said we can’t get in at midnight, how are we supposed to get to Florence, staying at a boutique hotel front desk closes at 10pm

She promised to call me Thursday after reaching out to IB and BA to improve it
What should my expectations be?

I would expect you will have to call back, and it still will be a mess.

IME, the airlines do not bother to send a notification until a few weeks before the flight. That is because there could be additional changes. Saves them from multiple updates. That would be fine if airline travel happened in a vacuum. But it does not. As such, like voting. Check early and check often.

I got an email for a flight change in late March the day after Christmas. Time changed by one minute.

I was notified the week before Christmas that our BA connection in LHR this March went from two hours to an illegal 50 minutes (the old flight was never canceled - we were just bumped from it). The only other alternative available to us was a 10-hour layover. Nobody could move us to a different connecting flight, even if there were cash space available, because we booked with AA miles.

This past summer I had a BA leg of an AA award (BA short-haul to AA TATL) reservation cancelled. No notification. I don't know what possessed me to check, but I was at my departure city 5 days out when I did and found out that I didn't have a flight to get me to London. Totally ridiculous that it didn't auto-rebook into something else. I ended up spending an hour on the phone with AA to get it fixed. I lucked out and they were able to find me another option to London connect to my original TATL flight. But their position was:

We will open up award space on AA metal if we need to (which would've meant rerouting me), but we we can't do that for partners, so we can only book you on a partner if they have award availability.

I think this is a fairly standard, albeit not very customer-friendly, response. If the said partner cancels your flight, they should have an obligation to re-accommodate you on something else, even if it means opening up inventory.

Whilst this may appear weird it’s actually common place and is more to do with AA and BA using different systems than any nefarious plot which is why when you have a BA flight you need to use it’s app to keep an eye on it.

Comments about BA flights just not operating are unhelpful. I could say the same about AA given the regularity of my need to rebook AA flights as part of my trips.