Raffles

I had an email last night from a HFP reader (not a reader here) who had tried to check in for the day flight to New York today in F.

He had checked in, his companion (who was the companion on a 241 voucher) could not.

I told him he was likely to downgraded with no EU261.

Turns out I was correct:

* Reader's companion has been downgraded from First due to "overselling" (which I am constantly told on here cannot happen in F)

* Companion will not be allowed any EU261 compensation because the 241 has no monetary value and he is on the 'companion' part of it, so his ticket was not paid for

* Companion has been given a seat in CW and a £500 gift card, main BAPP cardholder remains in F

To be fair, the reader has taken the same view that I would probably take if this happened to me and my wife (ie I can live without her for 6 hours and £500 will cover a nice shopping spree in NY and is worth more than EU261 anyway) .... but I wanted to flag it as another datapoint in the "no, FLY is not deliberately downgrading 241 tickets first, honest guv" debate.

KARFA

This still doesn't prove FLY is targeting companion vouchers though does it? There are potentially several downgrades at day by BA (in the context of several thousand passengers).

To prove that FLY systematically targets companion vouchers you either need to find someone in the know who confirms that is exactly what happens - my understanding is that someone in the know has actually said the opposite, or you need to show that downgrades are happening statistically more to companion vouchers than to any other subset of passenger.

I would agree of course that the advice the passenger was given about EC 261 by the agent was wrong.

DYKWIA

Pretty sure that it's been confirmed that BA now oversell F by 1. This is backed up by the current thread :-

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...th-august.html

DYKWIA

This does not seem to a rogue agent, but BA policy. The ticket cost nothing, so 75% of nothing is nothing. I would have thought they'd still be due 75% of the taxes though?

Raffles

1 in 15 chance otherwise though! And logically any downgrade system which did NOT work by 'economic value' would have downgraded a single traveller first. After all, a solo traveller is subtantially more likely to be happy with £500 and a seat in CW.

KARFA

I must admit I am not an expert on EC261 so I defer to the advice in the EC261 thread on this point in terms of exactly what would be due. Whilst it could be argued the voucher per se is "free", the avios cost and the taxes/fees/charges are not as you noted.

Raffles

BA's policy on this is clear - EU261 does not cover taxes and charges (at least on redemptions) and a 241 has no cash value for the companion.

sunshinebob

Amex cant be happy with Ba's interpretation of the 241 voucher's precieved value. It belittles their product and takes away the main USP of the card..

Tobias-UK

Nonsense, you should perhaps read more carefully. It is a well known fact that airlines oversell and that includes BA in First. On some flights BA oversell First by one.

As for EU261, perhaps suggest to your reader that they take legal advice on their options.

KARFA

You are making so many assumptions here. Do you get a report on all downgrades across the network every day? It is pointless quoting probability based on one cabin on one flight.

Tobias-UK

BA's policy is not law.

Gomac

The title "with no compo" is a bit misleading, they did get a £500 voucher., did you mean no E261?

Surely of all the routes JFK is the best bet for keeping your F seat with so many flights going out. Do you know if they were offered 2 F seats on another flight instead?

It does make me worry though, and certainly puts less value on the 241s.

corporate-wage-slave

It's a bit difficult to work out unless we go through (a) the specifics of what happened here, in terms of ticket purchase date, seat selection, special meals, timings, on carriage arrangements and (b) what everyone else in First is doing in the same areas, plus their groups' composition. There is a relentless focus here on (a), but rarely much consideration on (b). Moreover if you want to look at Jerry's collection of downgrade anecdotes here, the overall pattern is rather mixed, to say the least, and in those cases we tend to know only about (a). Personally I think Jerry's list indicates it is not working by economic value, but essentially down to flight logistics: wrong person wrong time.

BA oversells First by one seat up to a few days before departure, which, to pile on a bit, has often been mentioned here in FT by yours truly and many others. Normally this works out fine, once in a while it doesn't. I'm surprised there wasn't a First seat to JFK on another flight, but I guess this being one of BA's busiest flying days of the year took away that opportunity.

There has been some recent movement on the "2-4-1 has no value" issue, which certainly did not show BA at its best. I'm now reasonably confident that a MCOL process will find in the passenger's favour.

Raffles

Yes, apologies, I tried to edit the title after I'd posted it but I couldn't.

ahmetdouas

Just a thought. With so many flights a day to JFK, can't they just be put on a later flight? Or does BA not want to pay compo because of that.