Skipping a sector in a ticket
 

I have a return business class ticket LOS-LHR-ABZ and I want to skip the LHR-ABZ leg and go by car via family etc, return is unchanged.

BA exec club say they can't help me as the booking was via a travel agent.

My company travel agent says it will cost me £550 to re-issue the ticket!!! they go on to say that if I just don't show, then the return leg will be voided. I am not looking for a refund, just trying to avoid having the return sector voided/cancelled

Is the really true? Any advice on what happens if I just don't checkin for that sector and miss the flight?

Richard

Yes, it's really true... pay up or be stranded for your return. And start believing what your TA is telling you, most do know more than their customers.

It really is true. Stupid but true.

I can't think of an easy way round it.

Assuming your ticket is a return on the one booking:
LOS-LHR-ABZ-LHR-LOS

If you miss LHR-ABZ, then both the ABZ-LON segment and LHR-LOS segment will be cancelled; i.e. all sectors after LHR-ABZ.

You should have booked the two legs separately originally
LOS-LHR-LOS and LHR-ABZ-LHR. That way, at least you would only loose ABZ-LHR only with your LHR-LOS being safe.

Sorry you had to learn the hard way. Many have been caught out in a similar fashion. These are currently in the Terms and Conditions. There are moves to legislate against this although that will be a long time off

Once you miss one leg of a multi leg journey the remaining legs will all be automatically cancelled and will only be re-instated in very limited circumstances if you have a very good reason which isn't the case for you. This is not just a BA, thing it is airline industry wide policy.

Who wants to be in a car from Heathrow to Aberdeen?

You're nuts. I would fly!

Failing that, is there not any other (male) member of your family who can fly in your place?

It's not stupid at all and there is an easy way around it - just buy a flexible ticket.

We should be happy airlines sell restricted tickets. Otherwise most of us would do a lot less travel.

Welcome Richard Spalding
 

Welcome Richard Spalding to Flyertalk, and welcome to the BA forum. It's good to see you here, we are very much open to newcomers joining us so I hope you can continue to post here. Welcome on board.

And I can only concur with the points raised. You are effectively asking for flexibility and you didn't pay for that flexibility. In the depth of winter you may have got lucky on that sector if they cancelled the service but apart from that you do need to complete each sector or risk the rest being cancelled, it's a standard airline rule.

£550 will be the sum of the change fee + the TA fee + the difference in price between what the ticket cost then and what it costs today.

It may well be cheaper to change the ticket after you have flown the first leg into LHR. At this point, you will only be paying the change fee and any difference in price (probably none) at historic ticket prices.

My advice -

Check the fare rules and if it's only small change fee, then go to a ticket desk on arrival at LHR and change the ticket.

Alternatively, if it's a reasonably tight connection, walk very very slowly (make sure they tag your bags to LHR only), then "miss" your connection, and at this point offer to take the lift instead of being rebooked LHR-ABZ but make sure they protect the return flights and get a printout of the new e-ticket receipt/itinerary.

That's not going to work at all is it? If you miss your connection even if it is over the MCT but close to 1 hr, the best case scenario is that you will be rebooked on the next ABZ service. It isn't going to give you an excuse to slack off the LHR-ABZ flight and keep the rest of the booking intact. If you push that too far then the only other likely outcome is that the rest of the ticket will be cancelled as already advised.

Conversely, most FT BAEC regulars know a damn sight more than TAs.

It's possibly worth a try. The ticket staff at LHR have a lot more flexibility, especially if he is booked on the last LHR-ABZ flight of the day, it would be possible to argue to make it the trip by road (at no expense to BA).

Yep, but that's why I stated "most" :-). It's good to verify facts, but most posts here start with the intend of disproving those that do something professionally assuming they are total morons (only a few are).

And now those FT'ers in the know are advising to scam the airline by faking a missed connection. Just great, giving new meaning to the Nigeria scam ;)

But then the OP would lose their guaranteed connection at LHR if the ABZ-LHR flight is delayed/cancelled.

The flight from LOS-LHR generally arrives around 0525 from what I can see on ba.com so the last ABZ flight plan isn't going to work. I really don't think this is worth a try at all, what is the OP supposed to do when the BA agent says no, and what plausible excuse is he going to be able to provide when they ask why he won't take his ABZ flight whether it is the original one or re-booked one in case of a misconnect?