robiles

Hi

i booked my return leg of my 2-4-1 redemption over a month ago and as yet it is till not been ticketed.

I have spoken to BA via twitter and there are vague about when it will happen. My flight is not for a few months however if like to book my seats and can't do this until it's ticketed.

Is there anyway I can convince them to ticket it ASAP palace

thanks
rob

UKtravelbear

It takes as long as it takes and the department that does it looks at them in closest date order to the flight.

corporate-wage-slave

There are quite a number of threads on this at the moment, which makes me suspect there is now a longer than average backlog. You will see from those threads that you won't be able to speed matters up until 48 hours before departure. It should be ticketed well before then.

However you can select seats by calling up and paying for them over the telephone, there isn't an additional charge for doing this.

robiles

Thanks for advice re calling. What you say 48 before departure do you mean of our outbound leg or the return that is the part that is not ticketed. U don't fancy chasing them from the states if it has not been done by then.

fransknorge

Chasing will not help. BA had a manual system and they do work by time of departure. This isn't considered urgent by BA until 48h before departure. You might be ticketed before bit it might also slipped through the crack.
Call them back 48h before departures if nothing is done yet.

robiles

fransknorge

That would be the outbound leg.

robiles

Thanks sorry to double post was trying to change spelling mistakes.

So even if outbound already ticketed they will ticket inbound 48h before the outbound?

Yoshi212

If they're on two tickets or you changed the inbound requiring reticketing the timing will be different but if it's a traditional RT ticket it should be ticketed by 48 hours before the outbound.
I'm not fully aware of how the 2-4-1 tickets work (RT, 2 1-ways or whatever).

Tim1975

Why don't BA sort this long wronging problem out? As well as being customer friendly, it would shorten the wait times for CS calls and safe them money as they would get fewer queries.

This is the sort of cost saving AC ought to be finding in his organisation.

Globaliser

Yes - what is most likely to happen is that the existing ticket will be cancelled and the entire trip (both outbound and inbound) will be reissued onto a new ticket. That's why it should have happened before 48 hours before the outbound (although it ought to happen long before then).

I share c-w-s' suspicion that there is currently a longer-than-average backlog of these, in part from my own re-ticketing experiences over the last 12 months. With flights a long time off, the backlog had seemed to get down to less than two weeks, but my most recent change took something like 5 weeks. I wonder whether the various bouts of disruption over the winter increased the burden on the department and pushed more into the backlog.

But it really shouldn't be like this at all.

markle

My OH is an expert complainer. She has successfully got a flight ticketed more than 48 hours out after complaining vociferously to the BA contact centre, on the basis that part of flying a full service airline is the ability to select a decent seat for a long haul flight, and it shouldn't really take 6 months for a ticket to be issued.

It took about an hour, and her refusing to hang up until it was fixed (but equally being v patient and understanding with the contact centre, who also find it equally frustrating), but it got done.

I'm sure the cost of calls such as that end up wiping out any saving BA thinks they're getting from the current ticketing process...

StingWest

If he/she would like some extra income, there may be a business opportunity here!

robiles

UPDATE

I have just had jet another AMAZING experience with BA Social Media Team. I DM'ed them on Twitter asking if there was a way to get it ticketed sooner as I would like to book seats (we don't fly until Feb) and I just had a call back from a lovely lady who said she can sort it. She said would do it while I was on hold but cam back and said was a big queue but would message me once done. Within the hour I had a message saying it is sorted.

This is the second time the Social Media Team have done far more than the contact centre seem to do for this booking for me. The first time they contacted me out of hours to book the inbound leg of my 2-4-1 redemption.

Top work BA Social Media Team

markle

Amazing, well done! Last time I tried to sort this via the Social Media team, the response was "FO"