2026 Short Haul Schedule Changes

You didn't have to do anything, you leave the booking as it is and BA are obliged to get you to the destination one way or another. All other parts remain in place, hotel and car hire. It's often better to leave things as they are until closer to the date.

Yes and no. BA's attitude was that they owed me a flight, but for the car hire, I'm on my own. (I don't agree with that, by the way). There is no hotel, as it happens. They really were very keen to refund me and couldn't understand why I wanted to be rebooked even though prices had gone up and the agent tried to say it was only fair that they'd charge me because I'd want a discount if prices had gone down. I did point out that I couldn't have that discount without paying the cancellation fee if they hadn't cancelled on me though!

Six months before travel, I have decent options and I'm only a few quid down and can hopefully put in a complaint to get that back. Had they only been willing to offer a refund in April, I'd be scrambling for whatever I could find and, even with an ironclad CEDR case, I'd be fronting a lot more than I am now.

it seems that Cologne, Stuttgart, and Riga are all gone next summer.

Thanks! Was wondering what the third one was. Expect this is part of a further shift towards beach routes. Will be interesting to see what pops up instead.

With RIX gone - there are no more baltic cities served. They flew to VNO from LGW - that went. Then it was TLL - and that went as well. Maybe there just is not enough people who can make the route pay. What a shame. I liked all three cities.

Shame. I visit STR often for work and much prefer BA over Eurowings. It'll take some serious head-scratching to figure out why FRA and then a 75-min train journey would be preferable to just using a different airline.

The discontinuation of CGN (once again!) can�t come as a surprise to anyone who has ever flown the route outside of a few busy Christmas market weekends.

In theory, the catchment area should be good, but FRA and DUS are close and have so many more options to LHR. CGN also has FR to STN, and don�t forget fast trains to Brussels ( < 2 hours ) which means you can get to St Pancras in about 4 hours.

Great shame, but in my view as armchair chief revenue officer, it was the lack of connections that made TLL and now RIX not worthwhile. AirBaltic (with all their issues) and the LH Group have both continental and intercontinental connects pretty well covered. The flight time to the Baltics combined with a two hour time difference makes LHR (at least in one direction) awkward for connections.

And then there is Finnair, and SAS who are now upping their game.

I also prefer BA. But the Eurowings offering is not terrible either. And given an arrival at FRA in T2, the schlepp across to the station in T1, a train to Stuttgart, and then an onward connection to wherever the actual destination is - I really can't be bothered. Depending on the schedule I would even prefer LCY-FRA/ZRH-STR over FRA.

I think you got a poor agent, because fairness isn't part of the rules. You have a confirmed flight reservation, and a contract for car hire, so personally I'd have hung up without cancelling or rebooking, which can be done any time,and there are advantages in having everything fully flexible now.

To the agent's point, cancelling and rebooking would get you a better price if there was a lower price, but UK261 requires rebooking at no additional cost.

It's not just UK261 - that would probably have got me a rebooking on Eurowings if I'd eventually litigated it - but rather a breach of Reg. 15 (1) and (4) of the Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018, i.e., that the airline is no longer able to fulfil performance of not only the flight but the linked car hire, and this gives right to redress under Reg. 16. The airline may argue that the reason for the increased cost is due to me (the traveller) due to my choice of destination airport (Para. 4 (a) of Reg. 16) but I didn't cancel any flights or instigate the change, other than by declining the refund that they were so keen to push.

(And to defend the agent somewhat, she did say that she'd checked with a supervisor beforehand, unprompted - albeit that's at best a numbers game if the supervisor is not applying the regs correctly).

So how many more changes will BA be making? This is my second cancellation in as many weeks.

Shame about the Stuttgart as I flew the route a few times a year for many years to visit a friend who lived there.

What's the likelihood of any of these German flights being reinstated? Agent offered DUS or refund straight up but said that if CGN became available again I would only be able to change back at my cost. The mad thing is, my flight is for Gamescom and the flights that week are always absolutely rammed. I also have not known this route to be cancelled for the many years I've flown it!

I don't have an informed opinion on that issue - but also lots of frequency changes have occurred to.

The question is whether BA are finished with the changes? I am not confident to book with them for June next year