father_ted

I recently had cause to change a BA-issued RTW, and decided that the best way to accomplish this was by phone.

UK Gold line made changes to reservation with no problems on Tuesday. It includes BA, AA, CX, QR and LA operated sectors. I was assured that it was queued to the priority fares queue and that I'd receive a call back from the original (very pleasant) agent with a price.

No word by Thursday, so I call up. Another pleasant agent informs me that it has been priced, so I give payment details. Surely, this should, at this point, be the limit of what a consumer can reasonably be expected to do?

I notice this morning that QR have cancelled two sectors, about 50 days before departure. I call and express my frustration politely, the reservations are made again but I get nothing other than another personal assurance that this agent will keep an eye on the booking and it will be ticketed 'sometime next week'.

I must stress that everyone I have dealt with seems competent and pleasant, but this is no way to run a company. What if I simply turned up for the departure of the next QR sector and found I had neither ticket nor reservation? I'm strongly opposed to a litigation culture, but I hope a judge would look dimly on any explanation offered by BA to get out of paying for walk-up J fares to solve the problem.

On a practical note, is there anything I can do to make sure this gets ticketed before space gets cancelled again? Given that QR cancelled the space somewhere between 72 and 96 hours after reservation last time, 'sometime next week' is not good enough. I'm sure that CX, LA and AA also have clocks ticking on it. The QR sectors that got cancelled are now as low as J7 C4 D2 I0 R0 (and I need D).

TheRealBabushka

I'm currently waiting for a BA reservation to be ticketed. Travelling in 3 days!!! Rang GGL line twice to follow up and was told it's in the queue. Are they facing a backlog?

father_ted

I'm worried, because the queue is unlikely to get any shorter with strikes next week.

AC*SE

I have had changes remain unticketed right up until online check-in. It seems that is the only point that the ticketing department can be persuaded that a ticketing request is actually a priority.

father_ted

It's not so great a problem with BA only bookings, because they won't auto-cancel the reservation. Other airlines quite rightly will, and apparently there's a priority queue for ticketing for this reason. I'm not confident that it will be fast enough.

What I can't understand is that the hard work of manual tax recalculation has been done - all that remains is to take payment, which surely should be a very simple process.

Cap'n Benj

On this evidence, when the shoe is on the other foot BA seem a little better than these other OW carriers in that a friends recently did BA sectors on AA tickets and the BA sectors had not been ticketed upon his arrival at DUB outbound and then at PHL on his return.

BA hadnt cancelled the reservations but he had some stressful waiting about while things were sorted.

Its probably more BA's IT not being in a position to cancel the reservations as opposed to anything else though!

Ldnn1

Worth having a read of this thread which shows what can happen when it goes wrong:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...d-account.html

If not ticketed in a couple of days I'd keep pestering BA and insist that other airlines are cancelling your reservations so it needs escalating now - this isn't like BA-only tickets where you can wait and assume they'll sort it eventually. Not sure what else you can do though beyond that.

father_ted

Thanks Ldnn1, it was interesting to read that. I suspect that what helped in the TLV-AMM-JFK case was that Avios had been taken, therefore technically a contract existed.

I wonder where I would stand - I requested a change, BA offered it to me for a certain price, I accepted and gave card details for payment (and emailed myself a reservation confirmation from BA.com showing 'confirmed' on all sectors). Is the contract executed when I provide the payment details, or when BA act on them?

Anonba

This far out BA may be able to speak to the other airlines involved via the oneworld team and get the flights reinstated.

*edit* didnt realise at first that the flights had been reinstated. All i would suggest is call and ask the agent to check if its on priority queue or ask them to call ticketing and ask them to reissue as you are concerned about the flights cancelling out again.

Anonba

Also there is a priority reissue queue for agents to use. This used when other airlines are involved to ensure ticketing before they cancel out availability.

Anonba

It isnt that taking payment on your one booking takes that long its that on the queue there are potentially several thousand other bookings all waiting to be actioned.

father_ted

It seems that when I gave payment details, the correct priority ticketing queue was not used.

Two hours after my call today, all is ticketed (although BA.com won't give me a receipt, Finnair will give me ticket numbers and the BA App shows the same).

Thanks, Anonba. I didn't have the 'priority queue' discussion with the agent who took my payment details, evidently I should have, but I must say I feel uncomfortable telling the professionals how to do their jobs. Lesson learned.

Often1

Under IATA "rules" (which are simply industry agreements), the other carrier has 72 hours to confirm positive space when a reservation is made. BA may then have as little as 24 hours to ticket.

This seems to be a problem for other major international carriers as these tickets are fetched to the head of the queue without human intervention. It is a BA IT fail that this happens on BA.

While it should not have to be, the real risk is that the space is gone and cannot be reinstated and there are no other good options. Thus, as it rolls up to 72 hours, check with the other carrier(s) and then back with BA.

As others note, BA can, of course, push your ticket ahead of others for ticketing.

Why this should take your time in 2017 is beyond me, but as between not flying your intended route as you had intended and leaving it to software which does not work, the former ought to prevail.

StingWest

As a Silver member, I've had several occasions recently where a price change had to be calculated by the pricing group, pricing "desk" etc. On two occasions, after waiting a week for a return call, I received nothing and had to call again. On the next attempt the agent herself promised to call back and she did the same day, with a ridiculously high quote.

I'm not sure about a backlog, but it seems that BA's system is set up such that the pricing/ticketing group must often get involved in the simplest transaction. This causes frustration and delays - in my case the fares went up between my call and the final price. I ended up flying on Virgin

FlyingGames

FWIW I rocked up to NRT last week and BA hadn't processed a ticket change from W to J to HNL, meaning a nice 30 minute call to BA whilst they ticketed it there and then.